With petrol prices staying high, most drivers dread watching the numbers roll up on the screen at the pump. So when one British man thought he found a way to buy a full tank of fuel for just one pound, he thought he was the luckiest guy on earth.
He was so sure he found a loophole that he ran home, grabbed his other cars, and filled them all up.
It did not take long for reality to hit him right in the bank account.
The £1 Notification
The story started when Mike J Ind pulled into his local Tesco petrol station in Bristol. He decided to use the automated Pay at Pump machine. He had never used that type of card reader before, but he inserted his bank card and put £10 worth of petrol into his car.
Right after he hung up the nozzle, he pulled out his phone and checked his mobile banking app.
A notification was waiting on the screen. The pending charge was not £10. It said Tesco had charged him just £1.
Mike could not believe his eyes. He did not stop to wonder if the app was glitching or if the payment was still processing. In his mind, he had just paid a single pound for petrol. He figured the machine had made a huge mistake in his favor.
The Multi-Car Mission
Instead of driving away, Mike decided to push his luck. He grabbed the fuel nozzle a second time and squeezed the trigger until the tank was completely full.
He looked down at his phone. Another message popped up from his bank: £1.
Now Mike was convinced he had struck gold. He figured the pump was practically giving petrol away, and he wanted to take full advantage before anyone noticed.
He drove straight home, parked the first car, and hopped into his second car. He zoomed right back to the same Tesco station, pulled up to the pumps, and filled that car all the way to the top. His bank app pinged him again with another £1 charge.
Mike was on a roll. He drove back home a second time, hopped into a third car, and drove it down to the exact same pump. He filled that tank up, too. Another £1 popped up on his screen.
By the time he was done, Mike had filled up three cars. His banking app showed four separate charges of £1 each. As far as he was concerned, he had just walked away with tanks full of fuel for a grand total of £4.
Spreading the Good News
Mike was so excited about his discovery that he wanted to share the wealth. He opened up his group chats and started messaging his friends and family.
He told everyone they needed to drop whatever they were doing and rush down to Tesco with their cars before the staff realized what was happening. He thought he was doing everyone the biggest favor of the year.
His friends, however, did not grab their keys. Instead, they started laughing.
They had to be the ones to break the bad news to Mike: Tesco was not giving away fuel for a pound. He had completely misunderstood how Pay at Pump machines work.
How Pay at Pump Actually Works
Automated petrol pumps do not charge you the final bill the exact second you put the nozzle back.
Before a pump lets you take any petrol, it has to make sure your bank card is real and has money on it. To do that, the machine puts a temporary holding fee on your card. At many stations, that test charge is set at £1.
The £1 charge sits as a pending transaction on your banking app for a short time. Behind the scenes, the machine calculates the actual amount of petrol you took. Once the bank finishes processing the purchase, usually after a day or two, the temporary £1 fee disappears and gets replaced by the real, full price of the fuel.
Mike had not scored £4 fuel. He had just spent full price on three separate cars, and the real charges were heading straight for his account.
Taking the Joke Online
Once Mike realized what he had done, he did not try to hide it. He went straight to Facebook and told the whole world about his blunder.
“What a w***er I am,” Mike wrote in his viral post. “Thought it was too good to be true. Never get anything in life for free and I don’t know how I managed to get this far in life.”
He even updated his Facebook profile picture to a photo of himself smiling next to Pump 6 at the Tesco station, joking about how happy he had felt before he learned the truth.
The post blew up online. Thousands of people shared his story. Many drivers poked fun at him for not knowing how card holds work, while others admitted they could have made the exact same mistake. Mike ended up with empty pockets, but at least he gave the internet a good laugh.
