Monday, December 02, 2019

Does this smell stinky to you?

I recently got a letter from Kwik Trip saying a car with my license plate was seen driving away without paying for gas at 5:07 am on a weekday in Marshalltown, IA--a faraway city I have never visited. It was written with clumsy English phrasing and asked me to send a credit card number, so I thought it was a scam and ignored it.

Then I got another letter that was very threatening. I was concerned that the sender somehow had my license plate number, name and address, so I sent a message to the Kwik Trip corporate office via its website instead of the contact info on the letters to see if it was legitimately from them--and they promptly responded to say yes, and whoever drove away without paying either had an altered license plate or had stolen one of mine--and *I* needed to file a police report and provide Kwik Trip with layers of proof that it wasn't my car that drove away.

I wrote back using my anger words saying 1) if they don't demand a credit card or up-front payment before letting people pump gas it's their irresponsible corporate practice and therefore their problem, not mine, 2) I have no obligation to spend time calling the police and chasing down paperwork to send them based on unsubstantiated, poorly written accusations, and 3) the burden of proof is on them and they need to send me a photo of my car and license plate at their pump or leave me the fuck alone. They promptly wrote back again to tell me that they had benevolently canceled my "account" and that I "owed" them no money.

So questions: Does this smell stinky? Do you think it's some kind of Kwik Trip corporate scam? Did they illegally obtain my personal and vehicle information? Did they by any definition harass me? Should I call the police on them?

In the mean time: If their stupidly spelled name weren't enough to drive you away, DON'T SHOP AT KWIK TRIP so you can prevent yourselves from being scammed. Fucking assholes.

I have a paper trail and a string of stupidly incriminating emails from Kwik Trip. I'm gonna keep pursuing the issue with the police and the Better Business Bureau and all of Twitter just to be a pain in the ass back at them.

2 comments:

Michael Lehet said...

I bet what had happened was their computer transcribed the license plate incorrectly and once they actually went and LOOKED at it, they verified it wasn't yours.

We got a parking ticket for not paying and the only reason is the Agent entered the wrong license plate number - we just ignored it!

Nate said...

You responded correctly. Pay no more mind to it.