My wife and I are currently driving cross country (US), and earlier in the day we stopped at a Pilot gas station in Tennessee.
I exited the vehicle, tapped my card on the thing to authorize my card and pay, got about 30 bucks of gas, then went inside and paid for a drink and snacks with a different card.
300 miles later, we stop at another gas station and while we do we check our cards and notice a 150 dollar charge on the same card used for gas at that exact Pilot. Strangely the 30 dollar charge for the gas was there too. We immediately call our credit card company and they say its a pending charge and cannot do anything about it until its went through, so we pause the card.
I call the gas station itself and spoke to a manager, and was told its an authorization charge and will go away. 150 dollars is a crazy amount for an authorization charge and makes little sense to me, has anyone ever experienced this before? Is it normal?
(Meta: I didn’t know where else to put this, but wanted to ask my fellow Lemmites, is that okay?)
Update: The charge has been removed from our account, so alls good. This is the first time I have ever seen an authorization charge so big, so it scared me, thanks to everyone for informing me on these charges, I’ll know to keep my eye out in the future and not worry so much!
$150 is about normal these days. The pumps will usually have a little sticker somewhere that list the authorization hold amounts.
Fun fact: The auth holds used to be $1 way back in the day. But when prepaid debit cards came around, people could have a balance of $1 on them, get $50 worth of gas, and the station wouldn’t be able to charge the actual amount (it would decline for NSF with no way to recover it as with a regular debit/credit card). That’s why the hold amounts are between $75 and $150.
If you want to avoid the authorization hold, you can either pay cash or pre-pay with a cashier; the latter case will charge only what you pay.
Wow, I’ve never actually seen the charge itself before. I sure am glad I asked here, I like seeing real answers.
Also, be aware that if it is debit and not credit card, it can take quite a while for the hold to come off. This isn’t on the gas station, it’s on how quickly your bank handles them. My bank it’s around 2-3 business days, but I know some it can be up to four weeks. Granted, this is my experiences in Asia and around Europe, but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same in the US.
If you think that’s the case, confirm with your bank before you using it and accidentally end up with a few hundred on your account just stuck there for a while.
I don’t think these happen with debit in the US, but if something happens and your card gets stolen your screwed out of that money with debit usually, so we always use credit.
In the USA, if you report the card missing within two days of discovering that it is missing, your liability is limited to $50.
https://consumer.ftc.gov/node/78373
I bet banks could have policy on top of this, but I doubt they do. 50 bucks is yikes.
I’ve actually experienced it. I discovered it was missing after the thief had used it, and the bank refunded the full amount, plus the overdraft fee I incurred by making a purchase using the card number after the thief had drained the account.
Oh I misunderstood. Maybe I shouldn’t lemmy when im still half asleep lol.
I read it as they will only pay 50 bucks, not 50 liability pay.
Glad you got your money back! That must have been stressful.
It was stressful. I was pretty young and pretty broke.
A gas station attendant didn’t return it when I made a purchase, and I was distracted so I didn’t notice. He then put gas in his own car at his own gas station using it. I came back the next day with a cop, and he confessed. The cop called his boss and he got fired. I got a report to give to the bank.
At the time, I was a little annoyed the cop didn’t arrest him, but he was probably as broke as I was and significantly dumber to commit such a stupid crime.
It was probably 10 years ago, but I’m in the US and had one of these on my debit card for a few days. I believe it’s if you use a physical card at the pump.
Certainly in the UK, the £1 preauth was just a check to see if the card was valid. Once the issuer returned the thumbs up, there was no cap on what you could draw from the pump.
Either a scenario like the above would happen, or people who were running on fumes two days before payday would do this stunt - full up with sixty quid’s worth of fuel - and when it bounced, would go back in on payday and be like “hey that’s weird, sounds like your machines are acting up” and nobody would be any the wiser.
Now it’s a near universal £99 preauth at unstaffed pumps.
Normal hold charge here is either $200 or $250.