Tesco's petrol stations automatically charging £120 per transaction on 'Pay at Pump'

[Silverlog]

Article here in the Daily Fail

Charging you and then refunding the difference. Did you know about this? I didn't. I'd be effing furious if this messed up my banking and the refund wasn't instant. The maximum I ever put in the the car is £40. I prefer pay-at-pump because it's usually faster than going in the kiosk. Aibu?

Wow. It's been years since you've been able to get gas without paying first here.

They can reserve up to £120 and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, you have to wait for it to drop off naturally after seven days if not before.

It is really not ok to do this if you are not spending this amount

I had ds in the car with only £90. I had to wait for my mum to finish work to transfer me £30 for £20 of fuel at Asda. The stress was unbelievable. You should be able to key in how much you want, let it preauthorise then give you that exact amount. Ridiculous that they think it is ok to put you in limbo like this
Supermarkets must have insurance to cover fraud losses so why put the customer at inconvenience

But you have no access to it until the pending is stopped. It should take up to. 60 minutes which would mean you couldn't use it for shopping for an hour, but it can take up to 3 days depending on the banking system. I've had pre authorisations taken out of pending 5 days after over a bank holiday weekend. For most it isn't an issue but for some the access to the difference between what they spent and the pre authorisation amount can be critical and any wait a serious issue. it can pend on the account for 7 days.

If the supermarket refund it back then it will refund back on to your balance before that but if not then it will pend on your account for 7 days and drop back into your available balance after that.

I use my AMEX BA card for everything for the Avios. I have a dd set up to take full balance every month, don’t see what’s wrong with that.

I won’t be using my back up Mastercard for petrol though if they are taking £120 to hold. Amex only hold £1.

Why? The pumps are set up to authorise a lower limit if you dont have £120 in your account.

So if you have £50 in your account, will they preauthorise £50 - and then you spend £20, you should have £30 left in your account.

But if £50 has been preauthorised and the preauthorisation hasn't been removed, I guess you can't use your card until it's been cleared.

Not all of them are.

I couldn't buy any petrol from Asda because I only had £70 in my account. It wanted to authorise £99/120 and would not allow a lower other amount. My car only takes £50/60 to fill anyway, so doubly annoying.

This issue needs a campaign from someone like Martin Lewis, especially as unstaffed filling stations are likely to become more common.

Fine to have a standard authorisation amount, but there should also be an option to be able to buy a smaller amount of the customer's choosing and all unused authorisations must drop off straight away.

People shouldn't be left without fuel or other essentials or have their choice of filling station restricted due to the risk of the system holding on to a lump of their money after they have paid for their fuel.

It has been like this for years where I live and I have never had the money not be available immediately upon paying for my gas. So it sort of reserves the larger amount and I get an alert for my bank as soon as I swipe my card at the pump that says "you paid $120 at BP" or wherever. But then as soon as I'm done fueling if I check my account the amount that was actually taken out was the amount that I spent and $120 is not showing up as unavailable.

Many debit card transactions put a temporary hold on your funds. Those holds can sometimes take several days to release. This isn’t new. It is yet another reason to always use a credit card instead of a debit card.

Lots of cars take this amount of fuel.

This is all online. Why the hell can't they refund it immediately?

I got turned down for a credit card as I do not earn enough.

Go you, stick to the supermarkets!

@Abraxan If you car takes so much fuel you are unlikely to have an issue with this.
My car takes a maximum of £60 and to get that high has to be running on fumes.

The £120 isn't an issue for me but could be for my child, which supermarkets drop down to a lower limit? That would be really useful information for them and it seems like a lot of posters on this thread

Tell me you don't have any concept of people who have different circumstances to you without telling me etc

I don't have a credit card, nor do I want one. If it's the day before payday and I'm filling my car up, there likely won't be £120 in my bank account to take for a £20 fuel transaction. That's nothing to do with 'not adulting' and everything to do with the fact that my bills have doubled and I don't have spare money at the end of the money. Which is the case for millions of other people.

Yes, I just pay at the till. But not because of a failure to 'be a grown up'. You patronising bastard.

This!

I work in banking and we used to close accounts of people who used to use the £1 authorised amount to fill up their tanks then go into unauthorised overdraft when the amount went out. They did it on purpose as they couldn't afford to fill up what they needed - but repeat offenders were flagged as fraud and had their accounts closed. This stops that issue.

The other day I only had £80 in my account and it came up on pay at pump 'maximum £80' so I think it still let's you do up to the maximum in your account if you had less than £100 or £120 whatever the sign says on the pumps.

@housemaus That poster obviously thinks if you are poor it is your own fault.

If they go into unauthorised overdraft, doesn't that means they get a charge (often a big charge) per day overdrawn?

Yes but it was more the issue that the bank were forced into putting them overdrawn when they weren't eligible for an overdraft.

The tesco I use authorises a lower amount.

Interestingly both of us filled our cars today and haven't got the £120 on pending, only the true amount of fuel