Forecourt chip and PIN concern

By Cathy Reay

A disabled woman has spoken out about how vulnerable she feels giving her chip and PIN credit card and number to petrol station staff because of stations’ inaccessibility.

Linda Guttridge of Woodly, Berks, who uses a wheelchair, is unable to access her local petrol station to pay for her petrol so has to trust staff with her credit card and PIN number so that they can withdraw money from inside the station shop.

She also alleges that last year a petrol attendant at her local BP garage near Reading, attempted to withdraw funds four times the amount she should have been billed, which Ms Guttridge only discovered when her bank queried the withdrawal.

“How often do you see wheelchairs on forecourts,” she said. "This has been a problem ever since I started driving."

“I did have an agreement with my local station to keep their manual swipe machine, but they lost it. And now some major franchises are putting chip and PIN machines directly into individual pumps and these are still not accessible to disabled drivers like me that are unable to get out of their cars to reach them,” said Ms Guttridge.

Helen Smith, Disability Now’s motoring expert and head of policy for the charity Mobilise, said: “If you’re a wheelchair user remote machines are a problem as there is no-one around to help. But I don’t think we should be worried that this will be the future as it is too dangerous to leave stations unmanned.

"There is a card called chip and signature that anyone who doesn’t want to use a PIN number can apply for, which Ms Guttridge should look into. But there is still a lot of confusion about them as cashiers often think they have to override the signature,” she added.

A spokesman for BP Oil UK Limited said: “We are not able to have roaming chip and pin machines for security reasons, particularly theft”.

He added that putting chip and PIN machines into individual petrol pumping stations was “not something BP are planning”.

When we asked the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to comment both said that this issue does not fall within their remit.