Do you still have old fashioned service at your petrol station?

I'm in England too and know of a few places here in Wiltshire and Hampshire that do provide a personal service. But charge an arm and a leg for the fuel! Personally I think that we ought to re-connect with what service is all about. It isn't about saying "Have a nice day" like an automaton. It is about having time to understand what your customer wants and to show interest in them. That way they come back and might even buy other products from you. It's old fashioned but I don't see what it wrong with it. Nowadays we tend to treat customers as numbers - the worst are those companies that tell you that they don't! Some major supermarkets don't even have check out staff now - you do it all yourself. To me that says all that I need to know about the company - Profit before people!!

Hello Thea. Just found this, so I'll add my bit, for what it's worth. A friend of ours used to work part time post retirement in a garage in Plymouth, and one of his duties was to serve petrol. He had a brain haemhorrage 11 years ago, from which he thankfully recovered, although he was never able to work again. A few months after this, the garage decided they could no longer afford enough staff to serve petrol, which was a shame, as it was the only one in Plymouth that still did it, and the fuel was reasonably priced as well. In Spain, there are a mixture of the two - some stations still serve, while others are self service. Strangely enough, the ones that offer service at the pumps are those just off the motorways rather than those in small towns and villages, although you can never really tell until you pull up at the pumps. Sometimes, even those that normally do self service will suddenly decide to come out and serve you. It adds a bit of excitement to the otherwise mundane task of refuelling. I notice you say fuel prices vary widely in Greece from towns to villages. That's also the case in France, but not in Spain. There is usually only 1 or 2 cents difference in price across the country, although one garage near us has a 'Happy Day' every Wednesday, when they dscount 6 cents per litre. Needless to say, we tend to refuel on Wednesdays!