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Debit card authorizations submitted for excessive amounts

Until recently, when you used your Alabama Credit Union ATM VISA/Debit card to "pay at the pump" for gas, the gas station would authorize $1.00 to make sure that your card was valid, and then allow the machine to pump as much gas as you needed. Apparently several local gas stations have decided that $1.00 is insufficient, as we are now seeing people who have $200.00 authorizations on their debit cards for the pre-authorization for this transaction. A member recently called who had purchased $10.00 worth of gas, but has $200.00 being held against their checking account. We hope this practice will meet with so many complaints that stations will revert to a more reasonable amount of "reserved" account balance. Until then, your account may be affected by this practice. If so, please bring us or fax to us a copy of the pump receipt and we can delete the pending $200.00 authorization. If the charge has already posted to your checking account, we can remove the authorization without the receipt copy, in most cases. (Posted June 10, 2005.)