Drivers have accused a leading petrol station security company of issuing “false” fuel theft debts, which left one family unable to fill up their car at more than 1,000 filling stations for more than a year.
Amjad Khan and his family were barred from multiple petrol stations around Blackburn for 19 months after he was accused of driving out of an Esso petrol station in Manchester without paying for £20.01 of fuel.
VARS Technology – which provides automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and debt recovery services to one in 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 had to pay for the cost of the fuel, plus a £30 admin fee: a total of £50.01.
Amjad, 58, was adamant he paid for the fuel with cash and was forced into a one-and-a-half-year battle with the company.
During this time the couple’s car was barred from the more than 1,300 petrol stations that VARS Technology operates at – leaving them struggling to refuel their car.
Nasim described the rejection from petrol stations as “embarrassing”, saying that an alarm system would trigger as if there was “an armed raid” any time they drove on to a forecourt with the company’s security system.
The couple say they were even left unable to visit their son, who lives more than 200 miles away in London, out of fear that they would be left stranded without fuel if petrol stations refused to serve them.
Amjad requested video footage from VARS Technology and the petrol station operator in order to prove that he paid for the fuel with cash but says he never received it.
A debt recovery company called DCBL then sent them a demand for £140.01 in October 2023 and threatened a claim against the couple if they did not pay.
During a small claims mediation hearing a year later, Amjad said VARS Technology presented a still image of him dispensing fuel – captured by its ANPR camera – and a handwritten note by a forecourt employee as evidence of fuel theft.
However, Amjad said the company’s timeline of events made “no sense”, as the handwritten note stated that he had driven off the forecourt at 10.28pm, while the ANPR image showed him dispensing fuel three minutes later at 10.31pm.
Despite the couple’s efforts to prove their innocence, they received a letter from Burnley combined court centre about a claim that VARS Technology had submitted against them, and that they would have to attend court in February this year.
However, when the couple arrived at court, they found that VARS Technology had discontinued the claim and was no longer going to present its case to a judge.
During the one-and-a-half years the Blackburn couple spent disputing the debt, they described VARS Technology as “intimidating, aggressive and having zero customer support”.
The couple are not alone in their frustration: on review websites such as Trustpilot, a number of individuals have accused VARS Technology of wrongfully issuing them with fuel theft debts and typically providing no evidence of them committing the alleged offence other than a still photo of them dispensing fuel.
VARS Technology provides forecourt protection and debt recovery services for major petrol station operators including Asda, EG Group and Valli Forecourts.
Angela Binns says she was issued with a fuel theft debt this summer after allegedly not paying for fuel at an Esso petrol station in Leeds in May – despite having a bank statement proving she had paid.
The 59-year-old’s husband, Mark King, sent VARS Technology copies of her bank statement to appeal against the debt but the company did not discontinue it.
King says: “They just steamrolled on to debt collection and should have stopped the process as soon as they received the appeal.
“This has had a huge impact on my wife, to the point she can’t even talk about it without getting stressed.”
The “stress and anxiety” from the situation led to the couple paying DCBL the debt in order to “just move on from it”.
An ex-employee of VARS Technology has told Guardian Money that the ANPR software is “terrible” and has been known to the company as an issue since 2023.
A spokesperson for VARS Technology said: “We completely refute the suggestion that our market-leading ANPR system is unreliable, which derives from a false and unsubstantiated claim from a former employee.
“The system is trusted by thousands of petrol stations to protect them against the growing issue of drive-offs.
“The VARS ANPR system holds multiple accreditations, including Police Preferred Specification through the Secured by Design scheme.”
They added: “We deal with thousands of fuel recovery claims every week on behalf of forecourt operators, in many cases small, family-owned and run businesses where fuel theft is a significant threat to their viability as a business.
“Incidents like those flagged up are rare, and when they do happen, we make every effort to resolve them promptly and fairly.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
