Family 'banned from more than 1k petrol stations' amid fuel theft row

FTA: "Amjad Khan and his family were barred from multiple petrol stations around Blackburn for 19 months after he was accused of driving out of an Esso petrol station in Manchester without paying for £20.01 of fuel.

VARS Technology – which provides automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and debt recovery services to one in eight petrol stations across the UK – wrote to Nasim Khan, the registered owner of the couple’s car, in July 2023 and told her she had to pay for the cost of the fuel, plus a £30 admin fee: a total of £50.01.

Amjad, 58, was adamant he paid for the fuel with cash and was forced into a one-and-a-half-year battle with the company.

During this time the couple’s car was barred from the more than 1,300 petrol stations that VARS Technology operates at – leaving them struggling to refuel their car."