When it comes to non-payment on forecourts, experience tells us that some motorists do make genuine mistakes and it’s important to respect customers inadvertently caught in a difficult situation. These can be rectified if accurate information is collected by retailers so that repayments can be made within a reasonable timeframe. This said, we must then turn to those motorists who deliberately seek to evade payment.

BOSS has expanded its efforts to find a sensitive, but robust solution, to tackle drive-offs. During this process we’ve discovered that a drive-off is often more than a drive-off from a pump. Our research has found that approximately 80% of drive-off incidents occur as a result of a failure to pay in-store.

By extending the BOSS Payment Watch scheme throughout the UK, we can provide retailers with a digitally integrated and effective service that tackles both drive-off offences and no means of payment.

This broader approach has undergone intensive trials and shown that approximately 11% of motorists reported as committing a drive-off return to make payment directly to sites where BOSS Payment Watch is currently in operation. And a further 72% make payment through the BOSS Payment Watch recovery process. This has led to 83% of drive-off monies being recovered on behalf of BOSS members.

The potential benefits, for both retailers and police, are considerable. Forecourt crime costs retailers an average £3,600 per site each year and opportunities to reduce these losses will have a direct impact on site profitability. But to be a success it will need retailers to take responsibility to record full details of drive-off incidents accurately and report them in a timely manner.

This is where our new technology can have a two-fold impact. By simplifying the process of reporting vehicles involved in incidents we can speed up the process of recovering losses.

In addition, a consequence of recording details about incidents gives retailers the ability to monitor the status of all incidents reported, identify trends and respond with solutions to reduce losses.

Topics