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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

> France as I discovered does this at the gas stations where they put $200 or so authorizations on your card for absolutely no good reason.

It's the same here but I'm not sure how it could work another way? They have to make sure you have the money to pay for the fuel you're pumping, it doesn't seem weird to me.

I can't imagine a pump that allows you to pump as you wish and then just begs you to pay. That works for the manned stations with low traffic only.

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It ends up being bank dependant a bit. (USA here)

If I use either my cashapp or chime card I had better have the full $100-200 on there or it will fail the authorisation.

On the other hand my main bank is a local bank and they treat all gas station preauth's as a $1 charge. So I can have say $30 in the account and still get $25 in gas whereas many other cards/banks would just decline.

That’s how it works if I choose “pay at cashier” - if I walk up and don’t have the money the fuel is already in my car.

Where? In the U.S.? Whenever I have paid for gas with cash or from the cashier, I pay for it in advance, “Give me $10 of regular unleaded!”

Many service stations in Canada still operate this way.

I think “everywhere in the world except the US” is probably right. I live in a major city in the UK and did it last week.

Before the 2008 Great Recession, most gas stations around me allowed people to pump then pay cash. After some stories of people driving off without paying, the stations changed their policies.

It also works like that at manned stations in France, but there are few.

I think maybe what happens is they tap your cards fully possible authorization limit and if you end up trying to get gas multiple times in a short time period (24/48 hours) you can't use your card because they can't hit it for the full limit.

The gas station is supposed to release the authorization after the real payment clears when you stop the pump. So they should not pile up even if you do many visits in short period of time.

In Finland the has pump firsts ask you to choose how big an authorization you want to do when you enter your card to the slot. It will not allow you to pump more than that and the authorization is then replaced by real charge before you enter you car.

I think that's what the problem was in France specifically, the authorizations don't clear as you expect and then your credit card authorization limit gets hit and when you go somewhere else to get gas and use the same kind, it gets mysteriously declined.

I've only had this specific problem in France. Funny enough my American Express cards worked better than my Visa or Mastercard did.

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