A BP garage attendant left a mum furious after they "threatened to call the police" on her son when he was 3p short to pay for fuel.
Shekira Malcolm's son Donté, 19, had driven to a BP garage in Wembley to fill up his car with petrol..
The total came to £30.03, but Donté only had £30 in cash on him, and he didn't have his card.
Shekira told MyLondon: "He was going to fill up his car to go back to uni in Nottingham on January 2, and had £30 cash but forgot his card. It went a few pence over. 3p."
"When he went into the shop he explained it to the [BP attendant]. He said, 'You owe three pence.' My son tried to explain it but it went back and forth."
The BP attendant then said he would be "calling the police" which Donté laughed at, saying, "Don't be silly, it's 3p."
Shekira explained that other customers at the petrol station were getting annoyed by the continuous "back and forth" as it was preventing them from making their fuel purchases.
"The people behind him were getting impatient because it was taking long. The attendant showed my son that he was dialling the police. He showed the screen and he was dialling 999."
"The guy behind him saw it and said, 'This is ridiculous.'"
The man, who was a builder, then gave the attendant 10p to cover Donté's outstanding charge, telling him to "keep the change".
"He then said to my son, 'I can't believe what you've got to put with, because if this was me, he'd never had done this. I see why everyone's talking about prejudice. Its ridiculous over 3p'," Shekira said.
She added that Donté pays £2,000 to insure his car so he would be trying to "get away with 3p."
BP have not responded to requests for comment from MyLondon, but they did contact Shekira after she posted about the incident on Twitter.
Customer Operation Lead Nicole Tilbury and Customer Service Manager Gemma Fox told Shekira that they would be looking into the incident.
After Donté told Shekira about the incident, a month after it happened, he said: "It happens all the time."
Shekira said: "We got him a car because he was getting hassled. Knives pulled on him, robbed twice in the last two years. He gets followed around the shops. He has people cross the road when he's walking down."
She said that it was very "sad" to hear about this happening.
Shekira and her family live near the BP garage in Wembley, and Donté attends Nottingham Trent University.
