I wonder if she had been hitting the key for Britain. Or maybe Colombia.

I'm a few weeks from 40, so I well remember what you're talking about, but most people are now spoiled by plastic and are no longer used to prepaying. I know I'm not any more. Even my 78 year old mother is surprised when places make you prepay. That used to be the norm, but it isn't in most places anymore.

I hear stories like this, and all I can think of is a line from Ferris Bueler's Day Off:

I weep for the future!

Sorry, but this is incorrect. As I posted earlier in this thread, the ban on self-serve gas in Oregon has no bearing on method of payment. There are plenty of stations in Oregon that require you to input your zip code at the pump. (Or, tell your zip code to the pump jockey who inputs it for you.) And, if you're paying with cash in Oregon, most stations require you to leave your comfy car and pay inside.

If she gave you a $20 and there was some question as to whether change was needed, she was either in the practice of filling her tank when it was less than half empty, or you must be really old!

(Actually, I can remember filling my first car, a Chevy Sprint, for under $10...so I guess that makes me old, too!)

But wait wait. There have been reports of people calling some banks in the USA (whether they're talking to a csr in the USA or India is another question but we'll leave that for a second) and ask about opening an account. When the csr asks where they live and they say New Mexico, they say sorry. Our accounts are only for people living in the United States. It has really happened!

I agree. This is somewhat of a worldwide problem.When we emigrated to Canada from the UK, I had more than one person over here asked me if I'd driven when I moved.

Or an old farmer from Saskatchewan who'd retired and taken a tour of the UK. He told me that all they showed him when he was over there was old stuff, like castles and Stonehenge and Stately Homes. "Don't you guys have any new stuff I could see".

Great. Now I weep for the present, too.

Back when I was a kid, gas was around $1.29 per gallon for premium. Filling up Honda Accord could be done well under $20.

When I was a kid, gasoline was 29.9�/gallon. A fill up was less than $6

(But then again going to a baseball game at Shea Stadium cost $1.30 for seats on the upper level but right behind home plate).

Any one here has pumped gas in Puerto Rico?
Less that 1% of the gas station offer PAY AT THE PUMP. It is all prepay, or full service (for those that offer it). It has been like that for many years.

$1.29. *sigh* Those were the days. I can remember filling up my Ford Thunderbird in the 1990s for $14 in OK, where the highest octane we had for some reason was 92 and it was 96 cents a gallon! (It hit $1.01 or so before I left.) I bought an Accord in 1999, moved to Saudi Arabia (my parents took the car) and I remember moving back to the US in 2003 and being horrified when I saw gas at $1.53 in the States! I can still remember that exact price for some reason and the gas station I saw it at. The price creep in the US hadn't fazed me when all I was doing was visiting once a year or so.

I just am old enough to remember "regular" and "unleaded". We had a 1977 Datsun pickup that was the last car we had that took regular. I can remember Mom putting three and four dollars worth of gas in it, even though I don't remember how much it was.

Exactly! And it ain't just one or two Canadian stations, it's pretty much all of them. Though I did find an antiquated one on my last trip that worked with American credit cards...

I was reading about this on another blog and forgive me if this info is already in the thread.

However, it is claimed that for visa and amex, a workaround is to enter the three digits from your Canadian postal code followed by 00. I read through a bunch of replies and it seemed like it usually worked with visa and Amex but not with mc. Of course, it might also depend on which bank your Canadian card is issued by (do the banks in Canada all usually offer both mastercard and visa from the same bank...I never understood that as I thought they were competitors).

It works with my Canadian Masterard.

Not sure it does actually prevent fraud. I recently moved and change my billing address and zip on all my cards, but not in my brain. When asked for my zip, I sometimes automatically say the one where I used to live. About 1/4 the time the old zip (2 years now) works and about 3/4 of the time it doesn't (NY, NJ and CT area). Same card. So it must depend to some extent on the interface with the vendor. If it was really going to prevent fraud it should never work when I use the old zip.