My Payment and Transactions Aren't Adding up at PenFed- $13.00 Unaccounted For

[Anonymous]

Some merchent sutch as gas stations get an aproval for  doller right away and then turn into charges later like a day or 2 and sometimes the 1 auth stays on your accounts for 2 weeks

[creditwherecreditisdue]

---

XQ28Libra wrote:
Some merchent sutch as gas stations get an aproval for  doller right away and then turn into charges later like a day or 2 and sometimes the 1 auth stays on your accounts for 2 weeks

---

Discover can be quite noisome in this respect. It can take quite a while for the charges to show up and even longer for the authorization (which can be for more than $1, even more than the amount of the purchase) to fall off.

[Karatz]

Gas station might ask for 100 bucks approval. You only put in 87 bucks, the difference might still be subtracted from available credit until the preapproval drops off. Just my guess.

[creditwherecreditisdue]

---

@Karatz wrote:
Gas station might ask for 100 bucks approval. You only put in 87 bucks, the difference might still be subtracted from available credit until the preapproval drops off. Just my guess.

---

Here's how it really works: Gas station authorizes $100 - $100 is reduced from your available credit - you pump $87 - when the charge posts another $87 is reduced from your available credit - after sufficient time has passed the original authorization for $100 falls off and $100 is added back to your available credit. Thank god most of the gas stations around me authorize for $1. I recently visited my parents and their local gas station authorized my card for $60 before I pumped. I didn't like that!

[Anonymous]

1.  With PenFed you do have to click on the AVAILABLE CREDIT amount shown to get a refreshed current system value.

2.  With Gas station authorizations, this will vary upon the local "average purchase amount" and based upon the number of bad or returned transactions.

Let's pretend that you get authorized for $1 to validate it is an active card, then you fill up for $70.  Let us also assume that you only have $12 in available credit/balance so once the final charge is put through, it gets rejected.  This is why some merchants authorize either the "average purchase amount" or the "maximum transaction" amount, in order to avoid post sale problems.

In my area, most stations show up as a $1 charge or pending charge, and then update later to the actual amount.  At times it can take 3-5 days for the final amount to show up. 

For these reasons, it is very easy to have odd amounts unaccounted for with your credit card.  Some banks (very few) show all outstanding "pending" authorizations, in addition to posted transactions.  Bank of America does this, which is one of the many online features I like with BoA.