I know no one wants to read a long story but trust me this is
will be beneficial. I have refused to summarize the story because I want you to
read the full details. If you own a car in Nigeria or buy fuel for any other
purposes, you might want to really read this. It is shocking how people think
that cheating is the way to success. We all go to buy petrol and right before
our eyes, the attendant is cheating us without our knowledge. Please the next
time you drive into a garage / petrol station, be extra attentive.
Read the full story below as reported by Punch
Mrs. Bisola Ayeni, a businesswoman in
her early 40s confidently left her house at Egbeda (Lagos) with an almost empty
tank heading for Ikeja. The red light of the fuel indicator was blinking
nonstop but Ayeni knew the quantity of fuel in her tank would take her to the
next available filling station where she had hoped to fill up her tank. Indeed,
as she got to the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Ayeni drove into the filling
station and told the attendant to fill her car with N5,000 worth of fuel while
she rummaged her handbag to bring out the money as well as pick a call. That
was her undoing.
Ayeni would tell PUNCH that she didn’t
bother to look at the pump while the sale was on because she didn’t envisage
any foul act, besides she knew the level a N5,000 worth of fuel would rise to
on her fuel gauge. Ayeni only managed a quick glance at the meter and when she
saw that it was reading, she relaxed and enjoyed her discussion on the
phone.She said:
"When I finished, I looked at the
pump and I saw N5,000 on the price column, I paid him and drove away. I
expected the light indicating low fuel to go off and the indicator to rise, but
it didn’t happen. Even if the rise in the fuel indicator would be gradual, I
expected a major shift. Lo and behold, the light never went off and the
indicator never rose. Oh my God, I was confused and very angry, so I turned
back, while praying that the car wouldn’t run out of fuel. By the time I got to
the petrol station, I was fuming.”
Ayeni said she had almost slapped the
attendant who attended to her having shouted on him when the station manager
came out.
“On hearing what happened, the manager
gave the sales boy a resounding slap, apologized to me and ordered him to sell
the fuel again, and I heard him saying the N5,000 would be deducted from his
salary. We both stood by him while he sold the fuel, the gauge rose even before
I left the station, which means he cheated me earlier. I still wouldn’t know
how he did it,” she said.
Ayeni’s experience is common among
vehicle owners, who had at one time or the other thought they had bought fuel
but later found out they either bought nothing or were short-changed in terms
of the quantity. A cross section of vehicle owners who spoke to our
correspondent alleged that they had noticed same at one time or the other but
said that there was nothing they could do since they really could not establish
any foul play.
In case you once bought fuel from a
filling station and it seemed like nothing was added to your fuel tank after
you have left, or you felt what was sold to you wasn’t commensurate with what
you paid for or expected, you may have been cheated under your close watch even
with your eyes wide open. Saturday PUNCH had a revealing chat with fuel
attendants of some popular filling stations in Lagos and they explained how
they make quick but huge cash from unsuspecting customers.
One of them who identified himself
simply as Owolabi John, while devouring a massive plate of hot and spicy pepper
soup and a bottle of chilled beer Punch correspondent, Tunde Ajaja, bought for
him, said he earns N10,000 as a fuel attendant. He wants to pursue a university
education. There is no other help from anywhere else, as such John admitted
leaving no stone unturned to take advantage of gullible customers to make some
money from what he described as “the customers’ carelessness.”
“Ideally, when we resume, we take the
reading on the meter on the fuel dispenser, which we call the opening meter,
and when we close, we take the reading, which we also call the closing meter.
Then, we multiply the difference in the readings by the cost per litre, which
is the amount we deliver to the manager. If there is any surplus, it belongs to
the attendant, and if there is loss, the attendant will look for money to make
it up. If the shortage is a lot of money, the manager may allow that the money
be deducted from the person’s salary if the person is not sacked,” he
explained.
However, that surplus money may not have
been a miracle or manna from heaven; it could simply be a product of
manipulation by the attendants. According to John, there are different types of
fuel dispensers, such as Marathon, Sanki, Eagle Star, etc, and each machine has
its peculiar way of being adjusted.
“On the keyboard of some of them, where
we enter the number of litres or amount, which is either in front or on the
side, there is usually a button labelled ‘Recall, TIM/CAL’ or any other label,
depending on the machine. The essence of the button is to enable the attendant
to see the past sales. If you want to see your last ten sales, you just press
Recall, then the number you want to see etc, depending on the number you want,
and it shows you the amount. Beyond seeing our past sales, we use it to make
money.
If I sell N2,000 worth of fuel to a
customer, and the next customer also wants to buy N2,000. If I observe that the
second customer Isn’t paying attention, I will sell some quantity, maybe N1,500
and press Stop or Cancel, depending on the machine press Recall, 1, then press
Ok. With that, N2,000 will appear on the screen and that is what the customer
will see on the meter, believing the sale is complete. This can be done in less
than one second. That is one of the ways, and at the close of business I remove
mine which is the excess of the actual litre sales.
Imagine if I do that for about ten
customers in a day, with varying gain from each case, which depends largely on
the amount of fuel the customer is buying and how sensitive the person is. I
could make up to N10, 000 in one day,” he explained.
According to him, attendants could go to
the extent of writing out some past sales on a paper where they can easily have
a glance to know which number to recall when a customer is distracted or looks
away, since many people prefer to buy based on price and not litre.
“When customers come, we observe them
and see if they are tired or we try to distract them, sometimes with the help
of our colleagues by engaging them in a chat or doing things that could easily
distract them. As soon as they look away, if the seller has made an appreciable
sale, he/she would have mastered or checked his paper to see the last time he
sold that particular amount, as soon as it is possible, he will press it, and
press OK. Before the customer looks back, the sale will appear complete,” John
explained.
John’s revelation explained one of the
ways Ayeni might have been cheated. Another fuel attendant, who simply
identified himself as Owode Kabir, told PUNCH that the use of Recall or TIM
button is the easiest way to make quick money because the customers would think
the machine was fast, so they wouldn’t always suspect anything, even though
some come back to complain.
However, Kabir stressed that not all
attendants are involved in the act, but that many of them do it as long as
there is opportunity and that in some cases, they settle the station manager at
the close of work if they are able to make some money, which they do everyday
anyway. Kabir also revealed the second method:
Even though many people know that when
the nozzle is hanged on the pump, the readings revert to zero, fuel attendants
have also found a way to manoeuvre it to make some money.
What we do is to gently place the
nozzle, such that it won’t click to rub off the old sales and revert to zero,
so, we fake it, which means the dispenser is still running, so if anyone comes,
we simply continue from where we stop and that is why sometimes it seems like
we are rushing the customers. It is easier when the last sale is a small
quantity. Even though the use of the Recall or TIM/CAL’ button on some of these
machines is the easiest method, faking the nozzle is another viable way to make
money.
If the previous sale is about N200 maybe
by a Keke NAPEP and Okada rider, or even commercial buses (danfo) drivers,
because they are the ones who buy fuel in bits, we will gently place the
nozzle, and naturally, when you see that we remove the nozzle from the hanger,
that is, from the engine, you believe that it started from zero. However, it is
not always the case,” he said.
Kabir was quick to add that some station
managers or managements know about their tricks but that once they are caught
or reported by a customer, such person could be sacked. He added that
attendants usually sell in all cases but such sales might not start from zero
or could be recalled to a previous sale that had the same amount, which would
be an incomplete sale for the customer.
“Sometimes we could gain up to N1,000
from one sale, it depends on the quantity that the consumer wants, and those
that are caught are usually the greedy ones,” he noted.
He added that in filling stations where
their dispensers do not have Recall or TIM/CAL only the last sale could be
recalled, hence, once the last sale is not the same with the current sale,
faking the hanging of the nozzle might be the only way to make money through
such pump.
Station owners and managers also dupe
customers
A female attendant with a major oil
marketer company in Lagos Island, Seun Jegede, told PUNCH how station managers
and filling station owners also cheat their customers.
She alleged that most filling stations
alter their meters to under-dispense fuel at the detriment of customers, which
is a known phenomenon among consumers. Even though this could be a product of
greed and inadequate regulation, she said they also do that to make up for some
loss they might have incurred during sales.
“Based on experience, I can tell you
that almost all filling stations, including the ones being run by government,
adjust their meters and what they do is to settle the officials from the
Department of Petroleum Resources if or when they come for inspection.
No attendant can alter the meter on his
own, except the manager sanctions it because it involves the engineer changing
the panel and doing some mechanical readjustment. That is why many filling
stations that alter their meters have to bribe their way through because the
engineers are not always there, except the manager recommends a trusted
attendant to be trained so as to put the pumps back to normal if DPR comes.
The adjustment is easier with the
marathon machine because it has a key in front of the meter. This allows for
quick readjustment of the meter so as to scale through the due diligence check
by the DPR, which could be once in six months,” Jegede explained.
She added that the decision to alter the
meter could either come from the owner of the station or the station manager in
connivance with the engineer, adding that whoever orders the adjustment takes
the money made from the unsold quantity.
Station attendants also cheat their
employers
According to John, not only customers
are open to this fraud, even the management that the attendants work for are
not immune to their fraudulent acts, through what he called ‘no reading’. In
this case only the price meter reads while the litre reading does not move. He
said this could be a product of frequent repairs of the pump or any other
mechanical fault, which could make it malfunction.
"When there is ‘no reading’ on the
litre menu, and the management is not aware, there is no way the management
will know the actual number of litres that have been sold. What we do in such
cases is to sell on the basis of amount only and we sometimes negotiate with
the customer for settlement because we can sell more to make money. I can even
call someone from home to come and buy and keep for me, before the management
finds out that the litre is not reading.
Even though the ‘no reading’ issue
rarely happens, it becomes a free for all if it happens to the diesel or
kerosene pump that usually has no attendant attached to it. With that, tracing
who sells what quantity may be difficult, even though an attendant must be
smart to avoid being penalized.
Another form of ‘no reading’ is when
some attendants, especially those attached to diesel or kerosene that have
lesser patronage compared to petrol, gently press the nozzle (just like a
one-touch press) that may not read on the meter whereas some fuel will still
come out. It can also happen when they finish selling and instead of hanging
the nozzle, they place it inside the keg for the little quantity to drip into
their kegs. It may appear little, but over a long time, the gentle one-touch
press and the leftovers become a large quantity. That is why you see some
attendants having kegs beside them,” John explained.
The attendants further explained that
they make more money when there is epileptic power supply which force people to
buy fuel in kegs.
“When there is no power supply and
people struggle or force your nozzle in their kegs, many of them don’t care
about starting from zero, which is a plus for us,” he said.
They however said station attendants
find it difficult to cheat if the customer comes out of the vehicle to stay
with them, adding that those who sit in their vehicles can easily be distracted
or shortchanged.
PUNCH
Please remain happy and spread happiness around. Xoxo
Please remain happy and spread happiness around. Xoxo
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