You probably wouldn’t try to leave a retail store without a receipt, but you might not think about it when you’re at the gas pump—after all, it’s not like you’re going to bring the gas back for a refund. But a reader points out that you should always have your proof of purchase just in case you end up in an awkward situation:
I pulled out of the lot, turned left, and I wasn’t more than 200 yards away when a cop comes up behind me, lights flashing. I knew I couldn’t have been speeding so I was genuinely confused. He said the woman at the United Dairy Farmers said I drove off without paying for gas.
Here’s Chris’ full story:
I had an interesting experience on Friday and a life lesson I think is worth passing onto other readers. On Friday I stopped at a United Dairy Farmers (local Cincinnati convenience store/ice cream parlor) to fill up while gas is relatively cheap. I pulled up to the pump, swiped my card, filled up, and paused before printing the receipt. Usually those things just end up wadding up in my pocket or under the seats of the car, but what the hell, I hit yes anyway. I then went inside to get a soft drink.
“Anything else?” the cashier asked. I said no, paid in change, and went back to my car. I pulled out of the lot, turned left, and I wasn’t more than 200 yards away when a cop comes up behind me, lights flashing. I knew I couldn’t have been speeding so I was genuinely confused. He said the woman at the United Dairy Farmers said I drove off without paying for gas. I said that was incorrect, and he said “She said it was a silver car, and she pointed at yours.” I do drive a silver car, but I had paid for gas, and wait! I told the officer I had my receipt, and he wrote down the details: Amount, pump number, last 4 of my credit card, and the time. I also pulled out the credit card I paid with and my license, just to verify everything was on the up and up. He was cool about it, apologized, and I was on my way.
Lesson here is to always print that receipt out. I rarely check it against my statements now that I don’t fill up as often. But without that 3×1 strip of paper I would have had a totally different story to tell. Needless to say I won’t be taking my business to United Dairy Farmers anymore – being falsely accused of theft is a dealbreaker.
(Photo: Getty)
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Many pumps now ask about the receipt before you pump gas. If you don’t want a receipt, how on earth would the pump know to “close out the transaction”?
@doctor_cos: I assumed craiggers was talking about pumps where you get it at the end.
@icy_one: I apologize for referring to you as the wrong gender in my post.
@Cupajo: You’re not being a jerk if it’s a valid point. They ought to be ‘set up’ to give receipts for pre-pay if only protect themselves. Shouldn’t they be worried about the reverse: someone giving them a 20 dollar bill and then claiming later it was a 50?
It doesn’t even make sense that they aren’t able to give you a receipt when you pay for gas.
@GMFish: Exact same thing happened to me n the early 90s. It was a small town with only one gas station. As soon as I realized I had forgot to pay, I went right back and asked them if I forgot to pay. They said yes, but they were too embarrassed to let me know because I was a regular customer. They were very grateful that I came back on my own and corrected the mistake.
I once went in and paid for my gas at a station in a small town on my way to college.
About 5 miles down the road, some lady zips by me and pulls in front of me with her flashers on and gets my attention to pull over.
As soon as I do she comes screaming at me while I’m in my car that the clerk said I didn’t pay and the police were on the way.
Then some guy pulls up behind me in a pickup asking what the hell my problem is doing a drive off.
At this point I had already called the cops on the lady for almost causing an accident by cutting me off. I also managed to show her my receipt and told her off then told the guy it wasn’t me and to deal with it. (I was a pretty pissed off 19yo at that point)
I went back to the station after I was done with class and started asking the clerk wtf her problem was and she told me, and I quote “I was high this morning, if you want to hit me you can hit me for it.”
I was stunned at that, went to the local Pizza Place/Liquor store/Strip Club (all places owned by the same guy, even the gas station) and complained to the owner.
I think she was fired later that week.
Anyway, keep your receipt. You never know when some tweaker is going to blame you for stealing gas.
@doctor_cos:
The Kum n Go (snicker) where I get gas has a sticker on the pump which says, “If you do not receive a receipt, you must pay inside.” So if putting the pump back closes the transaction, why would this be necessary?
Just wondering…
@HogwartsAlum: Wtf? If a receipt doesn’t print you have to go pay as opposed to getting a receipt? They can do that after they show me my credit card hasn’t shown up on their system. Or we can have to police sort it out
You also need a receipt if you intend to deduct gas for tax purposes.
The IRS has long since ruled that a single line on a credit card statement will not be sufficient proof; as that could have been cigarettes rather than gas.
@theninjasquad: I always pay for my gas with a credit or debit card, but I pay for drinks and other shit inside with cash. I don’t have enough cash for gas, and I’m not going to put an 89-cent soda on my Visa.
@LionelEHutz: So this is more of an argument to pay enough money to hire a smarter clerk. If it’s a busy time of day and the clerk has someone come in and buy something from the store and then they see them get into a car at a pump and drive off, they might get paranoid and call the cops if their job was on the line due to drive aways. On the other hand, they should be able to check the transaction status of the pump to verify if there’s still an open transaction on the pump before they call the cops. That’s what they have to do anyway when you go in to tell them you want $50 on pump #6.
I was just thinking the other day about printing out gasoline receipts. I used to always print one out, only to shred it later at home. Stated to think that it was kind of wasteful (paper and time) so I started to hit “no” when prompted for receipts…
…until a lightbulb when off (or rather, on) and I asked myself: how I could prove to American Express that I got overcharged if the gas station machines were ILLEGALLY PROGRAMMED to overcharge (e.g., 1 cent, 10 cents, or 4 dollars) whenever someone hits “no” when prompted for a receipt? Wouldn’t I be out of luck, even if I were to regularly review my statements?
So now I started to print them out again, and shred them after having reconciled my credit card statement.
I knew someone who worked at a place with a diesel tank for their fleet, and his personal vehicle was a diesel truck. He showed up one day to be accused of stealing fuel. (Fuel was missing, they were pointing fingers at everyone.) He produced the receipts he kept in his truck and kept his job.
It’s not your job to arbitrarily be able to show proof of purchase to to a cop – for items purchased at a store, gas, or anything else. If someone wants to accuse you of something, they have to bring proof to the table, end of story.
If a cop pulled me over and asked me for a gasoline receipt (which I never get because they end up trashing up my car) I’d ask him if he has a warrant and if not, he’s welcome to get one if the gas station has some kind of evidence that you’ve done something wrong.
Don’t play into a police state.
I am betting the cop was there and the cashier just told him verbally. There is no way they woudl dispatch him and he would get there that quick.
Stupid bitch tried to scam you!
Considering the relatively few “you should have just showed your receipt at walmart” comments those Consumerist posts get, and the huge comment smack-downs that follow them, I’m quite surprised at the reaction to this incident.
Those sort of posts have stood on the “the retailer needs proof of you taking an item, not paying for it, and leaving the store with it before they can legitimately contact the police” factor. Once you pay, receipt or not, the item is yours, and it’s the retailer’s responsibility to prove otherwise.
What bothers me about this is that, lacking store security personel, they were able to contact the police to perform the same role. Small inconvenience or not, your rights were violated, but I’m not sure whom to point the finger at.
Either the employee accused you of a crime without just cause, or the police officer pulled you over for no good reason. Even if neither of them was aware of the requirements to make such an accusation, how many times do we hear that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”?
@IfThenElvis: Heh, beer runs are a completely different matter though, those seem to be getting worse.
WRT the article in general, I wonder why they don’t make the machines automatically print the receipt if it’s that critical. I know I’ve often seen the printers at pumps be out of paper/order and I’m instructed to go inside if I want a receipt so clearly the station in question has access to that information.
Heck, I usually fill up at Sam’s or Costco and I need to swipe my membership card and my form of payment before I can pump anything so I really don’t need a receipt to prove that I paid.
Same thing happened to my husband and he didn’t even buy gas. We live right down the road from this small station and the cops came to the house about 30 minutes after my husband left the store. He had bought some ice cream. He had parked close to the pumps because the parking lot was full. He told the cops he didn’t buy gas but the cop made him go back to the store anyways. When they walked into the store the lady behind the counter said “That’s not him”. She did not bother to say “Sorry”. The cop was very sorry for what happened and he seemed a little pissed off. Strange because the lady behind the counter had to have given our license number to the cops. Don’t know what she was smoking that day.
@TomCruisesTesticles:
I’m thinking maybe it means that if it doesn’t print, the transaction did not complete. Or that they want you to come in so they can verify that it did. I don’t know. I think I’ll ask the nice lady that works in there the next time I go in.
Here’s a good scam:
Get a semi-real looking police cruiser and hang out at a gas station. Pull people over as they drive away. Tell them they didn’t pay. They’ll offer the receipt; you’ll ask to verify their information. Take their credit card and drivers license, write down all of the information, and apologize for the mistake. Send them on their way, then go home and get online for some serious credit card fraud.
@DrGirlfriend:
Technically, the Oregon law doesn’t require that a station attendant pump the gas. What it actually does is classify gasoline as a hazardous material, and require a license to handle it.
In theory, if you had such a license, you could display it to the attendant and pump your own gas. But unless there were too many customers, too few attendants, and you were in a big hurry, it’d probably be easier to just let the attendant do it.
It could have been a simple human error on the part of the cashier and not malicious at all. I say this because I worked at a gas station when I started college and accidentally reported someone who had paid for his gas as a drive-off. The problem was that he had told me the wrong pump number when he paid for his gas. So, when I saw him drive off I thought he hadn’t paid. The other driver was gone and didn’t pay for gas. The guy that I reported had to come back to the store so I could ID him. When I saw him, I knew that he had paid. I was embarassed and apologized profusely. The guy actually found it funny and started coming in regularly after the incident.
I’m definitely in the “don’t show your receipts just because they ask” corner. This situation is the same as wal-mart, but even worse, since they bring law enforcement into the picture.
It happened to me several years ago, and in a state of mental unpreparedness, I went out to my car (they came to my house about 10 minutes after I got home) and showed the officer my receipt. The dispatcher, apparently in a state of disbelief, had the officer check the date and time on the receipt as well, as if I was trying to pull some sort of a bait and switch scam!
Then and there, I resolved that if it ever happened again, things would play out differently.
Just as with wal-mart, the gas is mine, free and clear, once that credit card transaction goes through. You better not come accusing me of theft unless you have proof.
I would take that ride down to the station, and confront the clerk. Demand proof of this fabricated crime. As soon as it was established that they were making unfounded accusations, you better believe I would be asking that officer what options I had for pressing charges right then and there.
I am from a small town and they still let people pay AFTER they pump. Um, stupid. They say it’s a form of respect and trust. No, it’s a form of covering your ass to make people pre-pay.
I always get a receipt, even if I have to go in, JUST because this might happen to me.
@timmus:
There are still plenty of pumps in the last two states I’ve lived in (Illinois and Ohio) that do not require you to pay first or swipe a card in order to pump.
@msmith6044: plates