Filling-up the Odyssey the other day, I was surprised when the wallet-drainage started slowing down at $48. Of course, I knew what wasn't coming: anything more than $50 worth of gas. As an a tax paying member of the world's most pampered people, I found it incredibly annoying that I had to restart the entire sales process for an additional $8. As a free marketeer, I found it bizarre that a large corporation (Shell) would make it hard for me to spend MORE money. Turns out it's the credit card companies– Visa and Mastercard– who are limiting millions of gas purchases to $50 in some states, $75 in others. As USA Today points out, even $75 won't do it for many fuel hungry behemoths. "At $4 a gallon, $75 buys 183/4 gallons. A 2008 Toyota Sequoia SUV's tank holds more than 26 gallons, a Chevy Avalanche sport pickup totes up to 311/2 gallons, and a 33-foot or longer Winnebago Adventurer RV hauls 75 gallons." While environmentalists may have little sympathy for the Devil, the credit card companies claim the limits protect their customers from fraud. Sure, in the same way they write-off fraud rather than upgrade members' card security with photo-embedded plastic or thumb print biometrics. Profits before people? No way.
[Can anyone tell me if their TTAC RSS feeder is working?]
No problems here yet…..Largest tank on any of my vehicles is 15gals (if run to empty…I don’t think I’ve ever put more than 12 in) and thats the car I drive twice per month. Smallest is 4.5 (almost never put more than 3 in).
How exactly is making someone initiate 2 billing processes supposed to stop fraud?
Alot of gas stations around here require the billing zip code before you can start pumping fuel, which, IMHO isn’t that secure anyways (I live in a small town with just 2 zipcodes).
Why not have an 8 digit pin or something?
Robstar:
Why not have an 8 digit pin or something?
I use a debit card with a seven-digit PIN. Same limit.
morning robert- my rss feed for ttac is not working. great site content. keep up the good work!!
My RSS feed is working, but I got an Allstate full-screen ad just after I got on the page. It confused me for a second ’cause it got past Firefox’s usually quite good pop-up blockers.
@robstar – This helps with fraud for the same reason that compueters have a delay between asking for your password again after you type it in wrong for the first time: It adds time to the process.
Imagine that you have a huge 500 gallon tank in the back of your pickup. You steal a credit card, go to the gas station at 3 in the morning and fill it up. When the owner of that credit card disputes the charge, the bank and the gas station are on the hook for $2000. They don’t like that. But if you had to stop every $50 and restart the transaction it’d take a lot longer increasing your chances of getting caught. A bunch of $50 transactions in a row will set off a flag and the bank or the gas station can alert police to check it out.
The origin of the $50 limit came when gas was about $1.50, so they should increase the limit accordingly so that normal people don’t bump into it. But then again, there are probably more cases of gas theft at $4/gal than $1.50/gal
The $75 cut off isn’t that big of a deal. When I fill my F150, it quickly hits $75 and I just push in the lever and continue on, taking maybe an additional 20 seconds. It does seem a bit silly, though.
I hate this cut-off thing. And it doesn’t limit fraud, it’s limits the card companies’ responsibility. $50 just happens to be the level at which the money stolen is covered by them, not you. By keeping the amount that can be stolen down to $50…well, you do the math.
Gasoline @ $5.00 per U.S. gallon is making gas and dash an issue. Some filling stations here require prepayment.
RF,
I updated my Yahoo RSS feed yesterday with the RSS 2.0 feed from the site and it’s working fine. I did find it weird that the original RSS feed all of a sudden stopped working though.
On topic, I can BARELY fill my MINI Cooper S with premium without running into the $75 limit here in California’s Monterey Bay. We’re at $4.50/gal for premium. It’s funny that this comes up on TTAC because my wife and I were talking about this just the other day. Her X5 hasn’t seen a drop over about 18 gallons since the beginning of the year because I refuse to start the process twice just to get a complete fill up. Guess that also tells you how many road trips we do in the X5 too…not many.
What’s RSS?
I’ll tell you what’s annoying. Circle K bought up most of the fuel stations around here and they definitely took a down turn after the new owner ship.
Is it only here that we have to enter in our zip code when using a card at the pump?
@rtz
Nope, not just you. Most of the stations in NorCal require this now. Especially the majors like Chevron and Shell.
jrlombard: I can BARELY fill my MINI Cooper S with premium without running into the $75 limit here in California’s Monterey Bay. We’re at $4.50/gal for premium.
You’ve hit $75? Filling a MINI? The most I’ve ever fit into my Cooper S was just under 14.5 gallons, and that’s with a 13.5 gal tank (long fill tube?) and after letting the gas light stay on for longer than I probably should have. At $4.50 that’s about $65.
I never said that I hit $75 filling the MINI.
My point is that I have one of the smallest cars with a not so large tank holding somewhere around a 14 gallons. If I’m starting to get close to the $75 limit, I think they may want to think about raising the $75 limit.
And I was rounding down to $4.50, it’s actually $4.57 this morning at the end of the street. But down the coast in Big Sur it’s pushing $5.25–and I’ll bet the pump still stops at $75.
I had no feeds yesterday morning. Since Robert is pretty good on daily news items. I thought something might be wrong with the feed.
I deleted the old feed URL went to the TTAC home page, got a new URL from the RSS 2.0 button, and reset my Google news page.
I received 10 feeds yesterday and two today. That is all there is when I click the RSS 2.0 button.
Effective security is an inconvenience and is seen as a threat to privacy – and an influential minority of people do not like it.
Also, in many jurisdictions, the enforcement/punishment for crimes like credit card and identity theft is a borderline joke.
$58 is the most I have ever hit here in the Garden State. 17 gallon tank Chevy Impala and reg gas about $3.80 per gallon.
I use Google Reader… I noticed that you have new posts that are not showing up on the feed. Nothing new since Friday morning. I thought you had taken the weekend off.
Should I re-subscribe? Google Reader can handle almost any RSS feed format (Atom, RSS 1, RSS 2, etc.). So strange that it is either not seeing, or choking on your feed.
This limit is buried into the pump itself. Not easy to fix. Between this and high number limitations it looks like most pumps will be replaced soon.
Be thankful you’re not in some rural areas of the States. The limit there is $35. That will barely satisfy fumes if you wave the pump nozzle around the fill pipe. :)
ihatetrees:
You’re right. Effecive security is often a pain, and the enforcement of identity theft laws is much less than perfect.
But one element of security is the enforcement of law. It may not seem to help much in preventing crimes, but if the laws are rigorously enforced, they deter crime. Identity theft is a much less attractive proposition if the chances of getting caught are very high and/or the penalties are stiff.
We need “preventitive” security exactly to the extent that the laws are unenforced.
I somehow doubt that these limits mean anything much, securitywise – consider all the purchases of larger value that go unreviewed.
This is funny! I’ve heard that the fastest way to “shut off” your credit card in the USA is to fill up two tanks of gas, and then buy a pair of sneaker training shoes. Something to do with stolen credit card buying habit profiling.
So Robert, don’t go shopping for shoes after you fill up!
On a larger extent, this is so stupid. Preventing the customer to shop in the USA, that’s like preventing a Swede to pay tax. “Stop there, 10000 SEK is enough tax for YOU this month!”.
Filling up a large car with 76+ liter tank breaks the magic 1000 SEK (167 USD) non limiting barrier at current prices, over 13 SEK per liter. No USA-style stop and go action needed!
jrlombard, I don’t want to belabor the point, but “barely (filling)… without running into the $75 limit” sounds like you hit $75 when you’re near full. Maybe I’m just not understanding you but I can’t think of another way to interpret that.
Hey Robert,
I don’t know if the feed was working earlier (I last checked it about 12 hours ago, I think) but I’ve got the posts in it now.
Hm….a ways to go on my fills. I think I almost hit $15 for a fillup today :) The cars which I drive at most once per week get a fill if they are at half or below usually….that is 6g in the neon and 7.5 in the sports car. I don’t let them run down that far because sometimes in the time between fills the price can be up $0.20+/gallon
limit is 100 here in ontario. now i have to pay inside, so that i can go over the limit. rules like this are retarded. two years ago my credit card company approved four swiped transactions, two in europe (me), two in canada (fraud), all within an hour of each other. hmm.
I’m reading via Google Reader and haven’t had a problem with RSS at all with this site. Via either Firefox or IE. All good here. Comment 10 is a gem.
I hate this cut-off thing. And it doesn’t limit fraud, it’s limits the card companies’ responsibility. $50 just happens to be the level at which the money stolen is covered by them, not you. By keeping the amount that can be stolen down to $50…well, you do the math….
Ah, the credit industry doing all it can to save us from fraud. How about ending all the BS credit card offers and checks that flood the mail. Think of the losses there. Oh wait, those losses are offset by the foolish people who open yet more cards and get buried in more 18% credit card debt. Now, I feel really good that the credit industry is at the ready to combat fraud. Yeah, and my golden retriever makes Hershey bars…
RF,
RSS working fine today, most of yesterday’s posts just showed up, but some from yesterday morning never came through at all. Using Bloglines.
Having just filled up for £51 (roughly $99) I watched as some diluded fool put £87 in his Jeep – or around $155.
I have to say, I stop the pump at $50 even though it’ll go further. I feel mildly ill paying nearly 50 damn dollars to fill up a Volkswagen. Urgh.
I haven’t yet had to reset the pump for more gas after a credit card company limit. Are the card companies getting an additional transaction fee for that second portion of the fillup, in addition to the percentage that they take off the entire purchase?
Capping individual sales at the pump (within the industry called “island card sales”) is done by the credit card issues (i.e. the bank), not the gas station, oil company, Visa or MasterCard. Capping pump sales is mutually beneficial to both consumers and credit card company shareholders because it DOES limit fraud losses. Credit card fraudsters are attracted to fuel pumps because the purchases are anonymous; it’s a relatively safe place for them to test whether a stolen or doctored card is going to work.
Industry wide, fraud is up quite significantly year-over-year, so don’t expect these controls to go away. If anything, look for more controls at the pump to go in place. For instance, in many “high risk” market, pumps now require cardholder to enter their home zip code as a pin before authorizing a sale.
If you want to avoid having your sale capped at the pump, you can pay with your credit card inside the c-store where you’ll find no limit.
I hate this cut-off thing. And it doesn’t limit fraud, it’s limits the card companies’ responsibility. $50 just happens to be the level at which the money stolen is covered by them, not you. By keeping the amount that can be stolen down to $50…well, you do the math….
Ah, the credit industry doing all it can to save us from fraud. How about ending all the BS credit card offers and checks that flood the mail. Think of the losses there. Oh wait, those losses are offset by the foolish people who open yet more cards and get buried in more 18% credit card debt. Now, I feel really good that the credit industry is at the ready to combat fraud. Yeah, and my golden retriever makes Hershey bars…
Are the card companies getting an additional transaction fee for that second portion of the fillup, in addition to the percentage that they take off the entire purchase?
Everybody’s looking to make the credit card companies the bad guys here. I think you’ve seen one too many asinine Oliver Stone movies because your outrage is really misplaced. Yes, banks are for-profit institutions. But we’re talking about real thieves that are stealing billions of dollars from merchants, credit card companies, and consumers every year. Haven’t any of you been the victim of ID theft? It takes money out of your pocket, kills your credit, and impairs your ability to buy a home or car – sometimes for years. This is hardly a case of The Man trying to stick it to the little guy. Grow up!
Mongomery:
Credit card fraudsters are attracted to fuel pumps because the purchases are anonymous; it’s a relatively safe place for them to test whether a stolen or doctored card is going to work.
Just put up some video cameras at the gas station. And what’s with the pin codes? Am I the only one who doesn’t have the pin code written on the card? The pin code is supposed to be secret…
William C Montgomery :
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am
Capping individual sales at the pump (within the industry called “island card sales”) is done by the credit card issues (i.e. the bank), not the gas station, oil company, Visa or MasterCard. Capping pump sales is mutually beneficial to both consumers and credit card company shareholders because it DOES limit fraud losses. Credit card fraudsters are attracted to fuel pumps because the purchases are anonymous; it’s a relatively safe place for them to test whether a stolen or doctored card is going to work.
Industry wide, fraud is up quite significantly year-over-year, so don’t expect these controls to go away. If anything, look for more controls at the pump to go in place. For instance, in many “high risk” market, pumps now require cardholder to enter their home zip code as a pin before authorizing a sale.
If you want to avoid having your sale capped at the pump, you can pay with your credit card inside the c-store where you’ll find no limit.
I still don’t understand how it stops fraud. If the theif could run the card once, what’s to stop him from doing it a second time?
I still don’t understand how it stops fraud. If the theif could run the card once, what’s to stop him from doing it a second time?
Velocity Check. This is the fraud control that counts the number of times a card is used within a given period of time (i.e. 24 hours or over 3 days). After x number of purchases the card would fail to approve. It would throw a code instructing the bearer to see the clerk if he/she wanted to purchase further. It might also trigger a phone call from the credit card company’s fraud prevention unit to the card holder seeking to verify that the card was still in their possession and that the purchases were legit. So it wouldn’t necessarily curtail the small time thief from making one or two quick purchases before ditching the card. But it would stop the crooks looking to do more damage than that.
Look, there are bad guys out there with stolen cards who would otherwise fill up the gas tanks of a dozen friends. Also, last year a ring of thieves were arrested in Florida. They hid tanks capable of holding hundreds of gallons in the beds of pickups under tonneau covers. They got caught selling stolen gas for pennies a gallon. Unfortunately, stuff like this goes on all the time.