Grant’s law analysis
Posted in Politics on October 8th, 2007 by Sacha PeterAn employee of a gas station got run over when he tried to stop a car from speeding off after not paying for its gasoline. As a consequence, regulations were enacted to require gasoline to be pre-paid in advance. This will become effective province-wide February 1, 2008. The regulations will likely be in force between 10pm to 6am, although this component is yet to be finalized. (Update: As of February 1, 2008, gas will have to be pre-paid 24 hours per day; two employees are required between 10pm to 6am, although if the station owner wants one employee (which will likely be the case) then this employee must be encased in a protected building).
The analysis is that it won’t affect most people in the city – the vast portion use credit card and this is a pre-paid mechanism.
However, there are two cases where I can think of where this will affect gasoline station operations.
One is in Richmond. Richmond is a municipality that requires full service stations. As a result, when people fill up, they give their credit cards to the attendants. Since a fair deal of station pumps do not have this facility built-in, attendants would have to have a pre-authorization done and then they would have to go back and enter the amount, and have the customer sign this document as a confirmation of how much got deducted from the card. This will delay the process of getting fuel considerably between 10pm to 6am. The conclusion is that no gas stations in Richmond are likely to stay open between the hours of 10pm to 6am unless if they “convert” to self-service at this time, something I don’t believe is in the bylaw.
The second case is with station owners that do not have built-in credit processing. You typically see these in rural areas and they would have to spend money for the new infrastructure. The likely decision will be to close the stations during the hours of 10pm to 6am.
I’m positive about this regulation change. I would be much more positive about the change if rural owners of gas stations without pump-based credit payment facilities were grandfathered into the system.
I think this is a really bad idea and very unfair to alot of us that don’t believe in credit cards. Worksafe should be changing the laws so that that child was not left in that station alone. Just because the station owner was trying to save a buck we all have to pay. What ever happened to this being a free country we can’t do anything any more. I feel all stations should be prepay at night or have more than 1 attendent. Does anyone ever stop and think about the elderly that still drive and don’t carry credit cards
What you’re suggesting will require us to pay more – if there are two attendants, the price of that second person will be incorporated into the price of what you’re paying.
Credit and debit cards are a modern reality and for better or worse they’re here. I’d suggest using credit cards as the consumer has zero liability if it is improperly stolen or used. Not the same for debt cards.
Sacha, I’m surprised to hear you arguing in favor of sweeping new laws aimed at solving what looks to be an edge case problem.
Do gas’n'dashes resulting in the death/injury of gas station attendants happen much more frequently than I think they do, or is your position based on some other factor?
This “sweeping new law” (which is a single change in regulation) is already the de facto standard in gas stations currently, so there is zero burden of compliance. My misgivings with it are already in the text above dealing with the lack of a ‘sunset’ clause for rural station owners, which do face compliance costs.
I don’t think gas and dashes are a huge problem, but one can postulate as gasoline becomes more expensive there will continue to be bigger incentives to rip off stations. It was stupid for Grant (albeit very morally honourable) to try to stop the guy speeding off which killed him, but this law will relieve any moral obligation for attendants to do that sort of thing if they’re so inclined.
Instead, the future way to rip gas off stations will be through stolen credit cards or counterfeit cash. The attendant won’t know any better and the thief will get his/her gasoline.
As this posting is old I still feel I need to vent. Working at a very busy gas station for 3 years now I can say gas and dashes happened very often. We are a busy highway location and we would gets runs from US people as well as Alberta and BC vehicles. The problem is even if we did get the licence plate the police would not do anything about it as they have “better” things to do. They are a few police officers that wanted to help but others would rather be out shooting the bad guys.
So now the law is in effect…..what makes people think that they can come into gas stations and harrass us, the attendents, about the law. We have had things thrown at us, we have been verbally harrassed, called many names, degraded….oh I could go on. What is the point of this? We are minimum wage workers trying to do a job……it’s a law people….we can’t control it just abide by it. We are there to do our job and try to make it as quick and painless as possible. If we had it our way, we wouldn’t do prepay. We love not having every other guest be an ass. I use to love my job, but now since this law, all you cock suckers out there that think you are cool by coming and harrassing us, get a life and goto the people that created the law. Not the attendents following rules.
Ashley – I’d suggest you find a new job.
Also if this becomes enough of an issue, gas stations will end up closing as a result of the regulations. In urban areas I don’t see this happening as almost everybody uses credit these days, but my real concern (as per the original post) will be rural areas.
the government wants this so no more cash. all credit and all debit means 100% tax paid. We are sheep to fall for this.
the costs will go up. credit card and debit cards costs money. costs will rise.
this risk is a business risk and should be on the shoulders of the gas companies:
1. let them install cameras to photo vehicles that steal
2. educate attendants to not try and enforce or chase thieves
3. give the police power to prosecute thieves of gas
I have to say I hate this law, I would much rather have had it phased in so station owners had the time to switch to pay at the pump. As it is, I have had my credit card info stolen many times from having to leave my card with the station attendant while I fill, which is a real problem for me as I travel for work. There is nothing like getting to your destination to find out that your credit card is at it’s limit because of fraud, and you can’t pay your hotel or food. Now I refuse to leave my card, but if I pay with cash, quite often I don’t get a receipt for the fuel from the station, so I can’t claim the expense, something to do with them not being able to reprint receipts.
i suspect every day while buying gas thousands of people think of darnell pratt and what he did and some of them would like some private quality time with mr pratt. say twenty minutes with a body grinder and then to finish ten dollars worth of stolen gasoline. i wonder if he is smart enough to realize this.
As an owner, we never want to inconvenience customers, it costs us money. However, “Grant’s Law” is necessary to protect business owners, employees and even the public from those scumbags who persist in stealing.
We still get several gas runs per month despite a really good camera system and attention from staff (stolen plates). The cops can not handle the issue, they have made it clear to me. So hopefully the inconvenience can be understood by the public. It deffinitely saves lives and money.
I recently moved to this province and quickly got used to prepay at the pumps. I have had the privilege of meeting Mrs De Patie and sympathize with her family. On my travels through parts of the province, I discovered a gas station tucked away in a small corner that thinks they are above the law, Fas Gas in a little place called Grinrod, they do not fallow the law. I am wondering how they get away with the public pumping first, then paying after.