Petrol stations in the West Midlands are losing as much as £1,000 a month because of the number of drivers stealing fuel, it emerged today.
More motorists than ever are making off without payment, known as “bilking”, as prices continue to soar to new records every day. Some crooks have also been confusing staff by going into garage shops and buying an item such as sweets before asking the attendant to switch on a pump to allow them to fill up. They have then been fleeing forecourts.
Other motorists are leaving their details claiming they do not have enough cash on them to pay, only to fail to come back.
Kieran Wallia, manager of the Blakenhall Service Station on Dudley Road, Wolverhampton, said the number of drive-offs had soared from one a month last year to two a week.
He said: “We have had two cars drive off this week and two last week. It’s definitely become worse the last few months since the prices went as high as they have.”
The filling station charges 114.9p a litre for unleaded and 129.9p for diesel.
Shailesh Parekh, who runs Texaco filling on Wolverhampton’s Stafford Road where diesel had today risen again to £134.9 a litre and unleaded was £116.9, said the number of people confessing they do not have the money to pay for their fuel has also shot up.
Ebrahim Bhattay, from Mibson’s service station on Birmingham Road, West Bromwich, said people drove off without paying “once or twice a month”.
But Mr Bhattay said he was aware of one garage in the area which was losing £1,000 a month to drive-offs.
Police in Staffordshire have seen incidents of driving off from forecourts without paying nearly double in the last three months. During March, April and May of last year 120 offences were reported. During the same period this year the figure rose to 195.
24 Comments
£116.9 for unleaded and £134.9 diesel does seem excessive. Is it any wonder there are drive offs? An error by the E&S perchance? Whatever next?
Even if the prices were 116.9p and 134.9p that would still be quite pricey.
Why don’t petrol stations make people pay before filling up if they’re so concerned about this?
this is of course wrong & a crime,but how different is it from how the goverment are making us pay (by a distance)more fuel duty than any other nation.its a fine line .
There have been reports of stations applying to add tyre spikes to their forecourts to prevent such things.
In America, there are petrol pumps that won’t work unless a credit card has been inserted. Something like that could work here.
I can’t drive. Right now, I can’t afford to learn. I can’t afford to buy a car, can’t afford to keep the car maintained, taxed, insured and on the road.
I’ve always regarded the ability to drive as a useful skill, but a car for my personal use an unnecessary luxury.
I’ve never had a problem making a living without a car and have always used public transport.
Yes, I depend on bus, train and tram drivers who need to drive to get to work and for a living.
I have very little sympathy with those who live so far away from work, schools and shops that they need a car just to get from one place to another.
Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Fuel is so desperately needed to drive industry that ordinary domestic users will go to the wall first.
Hard cheddar.
Do what they did in France. Scrap the road tax. You got more money for fuel
Re; 1 in the know:
Where have you been hiding the last few months? These prices are not a mistake as these are the price we have to pay today. Most of the petrol station today make you pay first before getting fuel as there have been to many run aways. What we should have is a petrol attendant on the pumps like we use to have a good many years back.
I personally don’t blame them from driving off from the pumps, if they were caught and had to pay a fine it would still probably work out cheaper! anyone agree?
Diesel 134.9 pounds per litre? Unleaded 116.9 pounds per litre? No wonder people are driving off
I’m sure like all businesses, if the petrol stations know how much they’re losing on a regular basis they add it to the price of a litre of petrol and pass it on to the consumer. Of course some of them will add it on and still complain they are being robbed so they’ll have to add it on again, and so on.
Mary - Most people with a long commute probably live where they do because property is usually more affordable the further away from civilisation you get, and planning laws dictate where businesses can and can’t be located. Do you think people enjoy commuting? Don’t you think people pay enough to endure the misery of being a driver in Britain these days? What would you do if your bus/tram service was axed? Move house so that you could walk to your workplace? Good luck with that. For the majority of people, a car is a necessity, and that is not going to change. What will probably change is that fewer cars will be fully legal i.e. insured/MOT’d/registered/driven by an appropriately licenced driver, as even more money is squeezed out of people. If you ever learn to drive, you will understand.
Do as they do in the USA, credit card/debit card at the pump and no cash payments. Commonsense really that you are going to get people driving off without paying.
I suppose the only upside is, they wont be getting as many miles to a tank - perhaps thats why in the last month the amount of people driving off has increased - their not getting as many miles per tank… And at £1.35 a litre i can see why they are!!!!
Mary, you think that if you cant have it neither should anyone else, to you a car maybe a an unnecessary luxury, but to many its an absolute essential, that’s the problem with this country the car has always been seen as a luxury even though ridding people of their cars would almost certainly bring the country to its knees.
When I had enforced redundancy after 26 years, I had to travel to Ayr in Scotland to find work, with your logic Mary, I should not have had a car to travel to find work, I should have looked for work within walking distance of where I lived.
I would remind you of a recent documentary on TV, a company just north of Birmingham, sacked all its British workers, many of whom had been employed by the company for in excess of 20 years, the same company kept on the Polish workers that had been there for less than 2 years, so Mary do you suggest that the British workers now take public transport to Poland to seek work?
There is a saying “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Jim of Bearwood
WE IN AUSTRALIA ARE PAYING $1.60LT UNLEADED AND $1.82LT DIESEL . BUT YOUR FUEL IS BETTER THERE
TIME FOR A WORLD STRIKE I THINK ?????
MARK said WE IN AUSTRALIA ARE PAYING $1.60LT [77.2 pence ]for UNLEADED AND $1.82LT [87.8 pence] for DIESEL . BUT YOUR FUEL IS BETTER THERE
TIME FOR A WORLD STRIKE I THINK ?????
16 pence for fuel in Saudi Arabia. It has hardly gone up here in the ten years I’ve been here. So you can see how much we are getting ripped off when buying fuel in UK. I am on vacation coming to the Midlands in a few weeks. And then will be driving to East Anglia (Norfolk) to pick up my son and daughter from my ex’s house. We will then be spending some quality time together in the sun somewhere before I drive them back home. This will take most of the money I intented to treat the with just filling the tank to get around. Thanks Gordon for not doing a thing to reduce costs to the motorists. Try pay before you pump that would stop people driving off. What about the dayglo coat wearing jobsworth wardens who slap tickets on old men walking dogs or on a car that has no children in that’s parked in a family parking bay because the father is on his way to pick the children up from nursery. There are plenty out there at least this job would be worth their while.
Jim G.
There are people who commute to and from the continent to work even now.
A friend works in Germany and there were reports of a doctor who does weekend on-call work in Britain and who lives in Poland for the rest of the week.
The free economy is an extremely harsh world, where there’s no such thing as loyalty.
Once upon a time we were told to get on our bikes, nowadays we may well have to grab our passports and hit the Linguaphone courses to find work.
The British obsession with home ownership means that people feel anchored to one place and will travel further and further out from one fixed point to go to work when a large number of people in mainland Europe rent their homes and are that bit more mobile.
The Birmingham workers who were made redundant after 20 years probably cost more than the newly acquired Polish workers who were probably working for close to the minimum wage - what’s the betting local people didn’t want to work for that sort of money?
The ability to drive is an extremely useful skill and I understand that a car can be essential for work (mobile carers, shift workers, tram, train, bus drivers etc).
However, there are too many employers who have set up shop in remote business parks (probably built on green belt land) and too many people who can use alternative modes of transport.
Hmmn. Bearwood to Ayr. Let me guess, you’re a very specialised engineer.
Its time that a mass blockade of fuel stations was organised.
The damn goverment are driving this country to its knees.Labour have taken more and more out of the workers pay packet.They are just damn thieves.
Time the people of Britain said enough is enough…we wont stand for it any longer.In 10 years..my council tax has gone up from £48 a months to £109 a month.Road tax as gone uo.TV licence,Food..gas.electric.
I think i might just bugger off and be an immigrant in another country…so i dont have to pay for anything!
no.2 spot on the government are the thieves here,if you put 75 pounds worth of petrol in your tank yours really only getting 31 pounds worth because mr broon the tax lover is nicking the rest off us ,but it is wrong to do these drive offs the garages are’nt to blame for the rip off prices.
I have a 4×4 - necessary for my hobbies before you all moan! but i use it as little as i can - i also have a tiny cheap car for work and running around - i pay £90 (diesel)for the 4×4 per tank of and £35 a tank for the petrol car.
This is my choice to have 2 cars and therefore I have to put the cost of fuel in no matter wot - the government know this is the case and therefore it will never drop to a fair price that we all want !
Simple terms is - if you cant afford it - you dont have it !
Mary, I go back to my previous comments and the saying “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” You have just proved my point perfectly, thank you for speaking out.
Now just for the record, we are on planet earth, just so you know where you are.
I say this because I am trying to respond to your argument but you keep changing positions, first your against people owning cars, and for those people to then use them to travel to work, see your initial comment
“I have very little sympathy with those who live so far away from work, that they need a car just to get from one place to another”, but next your advocating that the earths population should use up valuable resources to travel, to find work in other parts of the world, in fact you have friends that already do this!!!! Strange lady, so are you for or against people being mobile when it comes to employment?
You blame British people for buying their own homes, so are you also saying that British people are in the wrong for the present economic climate and that we shouldn’t buy our own homes in the first place?
So we are all at fault for this situation because we work for our money, and we then use this money to buy our own homes? These homes that are then used to provide a safe haven, where we can live and raise a family?
Should we also not have families Mary????
So according to you Mary, we shouldn’t own a home? So just who should own the homes we live in? or are you saying now that we should all go back to living in caves? it would appear that this one woman is right and that we are all wrong for trying to make secure living arrangements for our families.
You make a comment about British workers not wanting to work for such low wages, well I will work for the same wages as the EEC immigrants on one condition we also get the same cost of living as them, and remember their families back in Poland live well, simply because The British Over Taxed people, are paying for their children back home, to have Family Allowance even though they don’t even know where England is, no wonder they can afford to work for lower wages.
What happens when their cost of living in Poland is equal to ours in Britain and its not economical to work here in the UK, and this has started happening, the workers that first came to the UK, are now looking round the rest of Europe for work, because of the poor pay they are getting here, and they know they are better off there because unlike the UK, other EEC workers are protected by EEC Employment Law.
And no I wasn’t a “very specialised engineer” I was one of Maggie’s Army, who was working for well below what is now the minimum wage, who had wife, 2 very young children, a mortgage, and who was in desperate need of work to provide for my family like any responsible parent would be.
Perhaps I should have sat at home saved what money I had , and lived off the state, I would have been far better off.
Jim of Bearwood
Nothing is constant.
We’ve all been warned for years that resources are scarce - oil, coal and gas are all running out. As resources get more scarce, then the price rises - metal thefts prove that.
Yes things are going to get more and more expensive and if there’s a way for any government to get tax revenue out of it then it will do so.
Those who drive are directly affected by the global oil prices while those who don’t “just” see the rise in prices in the shops.
There are cases to be made for say, essential drivers to receive some sort of tax break or government subsidised 24hr public transport so that shift workers can get to work.
There have always been those who travel to where the work is - economic migrants. When the work or the pay runs low, they will move along to the “next best thing”. It happened with the Irish, now Poles, who knows? Romanians may be the next on the economic tide.
In many former Communist economies, professors, teachers and doctors were not paid more than manual workers in an effort to reduce elitism - as capitalism takes a hold and state wage control reduces, that Polish doctor may well find it more cost effective to stay where he is on the weekends.
UK plc is being undercut every which way and suddenly we are losing the “steadiness” in our lives that many have become used to.
The cost of living has traditionally been higher here than in other countries - this will not be addressed while we stay helplessly reliant on imported goods from food from Africa to underwear from China.
I’m an Ex-Londoner, for many, driving (and home ownership!) is not really an option down there unless it really is essential to drive and most employers are expected to provide the vehicles for their employees.
It was only when I moved to the Midlands (with my job) that I saw how dependant people were on their cars and how rubbish the public transport is around here.
Even getting directions from someone means being told “It’s just off Jct 6″ or “Turn off Jct 5″.
Thanks to the mass building projects of the 60s, the infrastructure here is built around road traffic instead of public mass transport - big mistake - and one which we are paying for now.
We can only go where the work is - whether we stay there or commute there is up to us. The choice depends on cost and whether we want the swing and roundabouts of seeing the family as often as we’d like or saving the money for our families to receive more money.
Wage earners sending money home and not seeing their families for months or even years on end is a reality for many now - it may well become a scary reality for many more of us.
Hey Mary, We fought in 2 world wars to defend our rights to be British. Hundreds of thousands of people sacrificed themselves in the hope that they had secured a safe home with the culture and lifestyle that they wished for, for their families. They fought for me and what I believe in and you but you are willing to post your comments as though you are not in the slightest bit interested in the country you live in or even the house you sleep in. You and many like you are the reason patriotism is a rapidly dying quality in the British public.
I am an Expat living and working overseas but for the odd foreign holiday I plough all my money back into my family and my local community in England.
I know where my loyalties stand. I served in the Armed Forces for over 10 years to defend your country Mary. I see it was all a waste of time if your attitude is a reflection of the whole nation. Well shame on you, Mary.
Mary - i bet you wished you never started with your comments !
Dee - Too right!
At some stage a long time ago, there was this story about people stealing expensive petrol. There’s now even a separate page about having your say on the cost of petrol these days.
I can’t drive, can’t afford to drive, can’t afford to learn to drive and have done the public transport commuter ‘thing’ for my entire working life.
Working on the theory that I won’t miss what I don’t have, I’m fairly sure I’m not going to have CCDL on my CV. Ever.
My last holiday was in 2000. Two weeks in Glasgow. I know.
I pay taxes, live in my own house, have worked in public service for almost 15 out of 21 working years, shop locally and help little old ladies across the road when I see they need help.
I am British. I am nice. I am a good neighbour and a fairly good gardener. I am also very cynical about how we are governed and don’t see any hope of positive change.
Let’s face it, successive governments have sold large swathes of British industries either down the Swannee (coal) or to the highest bidder (banks, shipyards, utility companies etc) to make a fast buck.
Whatever economic advantage we had has been blown for short term gain. We should be self sufficient in gas and oil for a few years to come, but we’re importing huge amounts.
E.on is German. EDF is French. These are two of our biggest power companies. How did we end up importing gas from Russia? What happened there?
There are no British mass car producers anymore, Harrods is owned by an Egyptian, our Premiership seems to be owned by the United Nations - even what was once the Midland Bank is now a small part of the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Those we look up to for leadership - the politicians, bankers and industrial leaders who could have done something to prevent this have literally sold out those who fought for this country - the rest of us have to just muddle through as best we can.
Cynical, moi? You betcha!