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!
It’s got something to do with max fund preallocation / preauthorization. This is normal for gas stations, supposedly it keeps card thieves from armada fueling and leaving the station holding a grand of irrecoverable debt. Some banks won’t show these background transactions, some only show one dollar, some show the full amount. The exact specifics you’re shown vary between banks and stations, but it is normal and happens all the time.
$150 sounds about normal. I put gas into a motor home with an 85 gallon tank. Generally the pumps will cut off once or even twice before the tank is full — sometimes at $100, sometimes at $125, sometimes at $150
They don’t actually charge the extra, so once get over the initial shock of thinking you got stolen from, this is not a real problem (unless you’re running your card right up to the ragged edge of your credit limit.)
Prepay inside and you’ll never have this issue. You get to chat with a bored cashier as well.
I just never know how much to get exactly is all.
If you pay with a card inside, just ask for a full tank or round up to whatever you know the vehicle will fit. Everywhere I’ve visited refunds the remainder automatically to your card without you going back in. Generally, at least in my area any refund is done almost immediately too but you could ask the cashier if you’re concerned about the specifics.
My understanding about this and if I remember correctly they charged the maximum amount that the pump will let you pump so if the pump will let you pump 50 gallons they authorize the dollar amount for that amount of gas.
After that they charge the amount of gas that you actually get and delete the first charge. Normally this happens fast enough that you don’t ever see it on your account. If you were in the middle of nowhere though, they might have been using tile up for their credit card system and that could delay things.
Story on this one. As a young adult I needed gas to drive to my second job a town over, maybe 12 miles. I had $75 in my account which was plenty to fill up.
When I started the process, my card was declined. I tried and failed a few times, then went inside the store and had them try there to no success. The cashier mentioned that the hold amount was set by the bank.
Hearing this I went down the road too my bank and asked them what the fuck was going on, to which they said it was normal and that my funds were locked until the transaction went through. The 0$ transaction.
I managed to scrounge up enough change and a single $5 bill I had in my wallet to buy like 2 gallons of gas which was just enough to get to work and back. Shortly thereafter I closed my account at that bank and transferred everything to a credit union I have been much happier with.
Gas station or truck stop? If the latter, it isn’t that shocking that they might lazily use the same authorization charge amount for cars as they do for 18-wheelers.
Filling up an 18 wheeler can cost $1000. I don’t think the truck stops are using our piddly $150 car-side gas pump limits for the diesel pumps on the truck side.
Filling up my gas motor home at regular car gas station pumps all over, I find that Truck stops, big chain gas stations, little podunk gas stains in the middle of nowhere all use limits from $100-$200, which is not enough for me to fill up. My guess is that number used to be “safely big enough to fill up anything” and they haven’t adjusted it as the gas prices went up.
Yeah it was a truck stop, seems to be the case.
$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.
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.
Normal hold charge here is either $200 or $250.
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.
I’ll usually see $100, but $150 isn’t insane, especially at a truck stop. It’s just pending, because they don’t actualy process the charge until they close the books later, at which time the actual amount is cross-referenced with the pending amount, the pending amount is canceled, and the actual amount is charged.
tl;dr: Don’t worry about it.
$100-150 is typical for a gas station holding charge. In my experience, they only do this for credit cards, but not debit cards and also doesn’t get overcharged like that if you pay inside, but it also depends on the station.
They need to make it big enough to cover folks driving F-350’s or something. Idk how much they take. It was generally $75 about 5 years ago. They don’t do that with credit cards. Hotels are really awful about that, too.
$150 is the most they can, I believe. It’s normal and it fucking sucks. That being said, I have debit cards that will only authorize for the amount you use (like, I have $30 in my account, it clears, pump for $15 of gas, no residual hold). I know there’s good reasons to use a credit card on a trip, but they’re a pain for the pre-auth. It’s supposed go away in a few hours normally — maybe by the end of the day?
The annoying thing is that the credit cards fully support authorizing for some amount likely to cover the transaction and using the same transaction to capture so no lingering auth sits around.
If a merchant has captured the funds and still has a hold sitting around the someone has implemented something wrong.
but they’re a pain for the pre-auth.
I think I’ve only ever had a credit card decline one me once for being outside of my normal area. What kind of cards do you have?
I meant that credit cards specifically tend to get a preauthorization hold at gas stations, at least in my experience.
I will get declines on debit cards from my credit union if I don’t tell them I’ll be out of area within about two states. BofA has a feature where if you open their app with location on, it’ll register you as traveling in whatever area. Amex, never had a problem. Can’t speak for the others.
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.
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.
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.
The best selling vehicle model in America is the Ford F-150, with gas tank sizes mostly above 30 gallons (exact size depends on model/options). The second best selling vehicle is the Chevy Silverado, whose gas tank is between 24-28 gallons.
At $3/gallon, that’s between $75 and $90 for the typical fill up.
For some vehicles (really large SUVs, premium SUVs that take premium grade gas), I can see $200+ tanks at certain gas prices we’ve seen in our recent past.
So it makes sense for a gas station to do a pre authorization for $100, maybe $150.
The other thing, too, though, is that the hold/pre-auth doesn’t matter if it’s a credit card that you just pay at the end of the month. It gets sorted out before your statement balance gets billed to you. It can get annoying if you’re using a debit card and your balance is low, but this is just another way that credit cards tend to be better than debit cards if you can handle the responsibility.
Pilot is a big truck station. I expect it isn’t unusual for customers to buy $900 worth of diesel in a single fillup.
Its just quite a scary thing to see when you’ve never seen it before. My wife and I do this trip 2-3 times a year, several days of driving to and fro, yet only just now saw it, so it scared us.
Scares hell out of my wife as well. She’s foreign and thinks she’s getting ripped off. Having hell explaining to her how this works in America.
Used to be $50. $150 sounds pretty crazy, but ultimately shouldn’t matter. I guess. 🤷🏻
Its credit, so i suppose it doesn’t actually matter unless your card is super strict or something, still 150 is a scary amount for most Americans to see just suddenly charged. Even if its temporary.
Wife saw $50 and flipped her shit! That used to be the normal charge, your post made me realize it’s way higher now.
My condolences lol.
still 150 is a scary amount for most Americans to see just suddenly charged. Even if its temporary.
Think of it as not even being charged. The hold/pre-authorization is just there to make sure that it can charge you that much if it needs to, but it never actually does charge you. It just tells your bank/card issuer that it might want to charge you up to that much.
Hotels and rental cars do this with huge amounts, too, to make sure that they can charge you for the stuff you charge to the room or if you keep a rental car for an extra week. But you don’t actually get charged for it until the merchant determines you did use those extra services for those extra charges.
The race track I take my car to on occasion puts a $600 hold whenever you buy gas on site. And there is a sticker I didn’t see until after my bank called me asking if I was crazy buying $600 worth of gas.
Bananas!
As explained to me, the hold is there to make sure you have enough in the account. Once the charge goes through with the actual amount the hold should go away so you don’t have both at the same time.
I see people saying this is normal but I have never seen both the hold and the charge at the same time.
It depends on who you have for a bank. I know cash app cards will sometimes leave the hold for 5 business days.
Cash app will also leave a hold if the charge is denied for lack of funds, it’ll just put a hold on whatever is left in the account.
