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Friday my husband went to the gas station, they fired two employees before he got there, then the third who actually added an extra amount on our debit card, was coming to pick up his check.
the owner had him come in and face my husband, then had him top of our tank and refunded the money from our debit card.
The employee was then told he would repay all of it out of his check and he was fired in front of my husband on the spot.
We were grateful that the owner took it seriously. Apparently his business has been declining since the opening.
Here lies the problem, this is not the only station we or friends of us (we now know) have had problems with. This started a long time ago and I warned friends of ours to watch at the stations….
Think about this …if they get away with charging ten mil to 5 or ten gringos a day and get away with it, can you imagine how much money they are making? they do it on cash and debit.
this last one was particularly brazen because he put an extra charge on our debit card. So be careful. I commend the station owner for his efforts in fixing this and thought I should post it.
If this had happened in the U.S. the fired worker would undoubtedly have sued both his boss that fired him as well as the customer he tried to rip off. I’m glad this owner did what he did. Hopefully no repercussions.
[quote=”barbara ann”]Friday my husband went to the gas station, they fired two employees before he got there, then the third who actually added an extra amount on our debit card, was coming to pick up his check. the owner had him come in and face my husband, then had him top of our tank and refunded the money from our debit card. The employee was then told he would repay all of it out of his check and he was fired in front of my husband on the spot. We were grateful that the owner took it seriously.Apparently his business has been declining since the opening. Here lies the problem, this is not the only station we or friends of us (we now know) have had problems with. This started a long time ago and I warned friends of ours to watch at the stations….Think about this …if they get away with charging ten mil to 5 or ten gringos a day and get away with it, can you imagine how much money they are making? they do it on cash and debit. this last one was particularly brazen because he put an extra charge on our debit card. So be careful. I commend the station owner for his efforts in fixing this and thought I should post it.[/quote]
[b]barbara ann PLEASE keep your discussions in the same thread and do not start a new thread to reply to an existing thread.[/b]
I believe the previous thread disappeared from the forum. I tried to find it before when I made a posting to it and it was gone.
The previous thread has not disappeared [url=https://www.welovecostarica.com/members/cfmbb/messages.cfm?threadid=633B7D94-24E8-5ED2-F100431DA0A49F44]it is here[/url]….
I may be stupid here, but paying with cash might have solved the issue? Until I am established in any foreign country, I always pay with cash.
[quote=”kwhite1″]I may be stupid here, but paying with cash might have solved the issue? Until I am established in any foreign country, I always pay with cash.[/quote]
It’s interesting even paying in cash…well $$ that is. On several different occasions throughout the years, we’ve paid in US$ for gas. They had the conversion rate posted on the pump. Great. But when it came time to pay, some very interesting math took place. Oddly, this only happens to us at gas stations. Thankfully, I always carry a calculator with me. I would show it to them, and they’d just look at me, shrug their shoulders, and take the correct amount of cash. Imagine how much extra money they could make in a day taking and extra $5 or so from every unsuspecting person? Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt…maybe they just didn’t know how to convert???
do NOT pay in US$ for anything here. you will get screwed on the exchange rate. Their currency is the Colon. Not US$. of course they are making money; everyone does when you do that.
Other than to make our monthly mortgage payment, we never pay in dollars for anything. That way, the exchange rate is never an issue. We convert our dollars to colones at the bank, get the current correct rate, and spend the currency the people here are familiar with. It makes things much simpler.
[quote=”maravilla”]do NOT pay in US$ for anything here. you will get screwed on the exchange rate. Their currency is the Colon. Not US$. of course they are making money; everyone does when you do that.[/quote]
We don’t usually…it’s just when we first get there and in between before we have a chance to get back to the bank.
If I may, might I suggest that “never pay in US $” is not ALWAYS the case.
If you find yourself in a restaurant that has its menu priced in dollars, you DEFINITELY want to pay in dollars. Otherwise, they get you on the exchange rate going the other way, from dollars colones.
On a recent trip into SJO my wife and I were in a nice restaurant near Escazu and they had a dollar-priced menu. When they brought the check in dollars ($52.00) I asked for the amount in colones and the waiter came back with the calculated colone price of 27,300.
They were converting at a rate of 525/$1.00 and the bank rate at the time was about 493/$1.00.
At 493 the conversion would have been 25,630ish. Not a big difference, but if they pull it off several times a night, it adds up…..[b]especially if Scott shows up for dinner![/b]
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