General Chat

If you pay for your petrol at the pump be aware that card issuers are going to start ring fencing £100 on your card.

If you are unlucky the excess may not be back on your card in time for your next purchase.

As Rollo so loves a link - here is one:

www.visa.co.uk/pay-with-visa/pay-at-pump.html

For those that don't do links - this change is coming in soon.

We don't like on the continent so we don't have to worry about metal bars.

Here's another link:
www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-e10-petrol

You can check if your car will take the E10 fuel. Checked mine a while ago and am OK.

Surely we don't need E numbers in our petrol now we are an independent country. Didn't we get the Brexit we didn't ask for?

This happened before - some years ago. The 'held' amount was released sometime later. No big deal unless you are someone who regularly is maxed out to their cc limit.

Until last November I regularly hired cars in Sweden. Unless you are prepared to pay extra for 'supercover' the hire company locks SEK7,500 (around GBP660) on your card. More if you want a big posh car. So no maxing out credit before a trip!

Also.
Over there many of the petrol stations - especially outside of the main towns - are unmanned. You put in your card, type in your pin, take the card out, choose your fuel and fill up. So all fuel pumped is costed to your card. If you want a receipt after putting the nozzle back in the pump you put your card back in. No need for the pump to freeze another amount.

I prefer to refuel at Statoil pumps - now mostly rebadged as CircleK - because the screens display a number of national flags. Press the union flag and everything displayed is then in English.

Kense. If you can remember the jingle, the days of "Golden ESSO Extra" are long gone.
E10 - a slightly greener fuel.
But E85 was something else... When it first appeared a Hertz rep asked me please not to refuel with it. It was cheaper than the normal fuel, so many customers were refueling with it. And it was knocking hell out of the engines.

Anyway.
In a few years time we will all have electric cars - won't we?
So there won't be any need for petrol - will there?

No Rollo I don't believe that. My post was intended as a jibe at Brexiters. There aren't any completely independent countries, Probably North Korea is the nearest to being one

Who's Kim Jang-il?

I see you've corrected it now - well done..

To be or not to be eco-friendly. The jury is out on that question.

Sweden has 'green soap' made from pine resins, and is attempting to make even more use of 'cast offs' from its forestry industry.

https://www.sekab.com/en/blog/sekabs-technology-on-eu-radar/

A pilot plant on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DmY8W77wvow

Why is paying at the pump so complex for you???????????????

We have been doing it for years.

Put the card in the slot in the pump, indicate the amount of money you want to spend (eg $50), remove card.

Fill gas tank.

Two options ............... Fuel stops pumping at $50 OR card is charged for the cost of the fuel pumped if less than $50 worth.

Remove receipt for card charge.

Easy peasy

Sometimes, the pump does have a little snit, won't take the credit card, so the driver has to take the card into the cashier, ask for the card to be credited the amount required, and then follows the above.

Instead of the ring fencing of £1 card issuers, particularly visa, are to ring fence £100. The amount unspent should be released promptly. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen , so one could get caught out (if unaware of the changes ) being unable to pay for later purchases.

I know this happens elsewhere, apparently France has been doing it for years. But it could catch some people out.

what does "ring fencing" mean??

Never heard that term before.

As I said, we've had pay at the pump for years, simply done, no freezing of funds.

The way it is done was the way in both Canada and the US that card-only stations with a couple of pumps had been available since at least the 80s for truck drivers and other "approved" holders. They were always behind fences with a locked gate, anyone using them had to be able to open the gate.

Your way sounds daft to me

Ring fencing means they put a hold on the money, then take what they are owed and release the surplus.
This can also happen when you register your card with a hotel.

The new petrol situation is with some supermarkets. If you don’t have £100 in your account you will only be able to get a certain amount of petrol.

I’ve only used the pump payment once, I usually shop first and get petrol on the way out and pay at the kiosk.

Will someone just tell me if my Skoda Kamiq is ok with this fuel malarkey?

Is it not on the gov website I gave yesterday.

My car is compatible thank goodness.

Thank you names ........

we just call that putting a "hold" on the amount charged.

Simple Canadians and simple Americans use the simplest terms!

I doubt vey much that gas stations, or any business, would be allowed to do what you are saying.

The "hold" is on an amount charged for a specific purpose, and is never more than the cost of, for example, the first night room rate.

There is not a hold on funds excess to that, and you know or should know that you basically have paid for the hotel room and thus "removed" that amount of cash from use.

Your gas stations' charges are keeping an excess of funds over and above what has been charged.

That would be illegal here.

When we use a card to buy gas, the amount chosen (eg, $20, $50, $100) is "on hold" only until the transaction is finished by the gas being pumped into the car tank. Then the card is charged only what the gas has cost and the remainder of the "held" is released.

You can put as little as $5 on the card, and you will get just that amount of gas ...... probably about 3 litres at the current price of gas here!

I have been sitting on a 4 figure credit on one of my credit cards since last December. That was because I paid in advance for our annual train trip to and from Halifax over Christmas when booking became possible in June last year. I booked on the promise that there would be a full refund if the trip did not happen.

That is exactly what happened as we were still in stage 2 of covid ....... a representative of the company phoned me one morning in late November and said there would be a full refund posted to the card I had used. That was true, right down to the last cent.

Unfortunately, I don't have a bank account linked to that card, and so I could not draw it out in cash, but it has been useful over the last months as I can charge items and the money is already in there.

But it would have been illegal for the train company to have had a hold on more than the ticket receipt amount.

There's a conundrum. did I use the phrase 'ring fenced' because that is the way the article was written - would I have otherwise said 'hold'. don't know the answer.

I may be wrong but I don't think UK petrol pumps gnerally give you the option of how much you want to pay - I've always had to be careful with the trigger.

Good old fashion cash is the answer, do away with debit and credit cards then no more fraud or confusion.

I have just filled up at Tesco’s where this card thing originated and you can choose how much petrol you want. There were buttons beside the screen.

My little local petrol /convenience store doesn’t seem to.

You choose how much you want by letting go of the trigger.