A New Zealand oil company appealed on Thursday to 50 motorists who bought petrol at a give-away price after a worker put a decimal point in the wrong place on a self-service pump to come forward and pay the full amount.
The Challenge service station at Riwaka, near the South Island city of Nelson, sold petrol at 14,9 New Zealand cents (about R0,69) a litre for two days last month when an employee set the wrong price on an automatic dispenser that took electronic payment cards.
Challenge placed an advertisement in the Nelson Evening Mail on Thursday asking drivers who benefited to come forward and pay the additional NZ$1,34 a litre they should have paid.
”We’re upset, really,” the station’s owner Jeff Roger told the paper. ”Some people have got the fuel and just came back several times knowing the machine is wrong.”
He said drivers have until Saturday to pay up before their electronic account details are given to the police, who said the drivers could face theft charges because they knew they could not legally fill their tanks for about NZ$7 (less than R35). — Sapa-DPA