Credit card stuck in gas pump?

Has your credit card ever got stuck in a gas pump card reader & then the attendant accused you of damaging their pump?

No it hasn’t. Not even once.

Keep asking questions though @George_San_Jose1. They may be weird and often laughable, but at least someone is asking

If that happend to you, what would you do? Anything? Forget about it, keep using the station. Just use a different station in the future? Something else?

So perfect for Car Talk, right?

I’d go into the store and pay there. The next time I needed gas, I’d go somewhere else.

Not possible to pay in the store, card is outside, stuck in pump. Good advice to switch vendors for future purchases. Been using this vendor for 25+ years, but will do as you recommend…

Nope. I use the chip reader. I pay the way I want to. I control the horizontal and the vertical.

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Nopers, never and I have been paying at the pump for over 20 years now, none of my immediate family has ever had it happen to them either… But you probably live where there is a much higher volume of vehicles using the pump and I guess they, like anything, can get worn out from time to time…

My card was stuck in a card reader on a gasoline pump one time about 5 years ago, I thought there might be device in the reader to capture fraudulent cards. I think I used a pliers to pull the card out.

That’s absurd

I’d wonder if a skimmer jammed with the card.

This is very possible. One skimmer was in Manchester NH was found that way. Card got stuck and the guy grabbed a pair of plyers out of his truck and yanked it out - along with the skimmer. He knew exactly what it was and called the police.

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This happened to me the last time I filled up my car at the local Shell station. I put in the card, it authorized and said remove card. went to remove it and it would not come out. so, I filled up my car, put the pump handle back and tried to remove it. still would not come out. tried everything I could think of to remove it. like making believe I was getting gas again. it would authorize, say remove card and still would not come out. so, I went in and got an attendant. he tried for a while, and it would not come out. he stood there thinking for a second and tried again and out it came. I asked him if he had seen this happen before? he said more than you would think. For a while there I was thinking it would be free gas for everyone on me. :roll_eyes: :rofl:

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Weird. All of these reports. I’m now paranoid. Per my credit union, I probably did use my card once where a skimmer was installed. (I just got a notice one day that they were canceling my card and re-issuing with a new number). But I’ve never had one get stuck!

But as to @George_San_Jose1 's initial post - having someone blame YOU for it getting stuck is still absurd.

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QT now I just scan the card. No jamming possible, nor skimmers.

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I hope they can’t be scimmed using tap and go.
Six or seven years ago my card was scimmed,
$495 was charged in $99 increments to my card. CC company did delete the charges. Sheriff did catch the perps, what happened to them I do not know.

The new smartcards can’t be copied, but they can try to do a transaction at another location at the same time that your card is connected to the skimmer, while it’s in the pump.

I don’t see the need to lock the card in the machine while it is processing. A notice of safe to remove card should be sufficient. If it is pulled out too soon, the transaction can be redone. Maybe not using merchants that lock the card in the machine is the way to go.

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Don’t ATM’s lock the card when using?? I know Regions does, at least all the ones I have used do…

If it has a chip (which pretty much all do these days) they do.

Mine has a chip, and has never got stuck at any other gas station, grocery stores, etc. The bank atm does lock it provided it is inserted w/correct orientation, but releases it after the transaction. I expect the reason is that bank transactions take longer than grocery store or gas station.

The bank card is also a different card than the credit card I use to buy gasoline.

All the ATM’s and gas pumps around here are tap to pay, or at least the ones I go to.

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