An elderly petrol attendant working at a Shell station in front of Bukit Timah Food Centre had to personally bear the cost of fuel after a driver’s card payment did not go through after pumping petrol at the station. This incident was highlighted by a netizen named Penny Chua on her Facebook on Monday (5 October).
Ms Chua said she recently saw the elderly man, who is known as Uncle Ivan, sitting in front of the kiosk looking dejected. Concerned over his looks, Ms Chua waved at him and asked if he had eaten his dinner.
As a response, Uncle Ivan said that he just ate some biscuits and showed her a cardboard with a car number plate along with S$133.80 written on it. It appears that the car owner of the number plate did not pay the amount after pumping petrol at the station, resulting in the elderly man being forced to pay for it from his salary as he assisted the driver.
“Then he showed me this piece of cardboard which had a car licence plate number, $133.80 and the words ‘Run Away No Pay’ written on it,” she wrote.
She added, “Uncle Ivan (name of attendant) told me the company deducted the amount from his salary as the driver didn’t pay for the petrol. Apparently the driver had swiped his Shell card at the pump and Uncle Ivan didn’t check as he was chatting with the driver”.
Giving the driver the benefit of the doubt, Ms Chua said maybe his Shell card could be fault or expired, or he did not swipe the card properly.
She also noted that this incident happened on 21 September at around 6pm.
Following that, Ms Chua added that the amount deducted from Uncle Ivan’s salary is a lot to him. As such, she appealed for the driver of the Black Lexus with the car plate number SKP338P to get in touch with the elderly man soonest possible.
“According to him, the driver was a Chinese man of medium built in his early 40s wearing glasses,” Ms Chua stated.
Driver apparently deliberately cheated Uncle Ivan
In the same post, Ms Chua provided an update of the incident, revealing that a number of people got in touch with her saying that the car plate number is fake as there are no records of it found on the One Motoring website.
As such, the woman thinks that the driver “may be out to deliberately deceive and cheat”.
She also went on to state that she had informed Uncle Ivan about this and urged him to tell his company to lodge a police report. However, he was not keen to do so as he was afraid of losing his job, Ms Chua explained.
“I’ve informed Uncle Ivan to ask his company to lodge a police report but he’s not keen as he’s afraid of losing his job,” the netizen noted.
She added, “Apparently it’s quite common for petrol stations to deduct the pump attendants’ salary for cases where drivers didn’t pay. The onus is on the pump attendants to ensure the drivers make payments.”
