Sorry to say it, but your fuel tank may be sitting empty until tomorrow as a glitch has shut down petrol pumps around NZ.
It’s all thanks to today being a very special day, the 29th of February. Obviously, this date happens once every four years and the computers weren’t programmed to account for it.
Speaking to RNZ, one motorist said the pumps at four different petrol stations didn’t work this morning. They were eventually told that “the outage was caused by leap day not being factored into the system.”
Customers can still buy fuel at pumps/stations that are manned by staff.
Julien Leys, a spokesperson for Gull, said that card payments at all NZ petrol brands are down because of the glitch.
“We were aware from this morning about a nationwide technical issue that's affecting motorists across all fuel brands where they can't pay for their fuel,” he said.
In a cruel (but funny) twist of fate, Gull was running a discount today promoted around it being leap day. They have since apologised and promised another sale next week.
“We are working closely with the technology provider to resolve this issue as quickly as possible for our customers,” they wrote.
“We understand the frustration our customers are feeling and we will have a discount day next week to make up for the inconvenience.”
Kiwis on Reddit understand the inconvenience but are still having a good giggle about it.
“This generation’s y2k,” wrote one person, referring to the doomsday theory that all computers would shut down when clocks switched from ‘1999’ to ‘2000’.
“Some poor IT team is not having a good day,” said another.
“Must still be using Windows ‘98,” a third added.
As annoying as this is, once it’s fixed we won’t have to worry about it for another four years.
