Please pay in shop before filling
Thus read the sign at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere which I reached with the fuel gauge snarling REFILL.
I went in and asked "What’s with the paying before filling up?"
"Oh you can fill up first if you want."
Sadly the sign you saw is a depiction of how things are, many petrol stations, especially those miles from anywhere hare often the frequent target of Bilking (filling up with petrol and driving away without paying) often with false plates on the cars. The USA has been like this for sometime, I have no doubt that within the next few years the PrePay method (a la Tesco) will become defacto.
Comment by SlugsAndSnails — 2007-09-24 @ 08:01:04