Thinking about this, it makes total sense but it's still not very nice. From MSN/Money comes this story of a robbery at the gas pump:
Hosed at the gas pump -- by your debit card
You may have topped off with just $20 worth of unleaded, but the debit-card transaction could freeze as much as $75 in your account, sometimes for days.
If you ever use your debit card to pay at the pump, watch out: Did you know that every time you top off the tank, a chunk of your checking account can be blocked -- sometimes for days, with the potential to cause you all sorts of financial headaches and bounced checks?
That's what happened to Jessica Hathaway, a state employee from Allentown, Pa. Earlier this year Hathaway stopped during her commute to fill up her car at Rauch's Mini Mart, a Shell station. She bought $22.29 worth of gas using her debit card.
The next day Hathaway balanced her checkbook using her bank's telephone service -- and something didn't add up. The bank said that she'd made two purchases the previous morning: one for the $22.29 and one for $75.
Trouble is, she'd only bought the gas.
Finally Hathaway called the service station, and an attendant explained to her what few people know.
How your money gets frozen
If you use your debit card at a pump that does not require a PIN, the station regularly will block out an amount -- often $50 or $75 -- on your card.
That amount doesn't "un-block" as you drive away. Instead, the hold remains until that evening, and sometimes for up to several days, until the station does a "batch" transaction, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
I can see doing this for a reason -- if they are not asking for your PIN, they are not actually verifying the transaction, they are running it as a credit card -- the money does not get taken out of your account until the "batch" is run at the end of business day. What gets my goat is that they are floating themselves nice interest-free loans for several days. For you and me, being loaned $75 for three days isn't a big deal but to a large corporation, getting several hundred-thousand of these loans every day starts adding up to a nice revenue stream. This is just less money they have to borrow. They should credit the $75 at the time the batch is run and they should run the batch every day at a minimum...
