Safety · updated 16 August 2026

Fuel scams: free-petrol offers, fake apps and QR codes

Fuel scams follow fuel prices. When pump prices climb, so do the offers promising to beat them — and the ones asking for a card number first. Here is what they look like, the four things a genuine offer never asks for, and what to do if you have already paid.

The four things no real fuel offer ever asks for

Learn these four and most of the work is done. A legitimate discount, loyalty scheme or fuel card never needs any of them.

1. A payment to receive something free. A handling fee, a delivery charge, a small deposit — any money moving towards the offer is the scam itself.
2. A one-time code from your SMS or authenticator. That code exists to keep other people out of your account. Anyone asking for it is the other people.
3. Your bank login, card PIN, or a government ID number. No fuel promotion has any use for these.
4. An answer in the next few minutes. Urgency is not a marketing style, it is a technique to stop you checking.

What the common ones look like

Free fuel, vouchers and prepaid tokens

An offer of free or heavily discounted fuel arrives by message, social post or advert. Claiming it needs a small fee, a card number “for verification”, or a form asking for far more than a fuel voucher would need. The fuel never arrives; the card details do.

Apps and sites showing prices that cannot be real

A price far below every station around it is not a bargain, it is bait — usually to pull you onto a site that then asks for something. Sanity-check it against the local average: a station is not selling at half the going rate.

This is the honest reason our own prices come from named government feeds and each one says which feed and when. A price with no source is a number, not a fact — and that goes for us too.

QR codes stuck on the pump

A sticker appears on or beside the payment screen, offering a discount or a rewards signup. It leads to a page that looks like a payment form. The pump did not put it there. Reporting has described these appearing directly over official markings.

Simple rule: do not scan a code stuck to a pump. If a station runs a genuine promotion, it is in their own app or on the receipt, and paying normally always works.

Card skimmers on the terminal

A reader fitted over the real card slot copies the card as it goes in. Card-skimming attacks at payment terminals have been reported as rising sharply. Tug the card slot and the keypad before inserting — a fitted skimmer often moves. Prefer contactless or a phone wallet, which do not expose the card number, and check statements after filling up somewhere unfamiliar.

“Your fuel card has been suspended”

Aimed at drivers and small fleets: a message about a blocked card or a failed payment, with a link to restore it. The link is a copy of the login page. Open the provider from your own bookmark instead, never from the message.

How to check an offer in under a minute

1. Reach the company your own way. Type the address yourself or use a bookmark. Never the link in the message.
2. Read the address bar properly. Extra words, hyphens and lookalike spellings are the whole trick.
3. Compare the price with the ones around it. Our map shows what is published nearby, with the source named.
4. Wait ten minutes. Every one of these needs you to hurry. A real offer survives the delay.

If you have already paid or entered a card

1. Call your bank or freeze the card in your banking app now. Speed matters far more than certainty — a card frozen wrongly is a two-minute inconvenience.
2. If you entered a password you use anywhere else, change it there too.
3. Report it to your national fraud or consumer-protection body. It will not always get your money back, and it is how the pattern gets shut down.
4. Keep the message, the address and the screen. It is evidence.

What Refuelia will never do

• Ask for a card number, bank login, or an SMS code. There is nothing to pay for.
• Ask you to install an app to see the map. It opens in the browser.
• Sell or reserve fuel. We show what stations publish and what drivers report, nothing else.
• Show a price without saying where it came from and when.

The only address is refuelia.com. Anything asking for money in our name is not us.

Open the live map How our prices compare

Frequently asked

Are cheap-fuel apps a scam?

Mostly no. Established price apps are legitimate, and the risk is impostors using their names and prices too good to be true. Judge the source of the price, not the promise.

Is it safe to pay at the pump?

Generally yes. Contactless or a phone wallet is safer than inserting the card, because the card number is never exposed. Check the slot and keypad for anything loose, and be wary of stickers that were not printed by the station.

Someone offered a discounted fuel card for a fleet. Real?

Fuel cards are a normal product sold by fuel companies and card issuers. Buy them from the issuer, reached your own way. A large discount offered by a stranger by message is the oldest version of this scam.