Amen! :D

Maybe. But it’s right there in the song: “We’re gonna do what they say can’t be done.”

Yeah. I don’t know if it’s been a weird winter or if our precautions have paid off, but Nana’s Little Petri Dish hasn’t brought home anything contagious for months.

That’s handy to know. Thanks!

I don’t need to take a look, I worked in gas stations for years. The seal on the card reader portion is not one placed there by the state, at least not in Texas (where I live and work) or any of the other handful of states where I’ve bought gas. The only seal the state put on the pumps was done by the Weights and…

Yeah, I’ll hold my breath for that to happen.

That’s possible. I couldn’t say since I don’t know where you went.

Years ago, I was on Wellbutrin for depression and had been for a couple of years. Then it was re-branded as Xyban to help people quit smoking. Suddenly, every month, my insurance (UHC, of course) denied my prescription. At first, I didn’t know why because I hadn’t put Wellbutrin=Xyban together.

Really? I’m going to have to find that study. We have a bunch of onanadestron at my house, since they gave it to my husband practically every time he set foot in the hospital before and during his stem cell transplant. He’s still medically a bit fragile and we have a 6-year-old living with us, so it could be useful.

When I was a kid in Hawaii, people coming home from the Mainland did this all the time. If you brought home a case of Coors, you were the most popular guy in your neighborhood. (The unavailability was the point, not the quality of the actual product, obviously!)

Piers asked me to tell you that he’s stopped having thoughts. They made his head hurt too much. Thanks for asking, though.

It’s more expensive, but if you go to a grocery store with a salad bar, you can buy small amounts of veggies. Some will even let you bring your own container to put them in, thereby creating less waste, too.

My Swiss Army toothpick is long gone, so I went rummaging in my drawer to see what might work. The end of a zip tie did the job nicely, although there wasn’t much in my port. Might be because I’m all about keeping mine in a case/holster as much as possible.

Yes, the external skimmers don’t require access to the innards of the pump. Those are also the easiest to detect. When I used to start my shift I would walk all the pumps to check the seals and wiggle the housings on the card scanners. My employer didn’t require that but I thought it was necessary. I hope they’re more…

The station charges the hold, the bank/CU/CC decides how long it stays active. Nobody would actually care if it was only active during the time it took to pump your gas.

Nope. It’s the bank/CU/CC that controls how quickly the hold is released. I recall a few years ago when MasterCard touted that they were shortening the length that they kept the hold active down to 5 business days. They seemed to think this was a big improvement.

Thanks! I’m not in California myself, but was passing along the information to friends who are and they aren’t in LA. They figured it out eventually.

Note that the hold is controlled by your bank/CU, not the gas station. The reason for the hold is simple: If they didn’t do it, you could fill up your tank with $2 in your account and then when the pump went to charge you it would be “Too bad, so sad” for the station.

Your simple tip is largely worthless. The state seal doesn’t usually cover the portion of the pump that opens, and definitely not anywhere near the card reader. That’s not the purpose of that seal. The door that accesses the card reader also allows access to the receipt printer, whose paper has to be replenished…

This is not A&P, the local mom&pop, a small regional chain, or even chains like Wegmans. This is the big grocery chains with over 1000 stores, of which there are only 2 or 3.