It depends where you leave in Europe or seems to work that way in US you have card readers on the distributors or need to go to the attendant and pay in advance with cash. I think there’s also an option (or at least the attendant let me) to leave your DL, then fuel your car and then pay and get you DL back.
I’m still pissed off at being treated like a thief every time I go to gas up because they started a forever war in the middle east which inflated the price of gas. Then they never brought the cost back down with the price per barrel AND kept the paying before pumping policy.
If you were a local they’d see you pull up and turn on the pump. If you weren’t you’d go inside and pay cash first, but it was inconvenient because it was harder to just fill the tank.
My brother went to the same gas station in a small town, every day. Knew the staff by name. Went there for years.
One morning he pumps a few bucks of gas, then absentmindedly drives away.
Now I get it, a drive off is a drive off, and the cashier ain’t gonna lose his job. But it was like $10, in a small town (two stoplights), he knew these guys, they knew him.
Float my bro $10 and figure it out later.
But no, they called the cops, sent officers to my grandma’s house trying to find him, almost gave her a heart attack.
He never went back after that. Which was a maybe a little extreme.
But listen, this is the type of town, and my family was the friendly trustworthy type, such that I’ve overdrafted at the bank by a few bucks, and had the cashier catch it and put her own money to cover me.
They knew my mom better than me, but still.
Theres a station near me I go to regularly, and one time while waiting on a replacement card after my nunber got stolen online I went inside, gave them 40 cash tonpay for s few snacks and the rest for gas (about 35-ish for gas), and went out to the pump. My animal brain was used to pumping before going inside and getting snacks, so I just walked out, got in the truck, and drove home.
I realized it on the way to work the next day when my tank was low and had to buy gas at a different station on the way.
I figured I’d just lost the money and wasn’t gonna make any kind of fuss over it, but the next time I went to the station about a week later they recognized me and had kept the money in an envelope for me.
The mathematics I have to go through at fuel stations that don’t allow paying at the pump, gotta go inside and talk to the cashier, ugh.
Each tenth of my tank is 2.4 gallons, so if I’m at 4/10 and want to top off, (10-4)=6, so 6 x 2.4 = 14.4 gallons x price of fuel per gallon which is hovering around $6.90 lately (diesel in California), so I tell the cashier person I 'd like to purchase exactly $99.36 but gosh that’s so close to $100 let’s just round it to $100.
Remarkable how USian measurements always make people jump through some hoops. On my dashboard, I’d just see that the tank is missing about thirty liters of gas, so I’d get thirty liters. That was a car from the eighties, so we aren’t talking any fancy electronics, either.
Most cars don’t show that. Here’s the fuel gauge from my backup car since my other car is in the middle of repairs
Not only do you have to know the size of the tank, you also have to account for fuel tank math being different from regular math. The needle isn’t linear. E.g in a lot of cars it doesn’t start dropping until you’re down at least like 5 liters. That’s because people start whining about fuel consumption otherwise (“I just filled up and it’s already dropping”) and similarly the last half or quarter seems to be bigger in some cars. Middle bit is worth the least.
I don’t think I’ve seen a car that actually shows the liters. Maybe once or twice. I’ve owned like 10 or 15 cars and driven many more.
I thought for a minute that I misremembered, since image search shown only gauges like yours. But, here’s what it looks like in an old Volkswagen. Admittedly my car experience is very limited since I only bought it for fun and then discovered I just don’t have much need for a car. I guess most cars use the relative-scale gauges so that the instrument is interchangeable between models.
Yes but the cashier wants us to tell her a monetary amount. It has nothing to do with USA using gallons instead of litres. It’s a matter of multiplying money amount times unit of volume of desired fuel.
Hm, that’s still an odd system, to me. Around here, the cash register does the multiplication, and I probably wouldn’t be trusted to say the correct sum (nor would I want to). Never tried that, though — it might be possible to do it that way.
What I’m describing is not exclusive to the USA. It’s just how fuel purchases are made when paying at the pump isn’t an option, so you have to go in & do the transaction with a human behind a Point-of-Sale machine. The person at the cash register doesn’t know how many gallons or liters you need. So you have to tell them. But they want to know the corresponding cash amount, not the volume of liquid. So you have to do the math yourself in order to tell them the dollar amount to charge to your card. 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know how to make this any clearer.
I understand that. It just seems backwards to me. In a shop, I don’t ask for X bucks of meat, but for Y kilograms of it, and they charge me a certain sum. Same with gas stations.
It’s possible that some of the places that used to skip prepay were illegally taking the cost of a pump and run out of the pay of whoever was on register. I’ve never experienced it personally, but I’ve heard a lot of stories.
In my wanderings around the USA I’ve only encountered one pump that allowed pump before pay. At some obscure Nevada gas station in a little pass-through town in the middle of nowhere.
Depends where you live. I live in Australia, and there isn’t a single service station that makes you prepay where I love. You can just pump and pay at the end, always.
This was how gas pumps worked everywhere when I started driving
It depends where you leave in Europe or seems to work that way in US you have card readers on the distributors or need to go to the attendant and pay in advance with cash. I think there’s also an option (or at least the attendant let me) to leave your DL, then fuel your car and then pay and get you DL back.
I’m still pissed off at being treated like a thief every time I go to gas up because they started a forever war in the middle east which inflated the price of gas. Then they never brought the cost back down with the price per barrel AND kept the paying before pumping policy.
Yeah.
If you were a local they’d see you pull up and turn on the pump. If you weren’t you’d go inside and pay cash first, but it was inconvenient because it was harder to just fill the tank.
My brother went to the same gas station in a small town, every day. Knew the staff by name. Went there for years.
One morning he pumps a few bucks of gas, then absentmindedly drives away.
Now I get it, a drive off is a drive off, and the cashier ain’t gonna lose his job. But it was like $10, in a small town (two stoplights), he knew these guys, they knew him. Float my bro $10 and figure it out later.
But no, they called the cops, sent officers to my grandma’s house trying to find him, almost gave her a heart attack.
He never went back after that. Which was a maybe a little extreme.
But listen, this is the type of town, and my family was the friendly trustworthy type, such that I’ve overdrafted at the bank by a few bucks, and had the cashier catch it and put her own money to cover me. They knew my mom better than me, but still.
Theres a station near me I go to regularly, and one time while waiting on a replacement card after my nunber got stolen online I went inside, gave them 40 cash tonpay for s few snacks and the rest for gas (about 35-ish for gas), and went out to the pump. My animal brain was used to pumping before going inside and getting snacks, so I just walked out, got in the truck, and drove home.
I realized it on the way to work the next day when my tank was low and had to buy gas at a different station on the way.
I figured I’d just lost the money and wasn’t gonna make any kind of fuss over it, but the next time I went to the station about a week later they recognized me and had kept the money in an envelope for me.
The mathematics I have to go through at fuel stations that don’t allow paying at the pump, gotta go inside and talk to the cashier, ugh.
Each tenth of my tank is 2.4 gallons, so if I’m at 4/10 and want to top off, (10-4)=6, so 6 x 2.4 = 14.4 gallons x price of fuel per gallon which is hovering around $6.90 lately (diesel in California), so I tell the cashier person I 'd like to purchase exactly $99.36 but gosh that’s so close to $100 let’s just round it to $100.
Remarkable how USian measurements always make people jump through some hoops. On my dashboard, I’d just see that the tank is missing about thirty liters of gas, so I’d get thirty liters. That was a car from the eighties, so we aren’t talking any fancy electronics, either.
Most cars don’t show that. Here’s the fuel gauge from my backup car since my other car is in the middle of repairs
Not only do you have to know the size of the tank, you also have to account for fuel tank math being different from regular math. The needle isn’t linear. E.g in a lot of cars it doesn’t start dropping until you’re down at least like 5 liters. That’s because people start whining about fuel consumption otherwise (“I just filled up and it’s already dropping”) and similarly the last half or quarter seems to be bigger in some cars. Middle bit is worth the least.
I don’t think I’ve seen a car that actually shows the liters. Maybe once or twice. I’ve owned like 10 or 15 cars and driven many more.
I thought for a minute that I misremembered, since image search shown only gauges like yours. But, here’s what it looks like in an old Volkswagen. Admittedly my car experience is very limited since I only bought it for fun and then discovered I just don’t have much need for a car. I guess most cars use the relative-scale gauges so that the instrument is interchangeable between models.
Yes but the cashier wants us to tell her a monetary amount. It has nothing to do with USA using gallons instead of litres. It’s a matter of multiplying money amount times unit of volume of desired fuel.
Hm, that’s still an odd system, to me. Around here, the cash register does the multiplication, and I probably wouldn’t be trusted to say the correct sum (nor would I want to). Never tried that, though — it might be possible to do it that way.
What I’m describing is not exclusive to the USA. It’s just how fuel purchases are made when paying at the pump isn’t an option, so you have to go in & do the transaction with a human behind a Point-of-Sale machine. The person at the cash register doesn’t know how many gallons or liters you need. So you have to tell them. But they want to know the corresponding cash amount, not the volume of liquid. So you have to do the math yourself in order to tell them the dollar amount to charge to your card. 🤷🏼♀️ I don’t know how to make this any clearer.
I understand that. It just seems backwards to me. In a shop, I don’t ask for X bucks of meat, but for Y kilograms of it, and they charge me a certain sum. Same with gas stations.
You can usually go back in and get change, or the balance refunded.
Well yeah but I still need to tell her a dollar amount. If I underestimate then my tank won’t get topped off. So I have to do the math.
I’m 60, so me, too. But, I haven’t seen a pump or a station that allows pumping before paying in many, many years.
You hand over cash at the counter, and they turn on the pump. Or you pay at the pump--you need to put your card in before the pump will start.
It’s possible that some of the places that used to skip prepay were illegally taking the cost of a pump and run out of the pay of whoever was on register. I’ve never experienced it personally, but I’ve heard a lot of stories.
In my wanderings around the USA I’ve only encountered one pump that allowed pump before pay. At some obscure Nevada gas station in a little pass-through town in the middle of nowhere.
Depends where you live. I live in Australia, and there isn’t a single service station that makes you prepay where I love. You can just pump and pay at the end, always.
You make love in the gas station?
No elevators nearby