I usually purchase fuel at the chevron station and today I purchased only $10.00 due too a low account balance, to leave myself and my wife enough to get some groceries until the next payday. To my surprise I checked my cheking account only 1/2 an hour later and was -$58.00 in arrears and could not use my debit card at all today. I contacted my bank and they said a hold of $101.00 plus the actual $10.00 I spent was placed on my account from a pre-authorization from chevron for fuel and by the next day it would go back in. So for a $10.00 purchase they decided to use another $101.00 of my money from my bank account today, that I did not have without any penalties, but was allowed by my bank to use it through my name and account that I was not aware of at all.
In effect the bank allowed Chevron to use my name for $101.00 temporarily and use this money for what? Trading stocks for the day comes to mind among other things, so while I have no useable money with my debit card unless I go directly to my bank and make a personal check withdrawl they can use money I do not have for the day any way they want? This seems like a legal or illegal loophole any company can duplicate or create to temporarily borrow money that is not even there, make some money then replace it by later the same day or that evening so no one is the wiser.
"I never authorized this through thier fuel pump" so temporarily turning my debit card into a completely worthless piece of plastic with no funds to shop with is not in any way acceptable.
My bank said it was normal for places to pre-authorize whatever they decided, now something looks wrong with this picture to me. Today chevron has an extra $101.00 just from me pumping fuel at one terminal at one station to use for whatever they choose until the bank catches up tonight and replaces the money that I never had in my account to begin with, and then tomarrow I can use my $42.00 that I could not use because chevron was using it?.
So if any big corporation is allowed to do this then I can surely see why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
"I havent been fishing lately but something really stinks".
Robert
Irvine,#2Consumer Comment
Wed, July 22, 2015
When you use the Pay at the Pump feature, the gas station has no idea how much you are going to pump. So every gas station will put a "hold" on your card. This hold can be anywhere from about $50 to $100+. Had you actually pumped $101 you would have found that the pump would stop as that is all that was authorized.
In most cases this hold is removed immediatly after pumping and you never notice it. However, there are cases where it can take 24-48 hours(or more). This is not just this station, this is EVERY gas station. As a side note, in normal circumstances that transaction would have been declined because it put you into the negative. So if you have set up your card to not allow you to go into overdraft, you should verify with your bank that is still the case.
Now, onto your "conspiracy" theory that they are just doing this to play with your money...WRONG. This money at this point is actually not with the business. The bank is just "holding" this money for the business. So it's not like the gas station can go on a $100 spending spree in the evening as long as they get the money back before morning.
To put this in a slightly different perspecitve, it would be like you calling a store and having them hold 2 pairs of shoes. You don't actually have the shoes, the store does. They are just holding them until you actually go down there and actually say that yes you do want one pair. You then complete the sale of the one pair and the release the hold on the other shoes. If they get busy they may not release the hold of the other pair for a while and during that time no one is able to use them.
For future reference, if you want a specific amount to be charged you MUST go inside the station and pay for it. In this case if you wanted $10 they would charge $10 and put no additional holds on your card. This goes for ANY gas station.