Family ‘banned from more than 1,000 petrol stations’ amid fuel theft row | Consumer affairs

D.Rivers accused a prominent gas station security company of issuing “fake” fuel theft loans; This left one family unable to fill up their car at more than 1,000 gas stations for more than a year.

Amjad Khan and his family were banned from several petrol stations around Blackburn for 19 months after he was accused of leaving an Esso petrol station in Manchester without paying £20.01 in fuel.

VARS Technology, which provides automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and debt collection services to one of eight petrol stations across the UK, wrote to Nasim Khan, the registered owner of the couple’s car, in July 2023 and told her she must pay the fuel cost plus a £30 administration fee (£50.01 in total).

Amjad, 58, was adamant that he had paid for the fuel in cash and was forced to engage in a year-and-a-half battle with the company.

During this time, the couple’s car was banned from the more than 1,300 gas stations where VARS Technology operates, leaving them struggling to refuel their car.

Nasim described being turned away from gas stations as “embarrassing” and said that when they went to the forecourt with the company’s security system, the alarm system would be triggered as if there was an “armed raid”.

The couple say they can’t even visit their son, who lives 200 miles from London, for fear they will run out of fuel if petrol stations refuse to serve them.

Amjad requested video footage from VARS Technology and the gas station operator to prove that he paid for the fuel in cash, but said he never received the money.

A debt recovery company called DCBL then sent them a claim for £140.01 in October 2023, threatening to make a claim against the couple if they did not pay.

At a small claims mediation hearing a year later, Amjad said he presented a photo of VARS Technology delivering fuel (taken by an ANPR camera) and a handwritten note from a pretrial employee as evidence of fuel theft.

But Amjad said the company’s timeline of events “doesn’t make any sense”; Because the handwritten note stated that he left the forecourt at 22.28, ANPR footage showed him delivering fuel three minutes later at 22.31.

Despite the couple’s efforts to prove their innocence, they received a letter from Burnley combined court center regarding a claim brought against them by VARS Technology, stating that they would have to attend court in February this year.

However, when the couple arrived in court, they found that VARS Technology had dropped the claim and would no longer present the case to the judge.

During the year and a half they spent disputing the debt, the Blackburns described VARS Technology as “scary, aggressive and had zero customer support.”

The couple are not alone in their frustration: On review websites such as Trustpilot, some people accused VARS Technology of unfairly issuing fuel theft loans and often providing no evidence of their alleged crime other than a photo of them delivering fuel.

VARS Technology provides forecourt protection and debt collection services for major petrol station operators including Asda, EG Group and Valli Forecourts.

Angela Binns said she was owed money for fuel theft this summer after allegedly failing to pay for fuel at an Esso petrol station in Leeds in May, despite having a bank statement proving she had paid for it.

The 59-year-old man’s husband, Mark King, sent copies of the bank statement to VARS Technology to dispute the debt, but the company did not stop it.

“They moved quickly towards debt collection and should have stopped the process as soon as they received the objection,” King says.

“This has had such a huge impact on my wife that she can’t even talk about it without getting stressed.”

The “stress and anxiety” of the situation led the couple to pay off the debt to DCBL “just to give it up.”

a former employee An official from VARS Technology told Guardian Money that the ANPR software was “terrible” and had been known to be an issue by the company since 2023.

A spokesperson for VARS Technology said: “We completely reject the suggestion that our market-leading ANPR system is unreliable, arising from a false and unsubstantiated allegation by a former employee.

“Thousands of gas stations rely on the system to protect them against the growing problem of drive-throughs.

“The VARS ANPR system has numerous accreditations including Police Preferred Specification through the Secured by Design programme.”

They added: “We deal with thousands of fuel recovery claims each week on behalf of small, family-owned and operated businesses, in many cases where fuel theft poses a significant threat to their business viability.

“Incidents like those flagged are rare, and when they occur we make every effort to resolve them promptly and fairly.”