Tesco pay at pump for petrol

clairbear1000

Just slightly related to this thread, on the 16th June I paid for peterol using pay at pump at Tesco. I saw the £1 authorisation deducted from my available balance for a while but it now seems to have disappeared. No money has been taken.

Whilst I'm sure it will catch up eventually and the money is there, does anyone know why this is? Is there any chance I got a freebie?

~Chameleon~

clairbear1000 wrote: »

Just slightly related to this thread, on the 16th June I paid for peterol using pay at pump at Tesco. I saw the £1 authorisation deducted from my available balance for a while but it now seems to have disappeared. No money has been taken.

Whilst I'm sure it will catch up eventually and the money is there, does anyone know why this is? Is there any chance I got a freebie?

No, it's a holding amount to check your card is actually valid.

clairbear1000

Now the holding £1 has disappeared. Available and actual balances the same and still haven't taken the money. Strange.

mattyprice4004

clairbear1000 wrote: »

Now the holding £1 has disappeared. Available and actual balances the same and still haven't taken the money. Strange.

This happened last week, 3 days later they took the lot. Don't spend it!

richard734

For anyone that is interested in the logic behind this, each supermarket agrees a 'floor limit' with their payment processing company. Some are specific limits to card vendors, others are general for Visa/MasterCard/Amex cards.
This means that transactions below that floor limit do not have to be formally authorized by the vendor, and the payment processor agrees to accept liability for fraud etc on transactions up to that value.
IE anything up to £50 on a visa card will be processed without doing the whole contact the bank, check you have enough money, accept payment link. They literally take your card number, pin as authorization, and then process via a bulk transaction later in the day.
The idea being that it cuts down on costs for both the vendor and the processor, and there is no increased risk of fraud loss to the vendor.

They also have the ability to override local floor limits, so back to our Visa card, if you spend £51, it would go through the complete authorization loop, right back to your card supplier. However rather than decline you hundreds of transactions if they lost local communications (phone lines etc) the store can override and set their own floor limit, but when they do, they accept all fraud liability on transactions over the agreed limit.

As you can imagine, that led to the crims cutting cables to stores before they went shopping, often in gangs, hitting the high value items.

To stop that, each store now has a local copy of the stop list, or blocked card list, stored locally and updated on either a real time or timed basis, so even if the lines are cut, if the card is reported as lost or stolen, it will be stopped.

Boring old subject, but can be quite interesting watching all the moves and counter moves between shops, card suppliers and criminals... no doubt the rules have changed in the 3 months since I left the industry

wilbo74

on a slightly different note, the same thing happens in store at the self service check outs. Even with no money in your account and no overdraft it will still authorize small amounts like £20. Handy if you are skint and hungry. I have regularly filled my car with fuel then gone in store and got £35 worth of food. Life saver for sure.

Iceweasel

On yet another tack - a while back Tescos had an series of offers on that gave 5p/litre off - and they were cumulatively to a max of 30p/litre. The leaflet said it was subject to a maximum purchase of 100 litres, in one transaction.

Mrs Iceweasel had several of these vouchers and I read all about it looking for the snag or catch in the deal.

Ho Ho thought I - I can't miss this - and off I went with our M-Benz camper which has a long-distance touring tank with 120 litre capacity.

Tank was nearly empty so I was feeling very pleased with myself, standing there watching the little numbers whizz round.

NO! - the pump cut off at £99 which was somewhere around only 70 litres!!!!! :mad:

Girl at the pay-desk couldn't/wouldn't help. so I locked up the camper and toddled off to the store and demanded to see the manager.

He was sure that I had a truck or a commercial vehicle of some kind.

Anyhow the conclusion of the story is after half an hour or so I got another 30 litres at the reduced price of 30p off.

Tilt

Isn't petrol expensive enough to be paying for it on a credit card?

custardy

Iceweasel wrote: »

On yet another tack - a while back Tescos had an series of offers on that gave 5p/litre off - and they were cumulatively to a max of 30p/litre. The leaflet said it was subject to a maximum purchase of 100 litres, in one transaction.

Mrs Iceweasel had several of these vouchers and I read all about it looking for the snag or catch in the deal.

Ho Ho thought I - I can't miss this - and off I went with our M-Benz camper which has a long-distance touring tank with 120 litre capacity.

Tank was nearly empty so I was feeling very pleased with myself, standing there watching the little numbers whizz round.

NO! - the pump cut off at £99 which was somewhere around only 70 litres!!!!! :mad:

Girl at the pay-desk couldn't/wouldn't help. so I locked up the camper and toddled off to the store and demanded to see the manager.

He was sure that I had a truck or a commercial vehicle of some kind.

Anyhow the conclusion of the story is after half an hour or so I got another 30 litres at the reduced price of 30p off.

Had a mate had an ex army Land Rover Ambulance(desert spec) with twin tanks. He used to have the same

Nesty

Does anyone know what time the Tesco's Extra petrol stations are manned until? I have checked the Tescos website but it don't say.

I want to fill up a container without getting any grief.