INCREASINGLY blatant incidents of fuel theft have a Donnybrook service station owner at his wits end.
Mario Contarino, who runs BP Donnybrook, said it is more than frustrating for him and his staff when they have put fuel into a tank and the car owner admits to having no money to pay.
“One of their tricks is to hand over a credit card in the knowledge that it will be rejected,” he said. “Then they just shrug their shoulders and tell us they have no money.”
Larger operators have replaced or updated their bowsers at great expense to facilitate the use of credit cards being swiped prior to the purchase.
“Look if I go down that track I’m looking at a cost of about $100,000,” Mr Contarino said. “Perhaps the city fuel stations with a big turnover can do that but in the country it’s different.”
He said pre-paid petrol cards would reduce or eliminate drive-offs but cut the sale of in-store items.
“If we set up pre-paid people wouldn’t have to come into the shop and that would greatly impact on our sales and our profit margins,” he said.
It has been suggested that one solution would be to go back to driveway service, but for many operators the cost of paying someone to serve every customer would mean very little money would be made out of fuel sales.
Another example of stealing is when people fill up their tanks then flee - usually at dangerous speeds.
In other cases petrol theft has occurred when the thieves use stolen number plates to hide their identity when they steal fuel, making them difficult to track down.
Mr Contarino said he believed police needed to enforce criminal charges where appropriate because he considered that fuel was no different from any other goods and service stations generally got good photos from security cameras.
“Something must be done,” he said. “It’s hard to make money in the fuel industry and we get hammered.”
Some WA service stations are using number plate recognition technology to fight petrol drive-offs, a move that is tipped to lead to a big jump in convictions for fuel drive-off.
Statistics show that fuel drive-offs cost Australian servo owners more than $60 million last year. Pleas for the WA Government to change legislation to make it a stealing offence have been ignored, according to the Motor Trades Association (MTA).
Now, service station owners have taken matters into their own hands by introducing Scancam, a system that uses high-definition cameras to detect license plates as vehicles arrive at the bowser. The license plate of any vehicle used in a drive-off is instantly added to an online database and when that vehicle pulls into a servo to fill up, it automatically triggers an alarm before the console operator allows fuel to be pumped.
Under the system, vehicle records will also be used by debt collectors to recover money owed by fuel thieves. The new technology not only identifies the car, but also the driver and then automatically fills out a police report thereby leading to higher convictions for petrol theft.
In Victoria the government has asked the Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee to examine how to reduce the incidence of drive-offs and to find ways for service station operators to recover their losses.
The inquiry into petrol drive-offs was set up in response to community concerns and fears service station operators – many of whom are small business owners – were losing their hard-earned money to forgetful drivers and thieves.
The committee will investigate the extent of the problem and its cost to the industry, how other jurisdictions here and overseas prevent fuel drive-offs and possible links between petrol drive-offs and crime such as car and number-plate theft.
The inquiry will invite contributions from stakeholders, petrol station owners and operators and members of the public.
