A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas!
Unfortunately for her, you can’t do that, prosecutors said. The 45-year-old woman was arrested March 6 and faces felony theft charges accusing her of a crime that cost the gas station nearly $28,000.
Prosecutors say the woman exploited the system over a period of several months. Police learned of the problem in October when the loss-prevention manager at Bosselman Enterprises reported that the company’s Pump & Pantry in Lincoln had been scammed.
Most gas cards are designed to give out small rewards, this particular gas card was designed to give out bigger rewards.
If an ice cream scooper mistakenly gives one person a larger scoop than anyone else, I don’t blame the person with more ice cream, that’s obviously the responsibility of the ice cream scooper.
Designing a rewards card that functions correctly and a car crashing because presumably something has gone wrong are very different situations.
A deer didn’t kick the fuel pump, wires weren’t damaged in the register; everything worked as it was designed to, including the double swipe resulting in free gas.
That’s not how the rewards work though.
There’s basically an account to which you accumulate your entire spendings, and based off that, you’ll get a a few % off at most, in form of either a flat out discount or perhaps in some other form.
“Designing IT systems that function perfectly” is what you meant to say with “designing a rewards card that functions correctly”. Do you have any idea of how many technologies and codes and databases are interacting with such a “simple” thing as showing your rewards card to a reader? I’m guessing not.
“Everything worked as it was designed to”
So you think someone designed a system to give out free gas? What a great business model. Perfect design, isn’t it?
Sorry, but if they didn’t test their hardware against swiping twice, that’s 100% on them. Obviously you can’t catch every bug but that doesn’t make it not your fault when something slips through. A responsible company doesn’t blame the user, it fixes the problem and then figures out how to improve development and QA practices so it doesn’t happen again.
It’s not the user’s job to QA your product. If the product allows them to do something without tampering with it, that might as well be its design.
You’ve made many incorrect assumptions.
“‘Designing IT systems that function perfectly’ is what you meant to say”
No, that is not what I meant to say
“Do you have any idea of how many technologies and codes and databases are interacting with such a “simple” thing as showing your rewards card to a reader? I’m guessing not.”
Guess all you want; yes, I do.
“So you think someone designed a system to give out free gas?”
Obviously.
“What a great business model.”
No, it’s a terrible business model because you receive no compensation for the resources you’re selling.
That company should refine their design.
