Idk if this is the right instance for this, but how fucking tired of these forced ads at gas pumps is everyone else?
I’m paying 4 bucks a gallon to have you shove advertising down my throat like an erect cock?
What the actual fuck
Anyone have any good ad blocking practices for this?
I’ve seen duct or painters tape covering the speakers…
You can press a button next to the screen to mute it, but this doesn’t work at all gas stations. (Usually its the 2nd from the top on the right side)
I guess its just time to gettoblast music every time I pump gas like back when I was 19…
This is one of those American absurdities that thankfully hasn’t made its way over to Europe yet, at least to my knowledge. I hope I have an electric car by the point they start introducing these here.
We’ve got some in the UK, like this one at the Shell petrol station at S60 5ND (pic from Oogle Gearth)
Is that a scale so you can weigh your gas?
“Place your GASOLINE in the tank”
In Finland our equivalence to Wal-Mart also sells cheap gas and they have ads on their pumps advertising their own products but it’s just on the display and there’s no sound with it.
Would be nice if the gas was less expensive at the stores with ads. At least that’s not the case in my area. 5 min down the road the same company has pumps without ads for the same price.
You’d think it should be less expensive.
But then you’re not thinking of increasing shareholder value.
How dare you!
That is how it started here. Then they got loud.
And now when I get gas I gotta listen to them hawk some shitty podcast from a washed up morning host. No! I don’t want to know about Hoda Kotb, I just want gas!
Oh yes they tried. The damn thing scared me when that ad started playing. I haven’t been back at that station again. Some other stations do have ads playing but those are silent, so I guess they do learn customers don’t like the loud ads.
Huh, I guess living in a small town with gas stations that have had the exact same pumps for many decades has its perks.
I’ve been driving an EV for a few years, but I flew out of state and had to rent a car recently. I’d never experienced this before then. It was one of the most dystopian experiences ever, leaving me feeling dirty and used.
I don’t think I could keep myself from vandalizing those things if I had to do that constantly.
Why do you think charging stations will be immune? Plus with all the ‘smart’ ‘connected’ cars it’s not impossible for them to push ads directly to your car.
What sucks about charging stations is they don’t have:
- trash cans
- squeegees to clean my windshield
- a portico to keep the rain off my head
- a little convenience store with coffee and snacks
EV charging doesn’t require you to stand around for 5 minutes holding a handle to fuel up. The charging times are longer, but once plugged in your need to stay anywhere near the vehicle is zero. And plugging in usually takes less than 5s.
So even if someone came up with a system whereby they expected you to watch an ad before the power would flow, you could always just plug in and walk away. How are they going to know you’re physically there?
As an EV driver I haven’t been to a gas station since I started driving it, but AFAIK this advertising hasn’t come to Canada — and hopefully it never does.
So even if someone came up with a system whereby they expected you to watch an ad before the power would flow, you could always just plug in and walk away. How are they going to know you’re physically there?
How about a button located near the ad screen and speaker that you have to hold like at least 80% of ad duration. If you failed to reach 80% it would reset to 0 and show you another ad so you can try again.
First — stop giving them ideas! 🤣
Second, a small rock and some tape would likely defeat that.
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The one thing that would push people to electric. At least then you can charge at home and avoid gas stations.
Don’t worry; they’ll just start playing ads in the car itself before you are able to shift gears to drive.
Discounted electric rates on your ad-supported charging plug…
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One time I put in my card, but the pump couldn’t show me an ad because it crashed. My card was stuck in the pump. The guys inside tried resetting the pump but that didn’t work, so they said it’d be a week before someone came around to fix it. I had to cancel the card and get a new number. All because I couldn’t watch the ads.
I hope you paid them for the lost ad revenue you caused them to suffer.
I’ve never seen a pump that took a card inside it like an ATM; did you mean the transaction was stuck or the physical card?
I’ve seen a lot of those. The card gets physically stuck until the machine decides that the payment is completed.
I’ve been to many a pump that instructs you to insert and leave your card, then ‘latches’ onto the card once you’ve inserted it, locking it into place until the authorization for the transaction is complete. I’ve seen them in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana.
Costco has no ads for the time being, and I can’t see it going with ads because they can only slow the sale of gasoline that people already line up for after paying to access the ability to buy it.
The majority of pumps in my area play ads. Some of the pumps can’t be muted. For those, press the top left and right buttons, then next two down, then the next two and it throws it into maintenance mode. That shuts off the speaker.
The ones here, you can’t mute. Pisses me off so bad I will refuse to back to a gas station. I have even pulled up seen the ads on another pump and drove off. I’m not a fucking captive! Congrats on losing money greedy fucks!
Push and hold the left and right top buttons to put it in maintenance mode. You can do everything normally, but no sound.
Does this work universally or is there a particular station you frequent that it works at?
Depends on the model of pump. Some of them you push one of the unlabeled buttons a few times (my local Shell it’s the 2nd one down on the right)
Are there any potential repercussions for sticking a utility knife into the speaker grill?
Mild electric shock and a vandalism charge if caught. Worth it? I don’t know but I’m getting sick of the fucking ads
Edit: So stab then pump, instead of the other way around to avoid boom boom?
I avoid gas stations that have ads. There’s a chain where I live that doesn’t do them, so they get all my business.
I wish I could do this. There are none left in my area and I’m not drilling and refining my own gas.
good time to switch to organic, gluten-free, vegan, open source, self-hosted and family-grown biomass fuel
I do this too. Speedway and Shell play video ads on their pumps with no obvious mute options. I don’t buy gas there.
Why do companies even buy ads in this space? There’s so many spots in our society where ads are just being injected to play for nobody. At what point do they figure out that it’s not worth the return on investment to put ads in those spots?
They don’t have to work, you just have to convince people they do.
- Sell the gas station operator on increased revenue (whether they ever see increased revenue from it or not is irrelevant — I would assume they are unlikely to stop once they have ad pumps in). They might not opt for ad pumps next time, but that’s a problem for future you.
- Sell businesses on thousands of people staring at these pumps every day.
- All parties are now invested in this ecosystem, and it’ll be a while before they determine whether or not it’s worth the money — or even having an effect.
Second button down on the right side of the screen, press it (up to) 4 times and it mutes that shit
Since we are sharing…
Holding down 1-5-9 or 3-5-7 can drop a POS card reader into debug mode, but it’s brand dependent. (I have had it also crash the host terminals in some cases as well.)
also want to say that this is illegal in most places. The store may or may not press charges, but they have the right to and they will win that case if they do. So only do it if you know you can get away with it or have permission or don’t mind having the stain on your legal record and whatever fine they hit you with
Because why just hack it as much as you need to when you can go all the way? AMIRITE?
It serves a niché function in some situations. (Physical pen testing, in my case. I needed the person at the register gone in one case so I could setup a small network tap.)
Physical pen testing
was it really pen testing or just pen…ing😏
The only difference is who pays you to do it 😁
I’m just going to leave this here.
I was really hoping this was for fuel pumps, but the bus stop ads are great, too.
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
– Banksy
Maybe we need a need OSM tag
One of my most upvoted comments on here is saying I should be legally allowed to smash those screens if they play ads.
I don’t need advertisements shoved in my face every second of every day.
Most of them the second button down on the right is mute, though I’ve been running into some recently that disabled the mute.
Anyway, I sharpie a “mute” next to the button on stations where it isn’t labeled for other people. It’s one bit of graffiti that I’m not at all conflicted about.
I wish advertisers would realize that forcing me to watch their ad against my will makes me actively hostile against their brand and/or product. If I remember their brand name from an intrusive ad I will not only not buy their products, I will go out of my way to give my money to their competitors.
Advertising is among the most studied psychological phenomenoms in the world. It’s not so much about getting you to buy their product but more about you remembering the brand. Ads work. That why they’re everywhere.
Sure I can name several brands that I’m not buying from either because of their ads… …but I remember the brands.
I have never experienced this. Where do you have ads at gas stations?
The United States of America.
Most of them anyway.
When they have an LCD screen. I go to the one sketchy one down the road because the pumps are older
For the pumps that the mute button doesn’t work: carry a small screwdriver, 1/8", flat blade, insert into center of speaker then pull sideways to severe the coil wire.
Great idea, it’s not like every single gas station is riddled with cameras and you have a license plate they can track you with or anything….
Tired of ads at the gas station? Carry a lighter
