Not had many dealings with this gas company as up until recently, none of their stations were near me. I have discovered that they do not take credit cards, BUT they will allow you to swipe your debit card at their pumps....if you are that terminally stupid, given the amount of skimming that goes on at pumps these days.

WTH is the deal with them and credit cards? Want to charge CC users a touch more, fine, but don't EVER think my debit card is being swiped at a pump. That's no with an F.

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Release the Kraken

Use my debit card for gas all the time. No problems.

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Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

I don't have or use debit cards. I just use credit cards and pay them out every month.

Please explain this. Are you suggesting that the business debits more than the amount rung up on the pump? I do understand that you have no recourse if an employee of any business you swipe your debit card at makes an additional debit for themselves.

Arco built a business on lower gas prices. They kept their prices lower two ways. They did not accept credit cards. That avoided including in the gas price the 3%-4% credit card companies would have charged them. Also they were selling gas cut with ethanol before it was required. They lost the later advantage about two decades ago when Al Gore managed get 10% ethanol required in all gas year-round to funnel money to his home state. That leaves no credit cards allowed. If that is not how you want to do business then Arco has competition.

Yes, skimmers are a threat, but only to the extremely unobservant. Just glance at the pump card readers near you. If the one you're currently at is different, don't use it.

Also, if your debit card is fraudulently charged, you're not responsible for those charges. So, get a separate account that you only keep a little money in. This way if you're hacked, you only lose a little and will eventually get that back.

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Freedom isn't free.

The sort of skimming I am talking about takes place when the criminal element attach an extra card reader to the pump. On retrieving your data, they now have VFR direct access to your checking account, and it's off to the races.

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Release the Kraken

Probably true that you are not ultimately responsible these days, but good luck sorting out the automatic payments that get missed when your account was drained.

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Release the Kraken

If I wanted to know know why they stopped taking credit cards-
I would go in and ask them!

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

I worked for ARCO back in the 70s and the only credit cards they took at that time were their own.
Jim

I think if they calculate the amount of business they lose by not accepting Cr Cards, they would find it is a small price to pay for a much higher volume of business. If you do sufficient volume your cost per swipe goes way down. a regional gas distributor could probably get processing fees down in the 1.25 cents per swipe. I had a low volume operation, and could get 1.77 cents per swipe.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Arco hasn't stopped taking credit cards, they've never taken them as far back as I can remember. As a result, they're generally a few cents cheaper. Back in the dark days of the 20th century when that really mattered in filling up my beat-up truck, I only filled up at Arco and paid cash. Nowadays, debit cards are another alternative.

As has been said, since most gas stations are not Arco and take credit cards, I don't see the problem if you don't like the business model.

You are as far as I know correct except on one minor point. They at one time had their own credit card and of course would take that.
As an aside: A couple of my compatriots at ARCO developed the software for their pay at the pump program.
Jim

As I have posted before,
My favorite Coffee Roaster on the planet- Norm Whiting,
Whiting Coffee, does not take credit cards.
I have given Norm some flak about it (Norm is a guy I give flak to on multiple subjects) .
But I just buy coffee and pay cash. And he will take checks.
His wife disagrees with the policy, they have had some 'discussions'.

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Entirely possible. I wouldn't have known, back then I would not have qualified for any company credit card either!

exactly what I use .. have a debit card from the local bank.. keep less then 1000 dollars in it and use it around town for gas and other odds and ends .. use it also when we travel .. I have a different number savings account I can transfer on line to the debit account if needed .. I also have one credit card that is the only one I will use on line if I order something and only use it online no other times its left in my desk .. its been compromised 2 times in 25 years both times years apart .. both times charges from Paris, France which I thought odd ..

Indeed, but they are easy to spot if you're paying attention.

One reason I don't do automatic payments. And, if you have a separate account for the debit card, you're regular checking account can't be hacked through the debit card.


These are all just ideas. Using the credit card isn't a bad idea either. I was just suggesting a way to use the debit card and still be safe.

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Freedom isn't free.

I don't use debit cards!
Credit cards- yes, all the time.
The only thing I auto pay are my utility bills.
Like my Cable bill ? Hell no!
Water, gas, electric.
And I like to pay for gas at the pump.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

Right on, I do not own or use a debit card and doubt I ever will. (do not trust them.) I do use my credit cards if I can in all purchases over $5. I like the idea of not paying any interest and a couple times a year getting money credited to my account.

I do pay my CC bills by a free phone call, money is taken out of my checking account!. Most other stuff I still do by my checking account. Most months only write 4- 5 checks.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

I guess you have to ask yourself who pays for all the credit card fraud. Anyone want to guess how many millions of dollars that is every year? Do the banks pay for it? Nope, you do if you use their CC.

This is one of those "this happened to me" stories so take a seat.

I got a call from my credit union one Monday and they ask me if I had been in NJ over the weekend. I've been around but never been in NJ in my life. Then they ask me if I had received my new CC and activated it. Nope, never saw it. Well, somehow that new card left FL in route to me but never made it. Someone activated it somehow and limited it out in NJ 2 days after it left FL in the US mail. A total of $25000 was stolen using 5 cards in the same batch from my credit union on the same day. I had to go talk to the manager of the credit union and sign some declarations that I was in WA at the time. I think they may have suspected me for a short time but one short conversation cleared me of fraudulently cleaning out my own account. My take on this was it was an inside job. The irony is a bank employee handed over the cash in NJ as a machine wasn't used. The CU manager said they didn't take the hit because they were insured.

I have had my card compromised 3 times. I've never had to pay anything because of it and still use one. CC fraud must be a pretty good business because hardly anyone ever gets caught and the merchants and users pay for the theft.

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That's just somebody talkin.

Speaking of Vegas gas pumps-
Do they still have some pumps which take Cash?

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I haven't seen one in my part of town for a while.

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Release the Kraken

I usually get my gasoline at a small convenience store in the next block as it's usually the cheapest in the area. The owner (an India Indian) doesn't have card readers on his dispensers, but does accept credit cards inside. Maybe five years ago he decided to go cash only and stopped taking credit cards to save money on the transaction fees. That didn't last very long. His gas sales dropped to nearly nothing.

This is funny as ARCO was the only company that would issue me a credit card back in 71. I was an E5 at Fort Sam waiting to be discharged. MC and Sears turned us down, but there was an ARCO on the base and I filled out an application and got the card. Trouble is there was only about 2 of their stations between San Antonio and Central Illinois and I darn near didn't get home.

There was an off brand station that would take any cards and I used my ARCO card there for a year or so. We eventually got a MC and then the offers started rolling in.

At one time, but maybe not today, there was a special gas credit card available to commercial truck fleets and company cars which worked at any service station. I had one for awhile back in the 1970s and 1980s when I drove a company car and used it at all sorts of different gas stations. Do those cards still exist?

Not exactly. I had my debit card frozen due to a skim. There are programs that can be surreptitiously installed on systems that have been hacked from the outside. The hacker lets the program run and every time somebody uses a card their info is stored. Later they'll download thousands of users' data and never have had to set foot anywhere near the place of business. The big banks run sniffer programs periodically on retail clients' systems looking for those skimmer hacks and when they find them, they freeze and replace all those cards. They don't even attempt to find or prosecute the perps as more often than not they aren't even in this country. My bank's security department explained this to me when my card was frozen.

Nowadays crooks open the cabinet, unplug the card reader from the board and plug it into the 'skimmer'--and the skimmer plugs into the board. Everything on outside looks normal.

That coverage of fraudulent charges is not prescribed by law--it's only a 'courtesy' policy of the financial institution, and as such, is applied at the whimsy of your bank.

Credit cards, OTOH, are required by federal law to limit liability to fraudulent charges to no more than $50 (as long as you notify your financial institution in a fairly reasonable period of time, which escapes me a the moment).

With a debit card, your liability is essentially "whatever money you have in the account."

You get a bunch more benefits with a CC compared to debit, such as ability to dispute charges, and you won't get multi-day "holds" put on your account for purchases, as merchants can do with debit cards--which can lead to bounced checks, if you balance margin is slim.

Debit cards may be a good deal for merchants, if the fees are lower, but they don't make much sense from the consumer's point of view, except for individuals who can't manage credit.

There's dozens of em...still big-time in trucking industry.

CC fraud is HUGE, big league!

Up until October last year, for fraud at *** transactions--store cash registers, pay-at-pump, etc--losses were absorbed by Visa, Master Card, and such, not the vendors.

CRS the date in October, but after that date, if *** card readers were still using the mag stripe, the merchant assumed liability for fraud. If merchant transitioned to chip readers, Visa/MC etc continued to cover fraudulent use.

Kinda wish I has stock in the chip-reader manufacturers, in August last year...