Us Canadians are a little backwards (
)...... but I actually do have a few reasons.... (edit - busy night, I was responding the Soundguy's post about Pay at the Pump).
1) Many pumps cap at $100. At Canadian prices, you don't need much of a tank to hit that on a fill. Making a long drive, at night, in a Canadian winter, you don't want to spend anymore time standing at a pump than you have to. Not a big deal if you don't care about filling up totally, I normally do.
2) When I delved into it just a couple of years back, stations will typically "pre-clear" your card for say $150-$200, before turning on the pump. Once you finish pumping say $65, then they will process that transaction for $65 separately. Then, they take days to a week to reconcile/credit the original $200 transaction. I stumbled on this by coincidence, when I was confirming a particular sequence of transactions with my CC company - went something like "What do you mean $150 at Esso, I don't (at the time) own anything that takes that much fuel".
Many people find out this when they go around buying $10 worth of fuel at a time, on a low limit card.
I generally refuse to pay at the pump as a matter of principal - irritates me that the CC companies/gas stations can play these games with my credit w/o informing the customer.
3) The one time in about the last 5 years that I did swipe at the pump.... it could have ended really badly.
I had two major customer demos set up for the same day, tight schedule. I had just enough time to fill up before the first meeting, with about 2 hours driving to do right afterwards to get to the second demo. OK, make an exception to your rule today Dave -> Swipe card at pump, pump turns on, fill up, return nozzle to pump. No receipt prints, no message on display. I almost skipped getting my copy of the receipt reprinted inside.... good thing I didn't - glitch on the first transaction, the pump turned on, but the card did not actually go through.
I thought I'd paid (no indication on the pump display otherwise) and almost unintentionally drove off w/o paying for my gas. I could have eventually explained what happened, but that is not a hassle I'd want to get into, esp. on an HD day like that particular one.
4) When I travel in Canada, and do find a particular area where Pre-pay is the norm (as in not province wide), that tells me a little about how bad the area is.
If my local Husky truck stop does change, I'll miss the convenience (my definition
) I enjoy now.
Rgds, D.
