So, yesterday, I put $8.00 worth of gas into my car at a gas station down the street from my house. I came home last night and checked my bank account and the purchase came out of my account, but only as $1.00. Today, I put $20.00 worth of gas into my car at the same gas station and checked it on my bank account this afternoon and it came out as $6.00. Has anyone else ever had this happen? Will it fix itself?

1/31/2008 4:52:09 PM

Yes.

[Edited on January 31, 2008 at 4:54 PM. Reason : and yes.]

1/31/2008 4:53:58 PM

never had it happen like that, thats quite odd

give it a week and see if they fix it, personally id go fill up and if it doesnt get fixed you got $texas for $rhode island

1/31/2008 4:54:45 PM

It will fix itself, but the 6 dollar charge is weird ....

1/31/2008 5:00:42 PM

what gas station is this?

1/31/2008 5:17:51 PM

It'll fix itself, $6 charge is odd but at least it wasn't $50 like some gas pumps do to put a hold on your money and be sure it's there incase you get $50 worth of gas...

1/31/2008 5:19:32 PM

When you run your card it puts a hold on your account for a dollar amount based on how much gas you've pumped which is set by the merchant. Then, at the end of the night (most often)) when they upload their transactions it will go back and remove the hold and charge the actual funds.

1/31/2008 5:21:54 PM

not quite...

the amount it puts a hold on isn't related to how much gas you get, it's a pre-set amount. it's almost always either $1 or $50. $1 just makes sure the card is good while $50 makes sure the card is good for the highest amount of gas you can get

[Edited on January 31, 2008 at 5:30 PM. Reason : what you describe is more like what happens at a bar when you close out your tab..they charge tab+%]

1/31/2008 5:29:38 PM

yeah ive always heard that its better to use a credit card than an ATM card at the pump. because they throw that 50 dollar debit hold on there (that stays for a day or so) when they authorize it. it doesnt matter on a credit card cause it never really affects your balance (unless you have fucked up credit cards and are trying to stay under a limit, god help you if thats the case)

but when those holds start showing up cause i used my debit/ATM/pin# card (never happens when i slide it as CREDIT/visaCheck) -- it starts fucking up my quicken stuff when it downloads and tries to reconcile. its so annoying to be off by an even number of dollars, even if its just 50 or 20 or whatever. so i basically use the credit card for shit like that, and then pay off the credit card with the checkCard online every month

and my quicken never fucks with my head, and i get points for cool gift cards!!!1

1/31/2008 8:24:21 PM

This dollar thing is great for when you need gas wednesday or thursday and get direct deposit on friday.

1/31/2008 11:20:48 PM

gozo, this happens all the time, it will straighten out later. i dont know why they do this....

sometimes it will even charge you for more. most of the time its a dummy 1 dollar charge but othertimes it will be something like 50 even

1/31/2008 11:24:30 PM

I used to exploit this all the time as a broke highschool kid. I would put 5 bucks in my paypal account and trade everyone gas for cash. Filling up our tanks with the debit card and net like 50-60 bucks. When the merchant batched out their cards paypal covered the difference and I would keep my shit in the negative as long as i had to, interest and penalty free.

2/1/2008 2:18:02 PM

my ex's family runs a gas station and when i'm back home, i always get my gas there

i noticed that my account had extra $$ and realized it was from all of my gas purchases

i went in and told his mom about the situation and she ended up calling into her credit machine people

almost $40,000 worth of debits had not gone through

they got it fixed

2/1/2008 3:22:12 PM

cash or credit

and sometimes checks


never ever ever debit

2/1/2008 5:24:12 PM

you bought 2.5 gallons of gas?

did you perhaps get a car wash when you bought the gas? if so it might have been like the $5 wash plus the $1 authorization charge.

2/1/2008 5:57:43 PM