Canadians getting gassed in the USA

When I am emperor, postal-coded Canadians with a credit card will be able to buy gas at the pump just like zipcoded Americans.

For any Canuck who has never experienced this little pecadillo of current US travel, here's how it goes.

You pull into the gas station and shove your credit card into the reader in the pump.  You may get welcomed and offered carwashes or 6-packs of Coke for $1.99.  But you will also be asked to enter your postal code. Security thing: the zip is encoded on the card stripe and you might not know the code if you stole the card. OK.

Nice phone-like keypad ... that will in no way accept letters.  Numbers only.


The Emperor will fix that.  But for now you walk into the shop, give them your card, tell them you're Canadian, and they turn the pump on.

Not. That used to work.  Now most of the attendants, when pushed, will admit they can no longer do that. They have a new plan which is magnificently stupid.

"How much do you want?"
"I want a fill"
"You have to give me a dollar amount"
"I want a fill"
"Give me a high number"
"I have to sort out price differences, exchange, litres to gallons, gallons to US gallons ... what if I guess too high?"
"We'll run the card again with a credit"

So, because you have letters in your postal code, you don't get to pull up, put in the card, fill, take the receipt and go.  Instead you get to go inside, wait, process the card, go out, pump gas, go inside,  process the card again for the credit, take your two receipts, go back to the car and leave ... pissed.

When I am emperor, if you oil companies want to allow card payments at all, you will take them all.  Your IT guys will take the 2 1/2 minutes to write the code that allows any alphanumerics, etc to be entered.  If they want to be cheap and stick with the phone-style keypad, hey, we manage text-messaging on phones. Shut up and start programming.

Being astonishingly benevolent and generous, I will permit a transition period to allow for the coding and to encourage the progressive companies to put proper keypads in the pumps.  However, during the transition the attendant will happily turn on the pump while holding your card.  Or close the station until the changes are implemented. See: freedom of choice ... turn on the pump or turn out the lights.