Thanks to gas prices reaching $4 per gallon and credit card limits on the dollar amount that can be spent at gas stations, some consumers now need more than one credit card just to fill up their tank.
“When I go to the gas station, I now have to use two credit cards just for one tank of gasoline,” said Paul Brisgone of Oxford, Pa. “Kind of defeats the convenience of pay-at-the-pump.” Brisgone, a field operations manager for a telecommunications company, said that he alternates among three credit cards when filling up the 32-gallon tank in his Ford F-150 pickup.
If you see a Hummer owner futzing with several credit cards at the pump, it’s because they are hitting the $75 limit set by MasterCard, or the lower $50 limit used by Visa and Discover. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER
Credit-card firms monitor gasoline-pump purchases [AZ Central]
(Photo: Yogi)
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@EtherealStrife: I was just pointing out what I saw as a flaw in the “I have a hybrid and they are the greatest things on earth” sentiment.
I for one think that a dog would have no problem hearing an electric motor. If my dog can hear my neighbor’s pick up from literally a half mile away approaching so he can bark, then I’m very sure a Seeing Eye dog can hear what is amount to a very large golf cart driving on pavement from less than 100 feet.
i’ve never had my card cut at $50 at a gas station, and my car holds 15 gallons, so i pass $50 every now and then. back when i had an explorer with a 20 gallon tank, i did it all the time. and then i’ve gone on a few trips this year across the US in a Toureag and and a Escalade, and they both averaged over $70 for a fuel up (400ish highway miles). so i think it is only a cutoff for poor people.
I’ve read in the past that those limits were set not by the CC company, but by the gas station: The way a previous article explained it, the gas station will ping your card for whatever the limit is when you initially swipe it. Then when you fill up and it gets your real total, it will submit another transaction for the actual amount as well as a retraction for the initial transaction. There is an issue with this: with some gas stations, apparently the retraction does not post as quickly as the others. In some cases, that delay is like three days!
This has been a serious issue with bank debit cards. You swipe your card and it runs a transaction for $50, then you fill up for $45, it runs another transaction for that $45 plus a retraction for the initial $50; but if the retraction doesn’t post for two or three days, your account is missing $95 instead of $45.
Anyway, I use a Visa debit card to fill my gas tank; since I have a habit of running until my gas light comes on, at current gas prices I regularly top $50. At some gas stations, the pump clicks off at $50. At the one I go to most often, it does not – I’ve gotten over $60 in one fill. (Oy, and I only drive a minivan. I can’t imagine filling a 32 gallon F150!)
My debit card is a Master Card, and it cuts off at $50 at the gas pump. Couldn’t believe it the first time it happened.
The AP story cited here is just plain wrong. I work for one of the largest fleet fueling companies in the US and I deal with these types of limits for some of the largest commercial fleets you can imagine.
All credit cards have some type of imposed spending limitations to protect the consumer and financial institution against fraud. However, these really have no bearing with “pay at the pump transactions.” My cards have all sorts of limits, dollars per transaction, dollars per day, gallons per transaction, etc. But when you swipe your card to activate the pump, I have NO IDEA what you’re going to actually buy so I can only go based on what the pre-authorized amount is. This limit is set by the gas station itself (or it’s corporate office, etc.) The amounts for this pre-auth are most commonly, $1.00, $50.00, $75.00 and $300.00.
A gas station that runs the pre-auth for $1.00 runs the chance of allowing someone to pump fuel that, once the sale is posted, the person can’t pay for. It’s too late at that point though because the person has left. A gas station that runs the pre-auth for $300.00 (this is most common for Flying J type truck stops.) runs the risk of declining the sale because of card limitations.
The limitations have always been there. As the price of fuel rises, so do the average pre-auth amounts at gas stations. This is what is causing the decline, not how much you spent on fuel. Your credit card company has no idea how much fuel you actually purchased until long after you’ve already driven away.
Typically around here (oddly enough the Oxford PA area), the pumps shut off at $75 on a cc transaction. As my name might suggest, I buy a lot of fuel. Generally I just let it run to shutoff and leave. 75 bucks gets me ~25 gallons, which is almost 3/4 of a tank. I don’t bother with a 2nd swipe most of the time, because it doesnt matter. Even in BFE there are gas stations every 5 miles, I can do almost twice that on a gallon of gas. If I want to run more than that on my card I just walk inside, give the friendly toothless redneck at the counter my card, and go out and run it as a cash transaction. Ain’t no hting.
Great insight, Johnhaven. Since when have people who actually know something been allowed to comment?
And BTW, I fill up my F150 (not a 32 gal. tank) with MC debit card and not only have I never hit a limit, but I also have never had some outrageous ‘hold’ on my account for more than the purchase price. Now, can we tack on some more myths to this thread? No comments about how ‘savvy’ it is to finance your gas??? C’mon, we’re really slacking here.
Just to clarify a few things.
1) These limits are not credit card limits /per se/ but are rather dispener limits that are set up on a site by site basis. The limits depend on the branding of the station and a few other factors, but in general that is the way it works. Bank cards (Visa, MC, etc) typically have a $50 to $75 dispenser limit by default, and most can be altered but it is a genuine pain in the neck for the most popular brand of dispenser controllers in use in the US (note: the controller and the station branding are seperate things, not all Shell stations run Verifone controllers, nor do all Chevrons run Nucleus or what have you). The controller and controller software vendors have been painfully aware of this for a couple of years now, but see (3) below.
2) For most credit cards, all you have to do is run the card a second time, unless the payment network (an intermediary between the site and the card issuer) has imposed velocity checking. In that case, you can ‘reset’ the velocity checking (usually) by purchasing your gas inside. Face to Face is always considered the least risky to the processor.
Some proprietary cards and specially branded cards will impose a daily limit, most notably petro company cards such as Sunoco Gas Card et al, or a special Shell branded MasterCard, or what have you.
3) Ultimately, for mainline bank cards, the card issuer is responsible for any limitation, as that defines thier liability for unattended purchase – usually the highest risk factor outside of internet purchases. Again, doing it face-to-face will alleviate this since in that situation you have to sign the receipt and accept responsibility directly.
4) When in doubt, prepay. The downside is that you have to go inside possibly twice if you don’t dispense the full amount, but at least you will be able to dispense your gas in one step. Prepay usually completely bypasses the per-card dispenser limit.
5) Fleet Cards (Wright Express, Voyager, etc) generally have a higher dispenser limit but still usually have *a* limit. There are also MC and Visa fleet cards out there, and in those cases they usually work as “fleet” cards rather than bank cards. But not always.
@GitEmSteveDave: Oh for heavens sake. REGULAR cars can be so quiet that not everyone notices them. I’ve pulled into spaces before and had people not notice til they turned around. Seems to me like it’s yet more hybrid haters trying to come up with excuses to hate.
If you’re worried about not noticing that there’s a car coming toward you, your dog isn’t well trained. It’s not like hybrids have cloaking devices!
@GitEmSteveDave: BTW, GitEmSteveDave, did you not happen to notice that she drives a Honda Insight?
Hybrid Hondas are designed quite differently than hybrid Toyotas. I should know, I own a hybrid Civic and did a ton of research on hybrids before I bought mine. Basically, the Toyota hybrids use the electric engine when the car is stopped or driven at speeds under 20 mph. The Honda hybrids use the electric engine when the car is stopped or to assist acceleration. Unless the Insight’s engine has a drastically different design than both pre-2006 and the newer models (since the Civic was drastically redesigned in ’06) — which I highly doubt — the Insight uses gas. What makes its mileage so impressive is how the car itself is designed.
In short: unless it’s stopped, a hybrid Honda’s gasoline engine will be on. These engines are quiet, but not as quiet as an engine running solely on electric power. Notice how the e-mail discussed the purchase of a Prius, which is a Toyota vehicle that runs solely on electric power at low speeds.
Toyota makes hybrids, but not every hybrid is a Toyota. Nor does every hybrid work like a Toyota. So no, no shame on Amy Alkon for saving a tree but killing “a blind guy and his dog” — the dog (and probably this hypothetical “blind guy”) would have heard the gasoline engine in her car and therefore the pair would not have been killed. Shame on you for making assumptions without doing your research.
I ran into this in Indianapolis. Luckily we had the VW passat that only takes $35 to fill with premium gas. I have run into too many security limits with my debit cards recently, and new ways they are finding to farm up new fees to the user. I have started carrying and keeping more cash on hand instead.
I also noticed that even locally few places take checks anymore.
This has been going on for some time. In May of 2006 I tried to fill up my BMW at a Valero station in San Jose. Key point: BMWs take premium and have a 20 gallon tank, and San Jose has some of the most expensive gas in America. I was amazed to find that Valero have a $50 limit. Over the course of the next week I found the same limit at two other Valeros and a $60 limit at a Shell station. Paranoid that I am, I figured that this was an under-the-radar way of imposing gas rationing without a big unpopular public pronouncement. As it stands, when the pumps shut off my reaction is “Jeez, gas is so expensive that the infrastructure can’t handle it. We gotta do something about this.” BMW doesn’t have a hybrid, do they?
This is not a bank or card decision — this is a gas station decision. Cards aren’t smart enough to know when someone is paying at a gas pump. The gas stations are setting limits on the amount that can be charged and blaming it on the issuers.
The first time I saw this was about a week or two ago, I had never had to spend more than $50 on a single fill up before, but it was close enough that I didn’t make a big deal about it. Interesting to know though.