OT Credit card charging

I've used nothing but a debit card most of the time, and only need a credit card for renting a car.

So I got one,

The debit card is set up to notify me when a charge is made over their minimum amount, which is $100.

I figured until I got used to the credit card, I would set that limit to their minimimum amount, $10.

So last Thursday I bought gas. My tank holds a little over 16 gallons.

An email comes shortly afterwards saying there is a pending charge on the card of $85, but I can't put $85 worth of gas in the car. And ~48 hours later, it becomes a permanent charge of $31.

I understand that when someone rents something, or maybe stays in a hotel with room service or one of those very expensive vending machines, that the seller wants to reserve a fairly large amount of money, to cover future charges. In case the car isn't returned the day the renter says it will be, or so they won't have to interrupt the drunk guy spending $20 for a candy bar to make him put more money on his account.

But when I pump gas, they may not know how much I'll pump when I start, but 5 or 10 minutes later, they know. Why did they keep $85 on reserve for two days?. What if someone is at the edge of his wallet and his credit and he needs to spend that 50?. I don't think anyone notifies anyone of this practice. If I didn't have the notification set below

100, I wouldn't know about this and I'll bet most people don't know.

Even I don't know who all does it. Is it all gas stations? Only Shell? Only Maryland? Is it the opera? What if you get more popcorn there than you and they anticipate?

Reply to
micky
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Up here in Ontario, "pay at the pump" requires you to select the amount of gas you want. I always select "fillup up to $200", you can select 10, 20, 50 etc or "up[ 2" several limits. This pre-authorizes the card transaction (to the maximum limit)

Reply to
clare

Clearly, they have to pre-authorize your card for some amount, and it's sort of unfair to make the pump determine what sort of vehicle you are fueling. It wouldn't surprise me if the amount varies with the gas station. I have no idea why it would take 2 days to resolve the difference--that sounds like an error.

Reply to
Bill

Common practice to put a substantial hold. Most gas companies do it. The 2 day hold is the fault of the CC company as it takes them that long to reconcile. OTOH, I've charged things and they don't show up until two days later.

Good chance your debit card had the same hold too, but you may not have seen it.

I've seen the notification over the years, but don't recall where. BTW, restaurants do that too, putting in enough hold to cover a tip. Your hotel and car rental company will do the same.

Since you are going to Europe, the best exchange rate I got was on my debit card. I have a few Euros at home to take, but stop at an ATM at the airport when I get there to get cash. Keep in mind, if your card has a daily limit, you can only take that amount in USD. I've seen people try to get 400 Euro when they have a $400 limit.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

The pre-authorization is fast. There are different ways for the actual charge to be made. Some retailers do all the charges for the day in one batch at the end of the day.

I get a notice that one of my bills is paid. I don't see the charge on my CC for at least two days.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

SNIP

Depends what bank handles the card. Some are AWFUL and I would never deal with them, even as a brick and mortar bank.

By it's very nature, a Debit card has no hold because it takes the money out of your account "immediately"

Never seen a restaurant do it, but around here we don't have to prepay at restaurants

Reply to
clare

Right. They ought to reconcile it in 10 minutes. They know it's a gaspump. Everything else at a gas station is paid after the amount is determined.

Right, because I only get $100+ notices.

That would make life simple. I still need the CC for the car. (One time in the US I didnt' know and I didn't have a CC but he took a DC not realizing what it was. This was before they wrote on all of the debit cards what they are.

BTW, the card doesn't seem to have any place** to sign it, and the letter that came with it doesn't say anything about signing it. What's up? Ddi they decide no one looks at signatures anyhow so why have people sign it?

**It has a silver strip that seems like I should not write on it, and a white strip with the CC number, the same number as on the front. Am I supposed to sign over that number? Or do I have to call them?

They want to have as few as possible transaction fees, and they don't know how much a euro is worth!

I think on the last trip I didn't get more than $250 at a time. I'm wondering if I should take a checkbook too, to pay my rent if he'll take it**. I lengthened the trip a little to save money on the fare and it's for 11 weeks now.

When I was in Guatamala 45 years ago, I paid my hospital bill in advance with a check. And the two orthopedists, the bad one and the good one, with checks, because I was running out of cash and there were no atms. (I still had to write my mother for more money because the trip took 6 weeks longer. I didn't want to travel, much less hitchhike, with my leg in a cast. 6 weeks at $5 a day was 210 dollars.)

**I don't know who "he" is yet, so I can't ask.
Reply to
micky

I agree, except that if the debit card people can decide how much I really spent on gas, the CC people should be able to too. They usually work for the same company.

So maybe they too take out 85 and then put back 54? But there's that problem again. What if you only have $35 left in the debit card and you need 34 dollars of gas? Are they going to refuse to let you get it? and if the DC can handle this, whyy not the CC.

This is AmEx, and they now have prepaid cards**, which are one form of debit card.

**Not just for rich people anymore. They used to not be credit cards but charge cards. You had to pay the entire bill every month. My brother had one, and when he bought a car, he brought a check for the car but didn't included some of the add-on costs, so he charged them on the AmEx card, and went over his limit, and they cancelled him, even though they paid the charge and he paid them before the due date!!
Reply to
micky

It said on the card to sign on the white strip but the words were small and somewhat destroyed by the embossing of the CC number on the front.

Reply to
micky

I was up to 3 questions so I called and she said the hold is put on the by the store, not them (I guess that's obvious now that she said it) and siad if I were down to my last 30 dollars I should pay in the store instead of at the pump. They can put it through for 34 and then limit the sale to 34. I hope I'm never down to my last 35 dollars. Even on that trip in 1971, I never got that low, and I only started with 400..

I didnt' ask about debit cards, and she might not have known, but it seems to me it would be the same.

Reply to
micky

I don't run that tight but I bet you can go in and put $20 or whatever on the pump and that is all they will take from the account.

Reply to
gfretwell

Simple - a debit card cannot authorize if you have less money in the account than you are asking for.. It is "direct bank transfer". It simply will not authorize and turn on the pump.

You can get "prepaid credit cards" from Mastercard and Visa now too - basically "gift cards"

AMEX would give ANYONE a card, and often even a "no limit" platinum card, but they had NO leaway. If you missed a 10 cent balance you were DONE. They were like a payday loan - SHYSTERS. Then you could get a "for fee" card that gave you time to pay the balance at ridiculous interest rates Then all the banks decided to beat AMEX at their own game, providing no charge revolving credit cards, with interest only charged if not paid in full on the due date.

Reply to
clare

I've never seen this at all, in my +30 years of CC use. The card charge is always the exact amount of the purchase. That includes gas, lodging and everything else.

Reply to
Vic Smith

Also let your card company know you are traveling. They might stop your card because of fraud concerns. While no problem with the debit card, much of Europe uses chip and PIN so you might want to find out the PIN for the charge card. Also, check in how they handle currency conversion. Don't know about debit cards, but many credit cards charge a %age of EVERY transaction for that. That can quickly eat up any advantage on the exchange rate. '

Reply to
Kurt V. Ullman

Yes and no. The problem in low balance situations where the debit card is tied to your checking account is that you can get authorization for it one minute and the next minute a check arrives that you didn't take into account. The hold from the card means you don't have enough money to pay the check and it bounces. >

Reply to
Kurt V. Ullman

They don't take out anything initially. They put a *hold* on a max amount that they think you could pump into your car. That avoids all kinds of problems, like you pumping $60 and only having $25 in your account or credit limit.

But there's that

Get it out in cash at the ATM. Simple, problem solved.

Reply to
trader_4

Of course the *charge* is the exact amount. But like Micky says, if you rent a car, rent a room, buy gas, the merchant very often runs the card and puts a hold on an amount to cover what you will typically spend. That way, come settle up time at the hotel, you don't wind up owing $250 and can't cover it. So, the hotel, if the nightly charge is $100, and you're staying one night, might get authorization for $150, to cover the one night, plus any mini bar, room service, etc. That $150 hold goes on and stays on, until the merchant sends in the final charge.

Reply to
trader_4

That's what I meant.

I don't mind the hold. What I mind is it taking more than 10 minutes to release it. Because in less than 10 minutes, I've stopped pumping, put the nozzle back on the pump, and printed the receipt

If there is one, and the ATM will only give out 20, not 35. That's about 250 miles and it might not be enough. How to get the other 15?

But the woman on the phone had what sounds like the right idea, pay inside. Let him see or hold your card, charge when done, and there won't be any hold.

>
Reply to
micky

Yes, that sort of thing. And they arrange it like this intentionally to get the bounce fee charge. Who knows when the gas station sent the final charge amount. Maybe it was indeed 10 minutes later, but they hold off reporting it for two days in order to get bounce check fees. (Even though I still had 3000 in the account.)

I had/have an account at Bank of America and I was furious when I saw how they reordered checks that came in on the same day but not at the same time. They would pay the biggest ones first, maximizing the number of checks not yet paid when the account was empty, so they could maximize the number of bounced check fees they could charge. They could have done the opposite to minimize the number, or they could just pay them in the order they come in. I consider what they did outright theft.

So I had occasion to open an account at the cowboy bank, Wells Fargo. And I told them why I didn't like BOA and we laughed about it. A year later I see in the paper that Wells Fargo was caught doing the same thing, and they hadn't stopped when BOA was caught. And then a year or two after that there is WF opening phony accounts so they can make extra charges! What thieves.

There used to be honor in being a banker, but as a whole, they've ruined that.

Reply to
micky

I never saw it either when the minimum the bank noltified me about was $100, and even with the extra money on hold a gas purchase never came to

100, but with this new CC, I set it at $10** and I got an email saying $85.

I throw the receipts on the car's floor, and they never actually get reconciled with the bank statement, but at least I had it until the next time I cleaned the car, to verify what the actual charge was. .

**Since once I spend $1000 in the first ??90?? days I get 10,000 points, but after that, I don't plan to use the card except enough to keep it alive.

I found out that checking account at WF goes dormant or somethilng after

11 months of no activity, after 12 months it's double-dormant (or whatever the word was) and after 3??? years they let it escheat to the state. One can still get the money back I think but it's a lot more trouble.
Reply to
micky

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