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Flawless logic
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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How do people pump gas before paying?
This was how gas pumps worked everywhere when I started driving
Yeah.
If you were a local they'd see you pull up and turn on the pump. If you weren't you'd go inside and pay cash first, but it was inconvenient because it was harder to just fill the tank.
The mathematics I have to go through at fuel stations that don't allow paying at the pump, gotta go inside and talk to the cashier, ugh.
Each tenth of my tank is 2.4 gallons, so if I'm at 4/10 and want to top off, (10-4)=6, so 6 x 2.4 = 14.4 gallons x price of fuel per gallon which is hovering around $6.90 lately (diesel in California), so I tell the cashier person I 'd like to purchase exactly $99.36 but gosh that's so close to $100 let's just round it to $100.
You can usually go back in and get change, or the balance refunded.
Well yeah but I still need to tell her a dollar amount. If I underestimate then my tank won't get topped off. So I have to do the math.
Remarkable how USian measurements always make people jump through some hoops. On my dashboard, I'd just see that the tank is missing about thirty liters of gas, so I'd get thirty liters. That was a car from the eighties, so we aren't talking any fancy electronics, either.
Yes but the cashier wants us to tell her a monetary amount. It has nothing to do with USA using gallons instead of litres. It's a matter of multiplying money amount times unit of volume of desired fuel.
Hm, that's still an odd system, to me. Around here, the cash register does the multiplication, and I probably wouldn't be trusted to say the correct sum (nor would I want to). Never tried that, though — it might be possible to do it that way.
Most cars don't show that. Here's the fuel gauge from my backup car since my other car is in the middle of repairs
Not only do you have to know the size of the tank, you also have to account for fuel tank math being different from regular math. The needle isn't linear. E.g in a lot of cars it doesn't start dropping until you're down at least like 5 liters. That's because people start whining about fuel consumption otherwise ("I just filled up and it's already dropping") and similarly the last half or quarter seems to be bigger in some cars. Middle bit is worth the least.
I don't think I've seen a car that actually shows the liters. Maybe once or twice. I've owned like 10 or 15 cars and driven many more.
I thought for a minute that I misremembered, since image search shown only gauges like yours. But, here's what it looks like in an old Volkswagen. Admittedly my car experience is very limited since I only bought it for fun and then discovered I just don't have much need for a car. I guess most cars use the relative-scale gauges so that the instrument is interchangeable between models.
I'm still pissed off at being treated like a thief every time I go to gas up because they started a forever war in the middle east which inflated the price of gas. Then they never brought the cost back down with the price per barrel AND kept the paying before pumping policy.
I'm 60, so me, too. But, I haven't seen a pump or a station that allows pumping before paying in many, many years.
You hand over cash at the counter, and they turn on the pump. Or you pay at the pump--you need to put your card in before the pump will start.
Depends where you live. I live in Australia, and there isn't a single service station that makes you prepay where I love. You can just pump and pay at the end, always.
You make love in the gas station?
No elevators nearby
In my wanderings around the USA I've only encountered one pump that allowed pump before pay. At some obscure Nevada gas station in a little pass-through town in the middle of nowhere.
It's possible that some of the places that used to skip prepay were illegally taking the cost of a pump and run out of the pay of whoever was on register. I've never experienced it personally, but I've heard a lot of stories.
It depends where you leave in Europe or seems to work that way in US you have card readers on the distributors or need to go to the attendant and pay in advance with cash. I think there's also an option (or at least the attendant let me) to leave your DL, then fuel your car and then pay and get you DL back.
In Germany that is the norm. You pay after pumping at the counter. Cashless automatic pumps that require a deposit are rare
But getting more common. The ED in Oberzissen now have one pump with a payment device and Oberzissen is in the back end of nowhere.
As an almost completely illiterate (in German) English person I prefer the pay at a counter thing because the usually pleasant person behind the counter can just accept the payment. This is good because getting a phone out to translate the instructions often results in an irate German shouting at you.
Weird I've never ran into any angry Germans shouting at me for translating things
How do you pay before you know how much you need?
Well these days credit cards have an authorization function where they can hold $50 or $100 and then when done can release the hold and charge you the proper amount.
And cash is rare enough that they don't mind inconveniencing those people anymore.
In Europe it blocks €300. Fuel prices are high. Sometimes a payment doesn't go through as it should and the remaining amount isn't released. Then you get an article in the newspaper of someone complaining their couldn't pay in the shop because 300 was blocked on their account. These things resolve themselves as the bank does a check automatically after a day or two but some folks get caught close to payday.
Credit cards? What's that?
It's a piece of plastic used in financial transactions, but that's not important right now.
You mean like a debit card but worse?
Where I live, the credit card is better than the debit card. Better protections against fraud.
That'd mostly a US thing I believe, ain't no bank here leaving money on the table just because you paid using a credit card. Still gotta pay it back or pay interest.
Credit cards are more secure.
A debit card payment is settled immediately. A credit card payment is actually a small loan that's settled at the end of the month. This goes back to the time that shops made a carbon copy of the card, fill in the amount and let the buyer sign it. That's why the numbers were raised. Basically they were used as cheques.
Pay the clerk. If you can't fit x litres/gallons/whatevers, you go back to the clerk and they give you the remaining balance back.
Personally, I estimate. I have a quarter of a tank, I need 3/4 of a tank. That's 9 gallons. Times $3.99 is $35.91. I get $30 on pump whatever
In most of northwest europe this is standard. Otherwise how do you know how much you need pay to fill the tank?
In Canada its an auto function of the payment system. You say you want $100 in gas. The card gets preauthorized for $100 to ensure the money is available then the pump starts. After you finish pumping and get only $80 in fuel that is what is actually charged to the card. The card is charged only after you finish pumping.
What if one only as cash?
Then you pay at the counter for the amount of gas you want to pump and if you overpay you go back to the counter and they give you back the difference.
That is definitely not true. There is no gas station here where you can do that anymore without having either signed in via an app or credit card.
It used to be like that, but that was a long time ago.
That's pretty standard some places. Or at least it used to be.
How do you fill your tank without paying for more gas than you're going to use?
In some gas stations you must pay beforehand, but in others you can pay afterwards so you can fill your tank.
you don't pay for more than you use. I prepay $100 on my credit card, use $58 and I'm charged $58, the $100 was a security hold and is the most you can get.
It's normal in the UK. Usually someone in the shop needs to see you, then they activate the pump, you pump what you need, then go in and pay. Some stations do have the option to pay at the pump, or via an app, but I've never seen one where you can't pay afterwards.
and in costa rica (and id assume much of central america, idk) you don't do the pumping, an employee at the station does it, then you pay them; you dont even leave your car
In Estonia two chains make you choose at the pump if you're paying inside after pumping or on the machine before. One switches over automatically when the shop part closes and doesn't even let you choose when it's open. Others are pay-first.
And nobody needs to see you here, they have cctv anyway
Standard procedure in Australia
not at Costco
The same way that people get completely exonerated of a crime by paying a fine for missing their court date: they fucking don’t.