With gas prices in the United States the highest they’ve been in 14 years, drivers are facing a new kind of pain at the pump: fueling limits that may deny them a full tank.
Because credit card companies refuse to reimburse station owners for fraud or disputed charges above the $75 threshold, many pumps limit transactions to $75. That used to be more than enough for a fill-up — but not these days.
“There is overwhelming evidence to support that a $75 limit does keep fraud losses down,” Visa said on Twitter this week. “There are also some concerns with multiple card swipes when gas prices increase.”
Though the $75 limit isn’t new, most people have never paid near that high a price to fill their tanks before — touching off deep frustration and confusion, especially for those with larger vehicles or who have long work commutes, forcing them to refill more often than the average driver. Stunned by the limits, some drivers turned to social media this week to voice their frustration.
Jonathan Moore, an engineering and project management consultant, said he was surprised when he was cut off in the middle of refueling his vehicle — especially since he was using a debit card. “The way it seems to have been for me is I hit a $75 hold limit, and the pump shut off,” said Moore, who says he was later able to swipe a second time.
Asked if he’d ever encountered the problem before, Moore said he hadn’t. “I’ve just never had an opportunity to fill above $75,” he said.
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Damien King, a lead petroleum service technician in Raleigh, North Carolina, has worked in the industry for years. After experiencing the fuel increases of 2005 and 2008, he said, the latest spike in prices at the pump wasn’t much of a shock. But it was certainly jarring for his 18-year-old daughter, a college student who balances her studies with a full-time job as a waitress.
She’s always paid for her own gas, King said proudly, and when she started driving two years ago, she “could fill up her whole tank for around $20.”
But that’s no longer the case. “She came home the other day and said, ‘Dad, it cost $44’” to refuel, King recounted. “I mean, she was really upset.”
For a waitress in North Carolina, he noted, “$44 can, you know, be [a] four-hour shift.”
Those with experience in the industry said it evokes painful memories of 2008, the last time gas prices rose above $4 per gallon.
“There were troubling stories when people were driving and they couldn’t pay for things with their debit cards,” said Jeff Lenard, the vice president of strategic industry initiatives for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “After they had this high hold on their bank account, they couldn’t get more gas. They couldn’t get food and things like that. With so many people [using] debit cards now and with so few people paying by cash, these credit card shut-offs, points, and debit holds are becoming a big deal.”
Retailers “can decide to go over that [$75] limit, but if they go over by even a penny, they risk not getting paid for the entire transaction,” he added, putting them “kind of in a bind.”
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They “never want to not get paid for a legit transaction, but at the same time, convenience stores … never want to be the ‘inconvenient’ store, where people are already not happy about high gas prices when the pump shuts off — when you want more.”
“That’s inconvenient, and it comes at a bad time when people are already upset,” he concluded. “It’s certainly not something that retailers want. But that’s the dynamics of the situation with the credit card companies.”
