Posted on 04/30/2015 8:46:10 PM PDT by rey
Ishara Sweeney couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was odd about the gas pump at the Santa Rosa Chevron station.
The hose seemed out of place and the numbers began moving before she squeezed the handle. They stopped suddenly at $36.36 but she didn’t hear a click sound.
Sweeney was further baffled when she got back into her Toyota Corolla after believing she had fueled up and saw the needle hadn’t moved on her gas gauge. It wasn’t until a knowing attendant arrived that she learned she was the victim of a scam.
“I felt pretty dumb,” said Sweeney, a Santa Rosa acupuncturist, who was ripped off Wednesday at the fairgrounds-area station. “I saw the red flags … but it never occurred to me that someone would do something like this. I’m kind of astounded.”
She is among the latest to be taken by a disturbing crime trend hitting local gas stations, leaving customers with the bill for thousands of dollars in stolen fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
Wow, one just needs to pay attention to everything in the public eye.
those who don’t pay attention...pay...
How stupid can a person be not to notice when the hose is leading?
I can see this happening only on those overhead hose type pumps.
The thief would need good timing, too.
Who looks up at the top of the rig to see where the hose goes?
Have you seen the video of the driver who repeatedly circles the pumps in confusion over how to get the fuel filler door closer to the pump? I can absolutely see this scam being very successful, people are so damned clueless.
Well... the bell curve of intelligence says they are.
Free gas. Let someone else pay for it.
And the risk is low and the reward is huge.
I had never heard of this scam.
And how can the writer be so stupid as to say “switch nozzles” when it should be “switch hoses”. “Switch nozzles” implies taking the nozzle-end off of one hose and putting it on another hose, which wouldn’t change anything. They are switching the ends going into the pumps themselves, obviously, or the scam wouldn’t work.
It’s a hoot to see the car going down the freeway with the nozzle in the tank and the hose flying on the car. Some people go through life as clueless idiots. And they vote democRAT.
Here in NJ have stations run by ragheads (Pakistani) who if
pay in cash dont give you change claiming you gave them tip....
I learned long ago that most people go through life in a fog, they don’t really see much.
In states where we are not presumed to be to incompetent to handle this simple task. A few demonstrate lacking ability, as the article shows. But the rest of us are not forced to pay extra for those incapable.
A couple of winters ago, I saw a driver pull away from the pump before removing the nozzle. It was so icy the car went nowhere. The driver kept racing the engine and eventually noticed the problem and catastrophe was averted. Kinda funny though.
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