The mother of sucker traps

Car and Driver magazine columnist Patrick Bedard got a longtime gas-station owner on Route 66 in Williams, Ariz., to come clean about repair scams his crew foisted on travelers for decades.

The fellow’s name is Roy Killinsworth, 78, who started with a Tidewater Oil Co. station in the early 1960s and eventually had a Chevron. Maybe that will jolt the memories of a few victims.

Anyway, the whole thing is worth reading. But this passage stands out for the ingenuity of those scams:

His hires did both mechanic work and manned the pumps, and they got a commission on anything they sold. That way they could make enough money so they wouldn’t be tempted to steal from the register. The commissions were enough, though, that some of them would hang back when a newer car pulled up to the pumps; couldn’t sell anything but gas. But one guy didn’t mind. He’d rush out for anything that drove up. He was good at selling, too. And Roy thought it was odd that he’d sell a set of tires, put the car on the hoist, then give the sale to another employee. If the commission was $30, he’d take $3 and let the other guy take the $27 while he went back to pumping gas. This was back when seven or eight bucks was a full tank.

So Roy watched him and noticed that this guy always stopped the pump a certain way, then transposed two numbers when he filled out the credit-card bill—$5.76 on the pump was $6.75 on the ticket. Always 99 cents high. Then he’d drop a penny into the register. When there were 50 pennies, he’d take out $50. But the tally always came out right. And if somebody noticed, he’d apologize all over the place and tell them that he was dyslexic. Some would feel sorry for him. He wouldn’t correct the credit-card bill. He’d go to the register and take out the change to give them. And a penny for himself. That kept the record straight.

I’ve heard that several gas stations on the Mother Road in the Southwest in the 1960s and ’70s were particularly bad about ripping off customers, to the point where “60 Minutes” did a big expose. Fortunately, with pay-at-the-pump and more aggressive consumer advocates out there, those sorts of shady tactics are no longer as common.

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