Building protection for forecourt operators
FORECOURT protection system VARS Technology has reached the milestone figure of 1million incidents of flagging vehicles that have driven off without paying.
Aiming to prevent further drive-offs before they can occur, the VARS system aims to reduce the money lost from drive-offs by alerting retailers of drivers who have been previously guilty of this from a national blacklist database.
Recent figures from the RAC Foundation found that there was a 77% increase in incidents of fuel theft in 2023, compared to the previous year. Over a five-year period, fuel theft incidents have increased fourfold.
To help prevent this, drivers that have previously failed to pay for fuel from a site protected by VARS, including those that had no means of payment but later failed to rectify the missing payment, are added to a national blacklist. These drivers can be added to the blacklist in as little as two minutes as well.
When blacklisted vehicles are then recorded as entering another protected forecourt, automatic notifications are sent to cashiers which allows them to prevent the drive-off before it can happen.
John Garnett, director at VARS Technology, said: “Fuel theft is a growing problem for forecourt retailers, so we are very proud of the fact that our customers are increasingly bucking that trend and protecting themselves from drive-off incidents.
“As our database of vehicles that have previously committed a drive-off continues to grow, forecourts ranging from independent retailers to large chains have a growing additional layer of protection against fuel loss.
“With many drive-offs coming from repeat offenders that target sites where they experience little or no repercussions, they are quickly learning theft from sites protected by VARS results in rapid and effective debt recovery.”
