Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Woman Pumps 7,000 Gallons of 'Free' Gas With a Rewards Card" video.

@DarkWolfsDen I wouldn't have. He prepaid for $20 and that's all the gas that should have been dispensed. The contract there is $20 for $20 worth of gas. If there was more dispensed, then it's up to the station to either let it go or siphon the extra back. Had they got the cops involved, I would have reported them for fraud and extortion. They can't force you to pay for gas that you didn't agree to buy and unless they have some method of siphoning it back, its to bad for them. Threatening to bringing in the cops to get the extra money is ridiculous.
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That doesn't make it not criminal. A door lock malfunction doesn't entitle people to go through the usually locked door and help themselves to things that were secured. I'm not sure how this is any different. If the card was given to her to receive free gas and she didn't understand the limit, that would be different. It's not like they're prosecuting her over just a tank or two worth of gas, this was apparently going on for quite some time.
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@paulperry7091 That's why there should be basic finance included in the K-12 curriculum. It doesn't take much time and it's something that everybody will need and use as an adult.
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@atomic66 If he got free gas, then it's entirely possible that the next person might get screwed. Plus, the filling stations tend to make very little compared with the companies that supply the gas. Those folks get their money regardless, but the filing station doesn't make that much from gas directly.
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She can argue that, the judge and jury don't have to believe it though. And the whole thing seems awfully sketchy even if you buy that argument.
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@gbear1005 Yes, although the ultimate ruling is probably going to be against her for the same reason that if they had left a stack of cash sitting on a counter she wouldn't be entitled to that either.But, either way, it should make for an interesting case.
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No, but there is a law that says that theft is illegal. The machine malfunctioning is one thing, the coming back repeatedly to take advantage of it and selling use of the card is why she's being prosecuted.
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It's probably both. And if she's convicted the person that bought the gas from her is probably guilty of receiving stolen goods.
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That's usually not the case. For black jack, they will intervene to comp the player, disrupt their flow or get them away from the tables, but unless they see evidence of card counting, they usually won't bother banning them from the tables. Same goes for some video poker machines that are programmed to pay out more than 100% with perfect play. All of the other games and machines in the casino put the player at a statistical disadvantage so the longer they play, the more likely they are to wind up giving the winnings back. Banning gamblers for simply winning is horrible for business and rarely necessarily anyways.
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I hope not, I hope the judge decides whether to allow the case or not based on the law and the pleadings. It certainly does appear that she stole gas, assuming that our understanding is correct. It's fundamentally not any different from seeing a bunch of cash sitting on a counter waiting to be put in the till. The ability to grab the cash by virtue of it sitting there doesn't make it free money. In this case, being able to use the card to get the gas doesn't make it free gas.
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That's different. When you go to a store, you expect to pay the posted price for the item. And, they likely fix it immediately afterwards. It's legally required for them to honor the price in most cases. In this case, she didn't pay the posted price and she didn't notify the service center and she sold some of the gas that she stole. That's the issue, if she had shown some restraint, she had notified the station and not sold any of the gas, she probably wouldn't be prosecuted for this.
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When it comes to the ATM malfunction, my guess is that they couldn't figure out which of the transactions actually resulted in money being handed out to somebody that wasn't being charged for it or that they couldn't figure out how much it was. They may also have been unable to identify any cases where the person got enough as a result to justify a felony prosecution.
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Yes, that's part of why there are so few independent filling stations now versus in the past. I remember a few years ago almost running out of gas because just about every shell station within several miles of me had closed their pumps for replacement. I finally found a different station that was open, otherwise I would have run out of gas. I'm not that brand loyal on gas, but I also had never been in a position where 4 gas stations were all without gas at the same time.
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@DKNguyen3.1415 That's not true. I used to be a department manager at a local grocery store and it happens pretty regularly when they're changing prices if you're not careful with your price tags. The customer winds up getting the lower price either way as they are entitled to the lower of the stated price or the system, so long as it's not an obvious mistake. In practice, that means that if the price tag matches the item you get the lower price for pointing it out.
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@PasleyAviationPhotography The sign was expired with a posted expiration date on it. That does not qualify as a pricing mistake and it happens every single week due to the store I work at opening before the department I work for opens. OTOH, for $3 it's not really worth angering a customer and the sign was presumably taken down at that time. It was probably worth it to them as a finders fee.
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It's not necessarily, I remember a few times getting free products because of a billing glitch on their end. I also remember giving customers free stuff where I work because of glitched systems. It definitely does happen, although it probably is more common for the businesses to get the freebies than the customers. (And, it's not like I just kept the items without offering to pay or return either, there just wasn't a reasonable way of handling it that wouldn't have cost the business even more money)
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@redrider7730 I'm not really sure how anybody can consider what casinos do to be theft. For the most part, it's all done in the open, people can calculate the expected value of the attempts they make at winning and in most cases it isn't even that hard to do. And everybody knows that the system is rigged in favor of the house. What they're selling isn't the money you could win, it's the daydreaming about winning that people definitely do.
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