It’s been a while since I posted something personal. Or a rant. But today I had the joy of using a well-know supermarket’s petrol station. In fact, I use it most of the time – the petrol is cheap and I can collect Club Card points (Oops, gave that away) as well.

Anyway, they have an option to “Pay at Pump” or “Pay at Kiosk” – the latter being to get in a long queue in the kiosk, behind people who felt the need to do their weekly grocery shopping from the tiny shop, in preference to walking over the road to the giant supermarket. Unsurprisingly, I use the former option.

It tells me to scan my club card. I’ve long since given up trying to do that as the scanners broke about 1 day after they installed the new pumps. So I slide it in the card reader, wait a second and take it out again. Then I insert my debit card. I wait – in fact I take this time to open up my fuel cap. Then I put in my pin number (on a hideously exposed vertical panel) and it tells me to start filling. Great. I have a petrol car so I lift the green nozzle. But then I realise – cunningly – that this is the premium unleaded (which they now have some poncie new name for, although the logo looks like it was designed by a 10 year old). They use the same colour coding and, indeed it looks remarkably similar to the normal unleaded pumps – I suspect many a short-sighted (and/or elderly) person has been caught out by this dubious trick.

So I put it back and pick up the standard unleaded pump. And wait for them to activate the pump. And wait. Nothing. Looking at the dim pump display, I could see it was asking me if I wanted a receipt, so I think I can safely assume that putting the first pump down had cancelled the transaction <sigh>. Ok, so I put the pump back and start the two-card shuffle again. Except, hilariously, this time it tells me that it won’t accept my debit card (down to it already being used I suspect) and that I have to pay at the kiosk.

At numerous points by now I’ve been thinking whether I should just give it up as a bad job and go to the petrol station at Asda. But, no, I fill up and head off to the kiosk where my card is happily accepted (as it should be).

My moan here, is that if they’re going to have 2 pumps, dispensing different (although admittedly compatible) fuels  looking near identical, they should at least make it not have a spazzy fit if you have to return one and swap it to another.

There, I feel better for that. Carry on.