Petrol Station rip off

Bitstring , from the wonderful person tim..... said

No they are not, because the credit card has no PIN, and the debit card is never used in a petrol station (or anywhere else of dubious security).

No. Or else you could just take things from places that don't accept cards and offer one.

"snapped" - that just about sums up shop staff these days

Er, no it isn't.

The "invitation to treat" is the retailer offering something, petrol in this case, for sale.

The retailer doesn't do the accepting, it's the customer who does that, by filling their tank with petrol. That forms a contract that the customer has to fulfill by paying for the fuel.

Not if the retailer has unreasonably refused an attempt at payment,

Cheers,

John

Yes, I think he must be joking.

I can't imagine how we would ever get through the chore of our weekly shopping at Trashco's were it not for being able to have a good ole whinge about being delayed by them what uses plastic.

Joe Lee

Correct, except that here the word "offer" must be interpreted only in its everyday wishy-washy sense, and not in the legal sense.

The key feature of an invitation to treat is that it is *not an offer to sell*, but something which seeks to incite the customer to make an offer to buy the goods at the retailer's advertised price.

This is incorrect. In a normal retail scenario, the contract comes into being when the retailer accepts the customer's offer to buy.

Of course, in a normal self-service shop situation, the customer takes the goods to the checkout and offers to buy them, and it's easy for the retailer then to reject the offer. This is obviously impractical at a filling station, where the fuel is already in the customer's car before he makes the offer to buy it. There is no way, realistically, for the filling station to refuse the motorist's offer to buy, since the fuel cannot be sucked back out of the car and poured back into the station's tanks. Once the offer has been (unavoidably) accepted, ownership of the dispensed fuel passes from the station to the motorist, and simulataneously ownership of the money to pay for it passes from the motorist to the station. That is to say that a debt has been created which the motorist must settle, by handing over the money which the station now owns. If there is a problem with doing this immediately, it must be done later.

Agreed. If the station does not accept the method of payment offered on the spot, and the customer is unable to offer an alternative, there has been no theft, and the customer must be given the opportunity to settle the debt later.

Slightly OT, but in Spain recently, you have to enter your PIN *and* sign. As one retailer told me - no signature, and he won't get the payment.

So there PIN *supplements* signatures, not replaces it.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Joe Lee said

T'aint them as uses plastic, it's them as gets all the way to putting shopping bags back in their trolley before even thinking about providing parking ticket, club card, or means to pay. Ladies rambling through handbag looking for purse, then rambling through purse looking for money, then .. ah, you get the idea.

Could it not argued that the offer to buy is made when the customer removes the filler nozzle from the pump and is accepted when the cashier presses the button to allow the pump to dispense fuel?

In principle that's a good idea, provided it is possible to create a contract in which the quantity is indeterminate. I don't know whether that is possible.

No it's not. Offering to pay for the goods is an 'offer to purchase the goods'. By processing your card payment the shop is accepting your offer, providing the card payment goes through ok. The contract is completed when they hand you the goods. At this point there is nothing to stop you leaving the shop with your goods. If they don't hand you your goods, you can claim your money back. If you've paid by card it would probably mean them putting your card through again in order to give you a credit. Much easier to give you the goods. As for swiping your card after it has been successfully processed by chip and pin, this could be a scam, but unlikely if they are doing it openly. It happened to me once in a shoe shop, their excuse was that they needed to swip the card so that their internal till system could record the sale! You need to stand your ground if there's any hint of an irregularity.

In many countries you put your card in at the pumps, otherwise you don't get any gas. This seems to work OK and does not rely on chip'n'pin.

Nowadays I only pay by cash in Halfords.

Just as well, since your puncture repair kit costs one ninety-nine...

I bet you spend a fortune at Halfords on:

Black tyre restorer Blue LED lights under the car Fake "Turbo" badge Furry dice "Kevin And Sharon" sun strip Rotating wheel trims Rust removers Silver 'go faster' stripes Wheelbase extenders