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STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY TESCO AND SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY

I went to a Tesco garage yesterday and went to the pay at pump. I inserted my cc and said was authorised and could take £99.00. However I got distracted and left the pay at pump for a few minutes with the car still there. It then appeared to cancel the authorisation and I entered my cc again and filled up. What concerns me now is on my online Barclaycard statement there is £2 pending but no mention of the actual cost of the fuel I put in car. Is this normal when you using Barclaycard. Also the £2 pending is correct because I had entered my cc twice.

Sounds about right, give it a couple of days and your statement will sort itself out.

Yup.. it doesn’t hold the £99 or whatever it says you’re allowed, it just does a check for a quid, then full amount then comes out a few days later.. One of the things I like about pay at pump, even if your skint you can still fill the tank

Panic over. The amount was debited from my card last night.

I’m-lost, I just wondered how you can fill up if you’re skint, does it not take an authorisation for the amount of fuel you use? Surely someone could put 99.00 fuel in but not have the money in the bank or an overdraft to cover it? Seems strange to me. Any ideas?

Well it’s your responsibility to ensure you have sufficient funds in your account in just the same way you would for any other purchase you may make. if you go into unauthorised overdraft then expect to be charged for it.

But any other purchase you make gets deducted from your available balance so that way you always know where you are. I’m glad that I haven’t been caught out by it otherwise I don’t know what would happen, I don’t have an available overdraft and the bank might not let them take the money if it’s not in the account. Seems very strange way of doing things to me.

Lilibet1, did you consider that Im-lost may’ve been using a credit card?

The mind boggles!

Oh yes, just seen it says cc wealdrom… Silly me. I was thinking it was odd that it would let it happen with a normal bank card lol. Otherwise people could be filling up lorries with fuel and driving off only paying a pound…..

I don’t understand where you get this idea from. You pay for whatever amount of petrol you buy.

The whole point is they only take authorisation for one pound, therefore someone could have only two pounds in the bank and still fill up with fuel to the amount of 99.00! I have just checked this out. Hence someone earlier in the thread saying you can fill up if your skint! That’s what imlost meant earlier. I was only repeating what he said. Maybe he will enlighten us by what he means later. Don’t shoot the messenger please.

correct. A couple of years ago, you didnt even have to enter the card PIN, so people would stroll up with a stolen car, and fill it up with a stolen credit card, no problem

But as I said in my previous post, it’s your responsibility to ensure there are sufficient funds available to pay for your purchases. I don’t see how this is any different to anything else you would purchase with a debit card.

some banks wont let you do it. when i had a barclays debit card moons ago, if you had less than £5.00 it will bounce a £1.00 authorisation transaction as a declined.

Chameleon – I understand what you are saying, and that is not in dispute, I am just explaining things to yöu as i see them as per the op posts. I always make sure I use the cashier, as I don’t like using the pump to pay.

Another little tip with these automatic pumps, if you need a printed receipt. As soon as you hang the nozzle up, watch the display. You will get a choice of a receipt or not. Don’t, as I did at first, replace the filler cap first. The choice screen will time out without printing anything. Some supermarkets, and some branches are better at keeping enough paper in the pumps than others. If not, they can print a receipt from the PC in that little shed.

At Tesco you can put your card back in to get a receipt, or put it in another pump if the one you are using did not print one.

Though that didn’t work for me the other day.

Just to clear it up.. I don’t have a credit card.. with HSBC, santander and RBS, probably others too, but I only bank with them, they just do an authorisation for a quid, the bank or tesco allows a certain pump amount to be authorised, even if you havent got the funds in your account to cover it, ive had the display on the pump show anything from £20 to £99 which I believe is the highest amount you can pump at a given time, how tesco comes to this sum I dont know, but they will let you have it even if your debit card only had a quid on it, or even if the quid authorisation makes you go in to an unauthorised overdraft. As long as they get the £1 authorisation you can put whatever the pump says you’re allowed, so in theory you could pump £99 whilst having a completely empty bank account, because a lot of accounts let you go overdrawn by £10 for free, so you don’t even need the quid to get the authorisation. I have no planned overdraft and fill up quite often when the bank is empty, or only has a few quid in it. The bank, should honour the payment even if it makes you go stupidly overdrawn, with an unauthorised overdraft, they must have some agreement with Tesco, if the bank reclaims or doesnt honour the payment, tesco will either write to you, asking you to settle up or send the plod around and will try to process it as a theft or something although its just a civil debt So yes, you can fill your tank up at Tesco pay at pump when you only have a quid or less in your account, on a bog standard account, no overdraft facilities, no credit cards etc etc im not sure about other pay at pump facilities because we only have a Tesco close by. If you do it, then just make sure you deposit the funds within a few days, because that is when it gets settled, I wouldn’t like people to get bank fees from doing it. Try it next time you go, use a card with just a quid on it, just have a spare incase it does get declined, but ive never had it happen. Its different to an instore purchase when you haven’t got any funds on your account, instore the full authosisation is often checked live, at the pump only the initial card check is done. After all, at the pump they have your card details, address, the fact you’ve used your pin, they have you being a grump on candid camera, they have your registration number etc so they have a lot of ‘proof’ when it comes to following it up should your ban decline the full amount a few days after.

Thanks for explaining that, I think it’s wrong that they don’t take off the amount from your available balance IMO as it gets confusing. And of course it could make you go overdrawn. X

Used to be a cracking trick as a student though. No money in the bank on a weekend? No problem…. Tesco… packet of polos and £20 cashback please. The machine only checks available funds for serious transactions (I think it was over £40) so anything under that and it would give you the money even if you didn’t have it. 5t.

you really do learn things on here lol

I do this all the time especially at the end of the month when im skint. As long as there is £1 in my account I insert my debit card in to the petrol pump and can fill up to £99. The money is normally taken from my account 3 days after the transaction. If im really skint and need money for something else ill fill up a freinds or family’s car for them and nock a fiver off to make it worth their while! Not very practical I know but sometimes these days you have to just survive!

Really? I fill up my car or a freinds at the tesco pay at pump when im skint! As long as there is £1 in my account then I can fill up to £99! When you ask for cash back does it not check your balance just like the petrol pump?

Yeah, this is what i’m wondering……. I’d be f**king sat there behind leaning on the horn. Why is it I can put £70 worth of fuel in my car and be off the forecourt within a few minutes, but some people seem to take forever!?!?!? And why do certain people need to sit there for 20 minutes counting their change afterwards?

in my younger days I used pay at pump to tide me over till pay day,for this very reason

It was even better in my younger days. Asda used to cash cheques for free in-store. At the end of the month when I had no money I would cash in £50 cheques. Abbey National would then write me a letter saying that I was overdrawn but on this occasion they would pay the money (didn’t really have a choice – it was with a £50 cheque guarantee card). Even better was that back then they didn’t charge a fee if they paid the cheque (if they had bounced it they would have charged me £20). I used this for about 5 years and it worked fine. A while later they got wise to it and starting charging £15 for paying a cheque when there wasn’t enough to cover it in the account. The bank manager did once tell me it was illegal to cash in cheques without having the funds in the account and I could go to jail! It was this sort of thing that keeps you afloat when you are seriously skint.

Most banks have differing types of debit card. For instance RBS Group cards are either purple for use in all transactions or blue which are effectively the old Electron type cards that cannot be used for pay at pump type transactions. Other banks handle cards with different "permissions" with differing first numbers for example 4567 which may be full use cards and 4590 which could be restricted.

I think each bank is different. If I use my Co Op debit card for pay at pump it says maximum fill £60. If I use my Nationwide debit card it says maximum fill £100.

Someone at my last job did this back when retailers still took cheques. Bought £50 of stuff using cheque and guarantee card. Went out the shop and came back in 10 minutes later to return the stuff and get £50 cash refund. Did it a few times over a month until they got a letter of warning from the manager for doing it.

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.

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!

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

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.

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!!!!! 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.

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

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

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.

Just position the container below the tank nozzle on your car, in such a way it is hidden from the view of the operative.

10pm is usually the universal "end of day" time for 24 hour supermarkets. So it probably won’t be manned after 10pm. I know the local ASDA petrol station is pay@pump only after 10pm weekdays and 4pm Sundays.

As long as it’s a proper fuel container I’ve never had any problem filling one up at all. I guess it varies between stores.


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