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!
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.