I’m driving to work. The gas light illuminates on the dash, letting me know I’ve got less than a quarter tank left. I pull in to the Holiday Oil to tank up before work. I notice the total from the car before me is a nice round number (some dollar amount with zero cents at the end). The pump fills the tank until it gets close to $43, then it slows down and stops at exactly $43.00. Hmm… Yeah. It won’t let me pump more even if I want to.
I get in the car and run it through the car wash, only to notice that I’m just barely over 3/4 of a tank. GAY. So I pull up to another pump and fill it the rest of the way up, another 11 dollars, mind you.
WTH does the gas station do this? Are they just GUESSING at how much gas you need? I clearly put another 3 – 4 gallons in the tank the second time around. Are they just playing mind games with you to soften the blow of high gas prices so you’ll *think* you aren’t getting bent over? “Holy crap, my car is a gas guzzler, I’m down to 3/4 a tank already!†Are they trying to conserve their supply of gasoline? What gives? Does it have anything to do with using a debit card (are there limits to how much you can pump per charge? The car before me had a tank with over $60 / 20 gallons of gas).
Anyways. I thought I’d share this strange and slightly annoying experience.
Comments
3 responses to “Gas Pumps”
this is weird and freaking annoying. i’ve heard of hotels using surcharges for debit cards. there are various methods used by credit card companies to encourage credit purchases. very screwed up. but it sounds like the pump put a hold on your card for some reason. when i drove the moving truck, i couldn’t put more than $100 at a time in. then i had to reswipe the card and fill it the rest of the way up.
I actually just fuled up a few hours ago and on the pump was a sticker saying that the preauthorization limit for credit cards was $100 and for debit cards was $45. So maybe you are using a pump that has a certain preauth limit. Lame! I can’t believe I actually paid less the $3 a gallon today. Yeah!
Yeah. Good point– it’s probably a game to get me to sign up for their credit card. Which isn’t a bad idea if I save 15 cents a gallon, I guess (or whatever it is these days), so long as I pay it off every month.