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Heres me living in Aus reading these comments saying this is normal, thinking its insane. We just pull up to the bowser, wave to the cashier and start pumping petrol. People would be livid if they saw a $150 auth charge. The petrol station would be getting dragged in the news.
Funny, $200 is standard in NZ if you pre pay. Can usually post pay though as you say.
Or guess how much fuel you're going to need and pre-auth a little more than that.
I'm from Europe and it's unheard of in my area. Although gas stations here work quite differebtly from US ones.
You drive up to the tanking machine. You take the gun and start tanking. No credit card terminal, no nothing on it. Just a display of liters pumped and amount owed.
When you finish, you enter the station, say the tanking plot number and pay that exact amount.
If you run off... I guess they call the police?
I've never had it happen to me, but if you were out of cash and all the cards you had failed for some reason you'd merely exchange contact info and pay in a few days via bank transfer, CC, cash or whatever.
If you don't, you'll get a court order within a year to pay the amount + some interest + court fees. That's enough of an incentive for people to pay, I guess.
If you just tank up and leave, you could get booked for theft. Most places have cameras and cars have licence plates, so finding the offender is quite simple.
Therefore, no preauth.
Lucky! I only just now learned this was normal now, but damn does it suck that it does. Im not sure why there isn't a system to authorize outside charging cards, seems backwards to me.
I would guess that you have the same thing happen there - you just never noticed/looked at the right time to see those charges. Fuel stations don't want you to fill your tank and then discover you can't afford the fuel, so they have some sort of arrangement with the credit cards to verify that you can afford the fuel before you put it in.
Credit card doesn't leave the wallet till I go in to pay. There's no way for them to magic the charges onto the card.
Oh, so you don't have pay at the pump and so have to wait in line? I remember those days. The station takes more risk of someone driving off without paying but it mostly works for them. Not pleasant for the customer who is waiting in line behind someone who is trying to decide which lottery ticket to buy or whatever they are being slow on.