[imagesource:here]

At R21,60 a litre for petrol these days, it’s pretty tempting to drive off without paying for the exorbitant cost of filling our tanks.

Of course, as upstanding citizens with a strong sense of right and wrong, we oblige when the petrol attendant arrives at our window with the card machine.

Then again, there are always those who don’t play by the rules.

As fuel costs rise, so too, have fuel thefts at service stations across the country.

Folks driving off without paying for their filled tanks are forcing petrol stations in South Africa to rethink their business procedures, with a few demanding payments before providing the juice:

Image: Twitter

IOL has more:

A Glenwood service station, which also has a sign telling customers that they may be asked to pay for fuel in advance, said they had been robbed quite a few times.

“Recently, we had four people drive off with four full tanks of fuel,” said the admin worker, who declined to be named.

“So the modus operandi is that they would ask the attendants to top up their tanks, and then while the attendant was placing the nozzle back, they would speed off.”

The sign was mainly put up to warn cars without number plates, but petrol attendants could also use their own discretion about upfront payments.

In a video shared on Twitter, one quick-thinking petrol attendant managed to give a petrol thief a taste of their own medicine as they drove off:

I Yes the Petrol Attandent!!!!! pic.twitter.com/MPfbYqrRxV

— Nyiko.Himself (@NyikoooP) April 4, 2022

Prem Balram from Reaction Unit SA said that cars have also driven off at the moment that the petrol attendant gets the card machine for payment.

In the cases where number plates can be traced after reporting the incident to the police, service stations have managed to recover the lost money.

Balram also said that thanks to the tracking of CCTV footage, two successful arrests had already been made this year, with those drivers being charged with theft of fuel.

He also mentioned that asking for payments before filling tanks was standard procedure in Europe and America, and could be “beneficial” to adopt here.

[source:iol]