The IT Nerd

In 2022 I did a story on two of the contactless payment apps for a pair of Canada’s gas stations. Esso which is owned by Imperial Oil, and Petro Canada who is owned by Suncor. The latter having been pwned by hackers over the summer. Anyway, the clear winner at the time was the Esso app. But that seems to have changed over the last few days. Esso issued a software update that changed what used to be the Speedpass+ app into the Esso and Mobil app. And it simply wasn’t a facelift. I was given the heads up that this was coming via an email from Esso and Mobil that said this in part:

And true to this email, on December 6th the new app appeared on my phone. I followed the instructions above and set everything up. And to make sure everything was working I logged in and out and everything seemed fine.

On December 8th, I went to a nearby Esso station to get gas. And that’s when I discovered that the app wasn’t working. Specifically:

• I opened the app and it prompted me for my password.
• I entered my password and then it prompted me for a verification code which was supposed to come by text message.

The problem was that the verification code never arrived. I tried a few times and gave up. I ended up paying inside the store which is a bit frustration as the whole point of me using contactless payment apps is to not go inside the store and instead pay at the pump in a secure manner.

Pro Tip: Paying at the pump by sliding your credit card in and out of the pump is not a secure way to pay because there is always the possibility of a card skimmer of some sort being installed that will allow criminals to clone your credit card. This can also be true inside the store which makes tapping your credit card, paying cash, or using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay as well as a contact payment app the safest ways to pay.

Now I’ve tried to fix this by doing the following:

• I tried reinstalling the app and that failed to resolve the issue.
• I tried recreating my account using my personal email address. That came back with an error saying that an account using that email address already exists, which is true.
• I tried resetting my password, but when I was prompted to enter the verification code that was supposed to be sent by text message, I never got said verification code.
• I tried creating a new account using my business email account. But when it was time for me to enter a mobile number, I got an error message saying my mobile number was already in use. Which again was true. And since I don’t have an extra SIM card with an extra number, I was stuck at that point.

Bottom line, the app or something on Esso’s back end doesn’t work. Which means the app is useless. Now I thought I was the edge case here. But perhaps this isn’t the case:

Imperial Oil reached out to this customer asking him to DM his information.

Now I did submit a request for help here, but if the best that they can do is say “try it again in a couple of days” to the person in the last Tweet, then that does not inspire confidence. What kills me about this situation is that Speedpass+ which is the predecessor to this app was unquestionably the best of the two contactless payment apps that I looked at. It was easy to use and worked flawlessly. Now, at least for me, it’s gone in the complete opposite direction. That’s a horrible customer experience and something that Imperial Oil needs to address.

In the meantime, I’ll be experimenting with the Shell App as that is a contactless payment app that I haven’t used before because up until now I had no need to as I don’t usually get my gas from Shell. But after discovering that it not only supports Apple Pay like the Petro Canada app and the Esso Mobile app does, and I can use my CAA membership to get rewards, I’ll give this app a shot and write a review about it once I’ve used it a couple of times to get a handle on how well it works. And what this highlights is that consumers aren’t unflinchingly loyal to any one brand. If they have a good experience with a brand, they will stick with that brand. But the second that they don’t, they will look elsewhere. Maybe Imperial Oil should remember that as the rollout of the Esso Mobil app has absolutely made me look elsewhere for my fuel needs, and the same thing might be happening with others if they have the same sorts of issues that I have experienced.

This entry was posted on December 10, 2023 at 8:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Esso. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.