NFCU Amex Quirks, Payment Troubles

[Anonymous]

I have encountered a few quirks with the More Rewards Amex from NFCU. The first one is that every time I use a pump at a gas station, I am presented with a $100 hold. This is very irritating with the $1,000 SL I got. Haven't seen this on any other cards.

In addition to that, I have been using this card to pay my college tuition in order to reach the SUB. I basically maxed it out and then submitted a payment afterwards. Surprisingly, NFCU put the payment on hold and customer service said to wait 7 days. The card declines in the meantime, and is unusable, even though it shows online as ~300CR balance.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues?

[Girlzilla88]

That is an Amex thing, my Amex unless there is 100 on it makes me go inside to pay for whatever amount I want.   (100 minimum ACL for use at pump) the other I'm not sure did you just get this card?!    When I make a payment to my NF card it usually shows within a day or so and I can use that amount showing?!

[K-in-Boston]

The $100 hold is the individual merchant, not Amex or NFCU.  For gas stations, each merchant can set different values and if Amex is processed directly (likely with many stations) that figure can often vary from what their Visa/Mastercard/Discover processor has set.

As for the payment hold, I have not experienced this paying with an outside Bank of America account.   You can always try pushing a payment directly from your financial institution and it should be reflected as soon as it's received.

[blindambition]

Is this first payment on card. A potential reason. Did you make multiple payments in first month? I know you have to call after first.

[Anonymous]

First payment I made ever. I can't really push a payment since my account is with a Fintech bank, they don't have that feature.

[Anonymous]

It is showing the hold on payment as -$1,000 PYMTMONYHOLD

[Anonymous]

First off, congratulations with the Navy Federal More Rewards AmEx card!

I recently got this card myself, except my SL is $500, which is very very low (if it wasn't for me wanting to develop a relationship with NFCU I would laugh it right in to the trash). The key with making payments when you have a low limit is it works best if you pay from a NFCU checking account. I learned this the hard way with my first NFCU card. Making too many external payments the first month caused my payments to be put on hold for 7 days.

However, if you pay from a NFCU checking account, you can pay as many times as you want -- every day even, without having it put on hold (assuming the funds are in the account).

How I make it work is I transfer funds from my primary FI to my NFCU checking account. I usually transfer $1,000+ at a time so I can make a couple of payments with it. Then, I simply pay from the checking account.

I too noticed a gas station hold of $100 which persisted for several days, and haven't had that happen on any of my other cards either (all at this same station) so it was a bit unnerving, but things like this occasionally happen. I just try to account for that when using it at the gas station (which luckily has been very rare the past 5 months).

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous Thanks for the suggestion to transfer to NFCU checking directly. I will try this method as I need to pay my tuition by next week . Hoping for success. There is simply no other way to get this SUB for me.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymousyou're very welcome! Note that NFCU is very slow for transfers though. It'll take a couple of days to get the funds into the account so start that transfer asap.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous I was able to use Plaid and instantly link the account to my other bank, so pushing it over will hopefully be quick.