In a message dated 1/28/07 4:19:38 PM Central Standard Time, Pat wrote, in a comment on a message from T :
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct on that. In the 'semi-
> automatic' days of gasoline credit cards (1970's mostly) when the
> dealer had to manually fill in the gas ticket and imprint your credit
> card by hand, then you had to sign, Amoco made a point of writing
> down the license plate number of vehicles.
They did that in the manual days, too, When credit cards had no raised information and were filled in by longhand by the dealer. Not just Amoco -- and to say that "Amoco" (or any oil company) did this is somewhat misleading, since many, many, perhaps a majority, of station were owned or operated by dealers, not by the oil company.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are also correct about the entirely manual days of credit cards and also on precisely 'who' owned and operated the stations. Technically speaking, the stations were 'owned' and 'operated' by individuals or companies, but rather tightly controlled by the major oil companies. And it would have been (then or today) economic suicide to _NOT_ accept oil company credit cards, so in essence, the oil companies 'operated' the stations even if they did put an extra layer in the middle about the 'true' ownership. PAT]