Beware of Using Your Debit Card at the Gas Pump

March 3, 2008

It’s happened again. Well actually it happens every day. A debit card has created havoc on someone’s bank account by freezing the available funds and then left a person stranded at the gas station.

When you use your debit card at the gas pump, an immediate hold for $75 is placed on your bank account. That can create a problem for many. The $75 of reserved funds in your checking account is meant to protect the merchant from you pumping gas and then taking off. That’s understandable. But what seems unreasonable is that it can take days to get those holds removed and in the meantime you can’t access that cash in your own account.

If you used a credit card instead that would not happen.

Again, isn’t it ironic and counterintuitive that what you would assume would be a good personal financial move, actually creates more havoc and disruption?

And why do banks continue to push debit cards even though they are less safe, cause more overdraft fees, can freeze your own money in your own account, profit. It’s always about the profit.

Unemployed and on a fixed disability income, she knows the frustration of being locked out of her own bank account.

Mosier said she had $43.15 in her account when she pulled into a Douglas City gas station last week to put gas in her Subaru’s tank.

“I was only going to put $20 in,” Mosier said.

But when she slid her ATM card into the pump’s credit card reader, she got a message saying that her account had been rejected.

After several failed attempts to complete the transaction, a humiliated Mosier was forced to borrow cash to get her car home.

But it wasn’t just her fuel purchase that was blocked, she said.

Her bank account was frozen for more than three days, and her bank wouldn’t unlock it for her. A teller told her it would be futile even if she showed up to get the cash in person. She said the teller told her it was up to the gas company to drop the hold.

“This is the end of the month. I’m disabled. I have no food,” she said.

And the holds could become more common. [Read more at Redding News]

Posted in Debit Card Warnings