KEY POINTS:
Senior managers from oil company BP flew to Auckland to apologise to a man threatened with a machete by the manager of a BP service station.
An Auckland service station owner-manager threatened a customer with a sharpened, arm-length machete while screaming at him to leave his shop.
The incident at Carr Rd Mt Roskill BP on Wednesday morning came after a disagreement between the owner and the customer's father.
Motekiai Kite, 23, told the Weekend Herald the knife threat was the final act in some "very blunt" customer service.
Mr Kite's father, Sione Kite, had pumped $20 of petrol into his car before realising he had misplaced his Eftpos card.
He paid the manager $10 cash and asked if he could leave his driver licence, tools and keys as security while he went to fetch more money.
The manager refused his offers and removed the keys from his car, Mr Kite said.
His father then telephoned him.
When Mr Kite arrived and paid the extra $10, an argument erupted between his father and the manager. At least three other staff members and two customers were present when the manager pulled the machete from under the counter.
"It was as long as your arm and the handle was the length of your hand. It looked like he was going to strike someone. He advanced at me, telling me to 'get the hell out of my shop'.
"I froze, I was in shock. I was thinking 'How can someone be thinking that, in New Zealand?' He was just acting like a cave man."
Mr Kite said he was pulled out the door by his father, and immediately called police, who arrived within minutes.
But later the family was told the manager was let off with a warning.
Mr Kite said his father was in shock and had barely slept since the incident.
"It was an honest mistake, and he tried to explain it to them. My father's quite elderly, he's in no state at all to be doing a runner."
BP New Zealand spokesman Neil Green said the station was independently owned, but was supplied with BP fuel.
That meant BP was limited in the action it could take.
But its contract with the owner covered customer service standards, and the incident was being reviewed.
Mr Green said the company was taking the incident very seriously.
