Pay at Pump - maximum amount/ usage limit

Me spends a fortune on fuel living in the middle of nowhere.

Goes on 250 mile round trip to meet friends from a discord server.
(Money saving logic eh)

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If you use the apps for the likes of Shell or BP, they let you do this and the pump cuts out a few pence before.

I hope so, because that’s what I did yesterday.

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People just stick fake or stolen plates on.

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I still don’t understand though the difference between pay at pump and pay at kiosk and why one way has to have the pre-authorisation setup, but the other doesn’t.

Does Pay at Pump take longer to validate after the transaction? If so, why? And, if that’s the problem, then maybe fix that instead so that those are online transactions?

If I went to a vending machine to buy a bar of chocolate and that machine took card payments, that doesn’t need to ‘pre-authorise’ a credit amount before I can buy anything.

It just seems to me that at some point at some workshop session someone came up with a hypothetical situation for fraud that’s outside any level of fraud that any other purchases can be subjected to and so they massively overly engineered and complicated the whole process when it’s not needed.

Normally I’d take any opportunity to not have to queue up and deal with actual people - but pay at pump is the one thing I wont do because of the massive credit reserve they take at the horror stories of ‘well it should clear before you leave the forecourt, oh but there’s these cases where that didn’t happen and it took weeks before it was all sorted’.

That’s a fixed cost,

People will utilise the £1 process, fill up their car, withdraw all the money from their bank putting the account into an unarranged overdraft, and could never actually pay the back back.

They could do this in multiple stations, and the banks and fuel companies miss out big.

It also puts people in financial difficulty more so than they were before committing this fraud. Filling their car and then looking to pay it back on payday but they can’t, and as banks take their share back from unarranged overdrafts etc when funds get added, customers continue to struggle onward.

Online payments wouldn’t be possible because it’s a variable deduction, as explained in many resources, stations are starting to charge the £100 in the first instance, and then refund the difference, which I’ve seen in a few occasions which is best way to go.

What’s more baffling is people think it’s a trick, to use the £1 thing, when actually it’s fraud.

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Yes - but they’re actually enabling this fraud by having the whole pre-authorisation process in the first place.

If they didn’t have that - and just had a system where you filled up your car and then once it was filled up, you just paid for what you’d taken, it would remove the whole ‘pre-auth for £1, take £100, move onto next garage and do the same’ option completely.

I don’t have to pre-auth my card before I buy literally anything else - why is pay at pump any different?

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wiith monzo i have never had to wait weeks for the pre auth ammount to come off , maybe its because i use morrisons for petrol and they update it quite quickly with the final ammount , i remember thinking no im not going to asda and paying at the pump as i read they held the money for a few days , so maybe it varies from brand to brand , but i agree with you if i walk into the kiosk its the full ammount taken right away so why the need for it at the pay at the pump

Because at petrol stations that aren’t staffed, everybody would just drive off without paying.

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People in the kiosk will authorise the transaction before you’re allowed to take fuel - normally (especially in Tesco etc). This will mean that they’ve ensured they can see your face, or appearance on camera first.

The card authorisation on P@P is used to force people to not use a stolen card by ensuring they know the PIN number instead of just running off using contactless multiple times on transactions.

Fuel crime is rising due to the increasing costs, and these are ways fuel companies have started to look to mitigate the costs/risks of fraud or theft occurring.

Slight deviation…

Used a Morrisons pump the other day, took me a couple of minutes to workout how to use it. It’s a manned station but also pay at pump included. Took the nozzle stuck it in my car, nothing happened. Like erm where’s my diesel please :face_with_monocle: put nozzle back tried again, nothing.

Noticed after that a button for pay in shop :person_facepalming: pressed this and out came my diesel, I wanted some pop from the shop, so hadn’t given it a second thought that you’d need to press a button to get fuel, to then pay inside.

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That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work per. the card rules but very few vendors actually seem to do that.

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I filled up at Costco today. They have increased their preauthorisation to £120.

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Gulf/Certas allow you to set the pre auth yourself when you put your card in however it is the max dispense .
They let you set it as low as £5.
Unfornatly their unattended petrol stations tend to be out in the middle of nowhere.

Tesco lets you choose, but I’m not sure if it would still take the full £120 but only fill up to your selected amount. Never tried tbh.

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I always hit £30, £40 or £50 and it only takes that amount at gulf then issue a seperate refund for any unused. (Quite a unelegent system but it works more reliable than the £99 system)

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