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24HourForums.com > Supported Forums > 24's Money Business > Warning About Paying At The Pump With Your Card |
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bg Original500© Member 
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Warning About Paying At The Pump With Your Card Or...Little-known ways the banks rip you off every day Ted Twietmeyer 3-5-7 RIP-OFF #1 Everyone has done it. You stumble out of your car, make a bee-line for the card reader on the pump, swipe your card and the pump and start filling your tank. Why go inside and stand in line? This is far easier and it's all the same, right? I thought so too, until one day I found my bank balance was seriously shorter than it should be and explored the reason why. Paying at the pump is NOT the same as paying inside. When you pay at the pump here's what happens. This fact is straight from a bank officer at my bank. Using your credit/debit card will authorize you to pump gas and the gas station company to invisibly debit your account for an amount that can be THREE TO FIVE TIMES what the pump displays! That's right - $20.00 of gasoline can result in an IMMEDIATE DEBIT from your account of up to $100.00. Suppose you're driving on a long trip in a small to mid-size vehicle getting typical mileage and fill your tank twice the first day, by the time you reach your hotel or destination your bank account can be $200.00 less than when you got in your car that morning! And what if you drive a gas pig SUV that costs $40.00 to fill each time? Your bank account could plunge up to $400.00 without you being aware of it, before you even reach your hotel. If you're traveling on a tight budget, you could actually have your credit/debit card denied by the hotel when you check in. This too, was confirmed by the bank officer. Often when traveling by vehicle we think of the hotel as our single biggest daily expense. This isn't always the case. The bank officer's remark about WHY this is done was, "They do that because they don't know how much gas you'll be buying." A lame excuse if I ever heard one. Any gas company could re-credit your account just as quickly as they debit it It was time to test this fact prove it is indeed true. First, a look on-line to check my bank balance. Then a trip to the nearest gas station to fill the car. Immediately upon returning home I checked the bank balance again. Sure enough - a sum of 3 TIMES of what the pump display was gone from my account. And 3 1/2 days the missing money "re-appeared" in the bank. However, if you walk inside the gas station and pay there instead, my test revealed that only the exact amount is taken from the account. It's handled like any ordinary retail transaction. Naturally, banks never tell account holders about this dirty deed - unless they ask about it or notice it. By now you're asking, "How long can they keep my money?" The answer I received upon asking the bank officer was THREE TO FIVE DAYS. RIP-OFF #2 Now here's another aspect to this dirty deed few people realize. While your money has disappeared into this no-man's land - will you receive all the interest on it they made while it was stolen from you? Not likely. RIP-OFF #3 There is also the absurd "5-7 day wait for deposited checks to clear." In this era of computers and instant credits and debits, does it REALLY take that long? Certainly not. But they use your money for several days in investment accounts, reap the interest and then give you nothing other than the actual deposit amount. But go try and write a check at any major store like China-mart and see what happens. The check reader attached to the cash register reads your account number, submits it to your bank through the network and immediately right there on the spot, takes the funds from your bank account. Checks are now the same as a debit card. One day in Wal-Mart a cashier called security because a woman had written a check which was rejected on-the-spot by the system. She was trying to buy a color television with it, and they took her away. RIP-OFF #4 This one is right up there near the top of the nasty list of bank tricks. Like many people I pay my bills once a month. About 1AM I called the phone company to pay my phone bill. Quicker and more reliable than mailing it, right? It was shocking to discover that the transaction was DENIED by the phone company computer. Thinking I made an entry error, I tried a second time but to no avail. I then went on-line to check my bank balance and to my horror, found that all but about $20.00 was GONE from my account. That resulted in a sleepless night. Where did the money go? Was my account hacked? Did the bank make a serious error? What happened? About 5AM, I crawled out of bed and to check on-line again. Presto- like a magic trick the missing funds re-appeared. But the bank had already hit my account with overdraw charges for EACH of the two attempts I made to pay my phone bill. Now I was boiling mad and couldn't wait until 9AM came. If I was on the road and attempted to use that card at a gas station that night or at a hotel, it would have been denied. A call to the bank resulted in numerous apologies by them for the stunt. Many readers already know what this is - it's called "sweeps." In the middle of the night many bank accounts are hit by this. Since the stock market is open on the other side of the planet, the bank's computers take the money from thousands of checking and other accounts and invest it in short-term investments overseas. Before the banks open, the money magically re-appears in all the accounts. Of course, the depositor never sees a penny in interest from this dirty trick either. You may have an "interest-bearing bank account" - but you'll never see the killing they make from your money overseas 5 days a week. SWEEPS IMPLICATIONS Now let's look at this system a bit closer: The entire sweeps system depends on EVERYTHING working flawlessly. Imagine for a moment that something goes wrong. Perhaps someone hacks the system (history shows that no system has ever been proven completely failsafe, and it is only as secure as those using it.) What happens if the money ISN'T moved back into the accounts? Perhaps even your account? What then? A survey several years ago revealed that the average person has less than $20.00 of currency in their pocket in this age of plastic money. Imagine the calamity that would occur across the country, when every bank transaction is denied! Millions of people at stores, gas stations, restaurants, utility companies and more the next morning - all suddenly find the only money they have left is in their pocket. What then? Martial Law? Think this can't ever happen in your country? Don't count on it. It just might be the way the economy will be destroyed overnight - all electronically. And those that do this dirty deed will remain invisible - hidden behind keyboards at a "secret location." ARTICLE LINK
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newbiecollector Pioneer100© Member  You can't fake real
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I use mine, and have for a long time. Nothing like this ever happened. Someone spoof this.....sounds fishy to me
 Enjoy the pleasure of life Wayne |
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UsedToRide Original500© Member  ^^^That is LOVE!!^^^
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All I found on Snopes was this: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/gascharge.asp And it's NOT the same thing as what's listed in the original post.
Respect some, trust one, fear none ~~Bullet http://www.freeholbrook.com The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. ~~Dostoyevsky |
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Britt Forum-Blogger© Original500© Member  Learning Contentment
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Wow...I use my card at the pump all the time and nothing like this has ever happened to me. Still, it is a reason to be cautious when purchasing gas from "unknown sources". Yikes! 
"All that you have is your soul." --Tracy Chapman |
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sirlamre Pioneer100© Member Official Forum Troublemaker
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I did the test--- nada. I guess if you bank with a REAL bank and not some fly by night local bank, they don't let gas stations do that.. Or the bank just quietly covers you without showing it. I didn't see any debits on my account except for the ones I'd signed for (or PINed for) I suspect that this DOES happen to people with bank accounts that remain below $400 for most of the month -- and do not have savings accounts at the same bank. The idea of all my money disappearing every night is ALSO bogus--- simply because the banks wouldn't SHOW you that--- it'd be REALLY easy for them to show your balance from 1AM-5AM being what you really have-- even if they DID move the money, they're not so stupid as to SHOW a $0 balance and actually CHARGE you like that-- Knowing that they'd have to process hundreds of calls and deal with refunding fees.. Yes-- I'm sure they DO move "your money" around and use it-- and don't give you all the interest--- that's called making a profit. BUT --- it would be really really really really trivial for them to maintain a record of your balance, allow you to charge against it, and you'd never know.. It's more likely that you don't HAVE any money in your account at any time-- what you have is probably more like an 'invisible line of credit with no interest on it' with the bank at any time for the balance in your account-- You can use that credit with them up to the amount you have.. any time anywhere.
Turn thou unto God and say: O my Sovereign Lord! I am but a vassal of Thine, and Thou art, in truth, the King of kings. I have lifted my suppliant hands unto the heaven of Thy grace and Thy bounties. |
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BNE Original500© Member 
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My partner has experienced a "hold" of several times the amount of gas purchased on his credit card, on occasion, when he paid at the pump, and was quite pissed. Of course, when the actual charge clears, the hold goes away. This shouldn't be a problem unless you are bumping up against the ceiling of your limit.
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sirlamre Pioneer100© Member Official Forum Troublemaker
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BNE wrote: My partner has experienced a "hold" of several times the amount of gas purchased on his credit card, on occasion, when he paid at the pump, and was quite pissed. Of course, when the actual charge clears, the hold goes away. Three questions- 1. Does your partner have a debit card with the Visa symbol on it? Or is it one of the old types usually offered by company credit unions, etc? If it's not one with the Visa symbol on it (very rare for decent sized financial institutions these days-- even most company-owned credit unions have it now)... ...if they don't have the Visa symbol, it may be that the bank is SO small that the gas station's systems don't recognize it. I was told by the gas stations down on the corner (a BP station), and the Shell station across the street: They have their credit card systems operated for them by a national company (about three or four different ones-- CitiGroup is one, Discover is another) Their systems "know" the medium and large sized US banks and do not always 'know' the other tiny local banks. For a bank they have registered they won't put a hold on the customer -- a bank that is tiny and not listed with them, they WILL put a hold on the customer, because they don't know about the solvency of that little local bank (I guess) 2. Are these gas stations out in the middle of nowhere? I don't live in the middle of Atlanta, but there ARE about 150 gas stations in the 25 mile circle of three or four towns near me... it's not like there are three gas stations, and then it's an hour to the next tiny town. Reason I ask is that if they are still using dialup for their credit card machines, it may not process charges instantly. 90% of the gas stations here use Internet connections- -- if they DO put a hold on, it's only for the time you're at the pump -- the minute you shut down the pump and it prints your receipt, THAT is the very moment that the registers inside the store 'finish' the transaction -- including clearing the hold and charging the correct amount--- quite literally BEFORE I step back into the car and drive away.
Turn thou unto God and say: O my Sovereign Lord! I am but a vassal of Thine, and Thou art, in truth, the King of kings. I have lifted my suppliant hands unto the heaven of Thy grace and Thy bounties. |
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24HourForums.com > Supported Forums > 24's Money Business > Warning About Paying At The Pump With Your Card | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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