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!
Heres me living in Aus reading these comments saying this is normal, thinking its insane. We just pull up to the bowser, wave to the cashier and start pumping petrol. People would be livid if they saw a $150 auth charge. The petrol station would be getting dragged in the news.
I’m from Europe and it’s unheard of in my area. Although gas stations here work quite differebtly from US ones.
You drive up to the tanking machine. You take the gun and start tanking. No credit card terminal, no nothing on it. Just a display of liters pumped and amount owed.
When you finish, you enter the station, say the tanking plot number and pay that exact amount.
If you run off… I guess they call the police?
I’ve never had it happen to me, but if you were out of cash and all the cards you had failed for some reason you’d merely exchange contact info and pay in a few days via bank transfer, CC, cash or whatever.
If you don’t, you’ll get a court order within a year to pay the amount + some interest + court fees. That’s enough of an incentive for people to pay, I guess.
If you just tank up and leave, you could get booked for theft. Most places have cameras and cars have licence plates, so finding the offender is quite simple.
Therefore, no preauth.
Funny, $200 is standard in NZ if you pre pay. Can usually post pay though as you say.
Or guess how much fuel you’re going to need and pre-auth a little more than that.
Lucky! I only just now learned this was normal now, but damn does it suck that it does. Im not sure why there isn’t a system to authorize outside charging cards, seems backwards to me.
I would guess that you have the same thing happen there - you just never noticed/looked at the right time to see those charges. Fuel stations don’t want you to fill your tank and then discover you can’t afford the fuel, so they have some sort of arrangement with the credit cards to verify that you can afford the fuel before you put it in.
In Australia we fill up first and then go in to pay.
I think you can prepay in some apps or at truck stops or whatever but its far from the norm and usually a choice.
Credit card doesn’t leave the wallet till I go in to pay. There’s no way for them to magic the charges onto the card.
Oh, so you don’t have pay at the pump and so have to wait in line? I remember those days. The station takes more risk of someone driving off without paying but it mostly works for them. Not pleasant for the customer who is waiting in line behind someone who is trying to decide which lottery ticket to buy or whatever they are being slow on.