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TOTAL fuel card for France

Total will typically ask you for 1/5th of your annual usage as deposit, so did you probably requested around 10,000 Litres avgas
Or they think you have a thirsty (heavy) air-plane

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

I entered a minimal usage and they asked for €200. Still the whole thing is a stupid concept.

EIMH, Ireland

yes, I agree that whole thing of a special payment card falls under rubbish monopoly schemes and local clubs politics

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

I agree that whole thing of a special payment card falls under rubbish monopoly schemes and local clubs politics

Well, someone, somehow has to pay for you using the infrastructure that you demand should be there, while not lifting a finger to make it happen yorself. Just saying…

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

I would like to pay for goods using a visa debit/credit card like any other shop in the world, the rest is just friction that makes GA planing more and more difficult

Apart from wasting time for everybody, I see no reason why I can’t pump and pay for fuel without having to wait for the boss of the local club who holds the keys of the pump (ahum, sorry the payment card)

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

I would like to pay for goods using a visa debit/credit card like any other shop in the world, the rest is just friction that makes GA planing more and more difficult

Agreed! However, it seems that many airfields with TOTAL pumps are able to accept ordinary credit cards, and some have recently invested in brand new machines that make self-service a breeze, so maybe things are changing…?

jgmusic
North Weald, United Kingdom

LeSving wrote:

Well, someone, somehow has to pay for you using the infrastructure that you demand should be there, while not lifting a finger to make it happen yorself. Just saying…

I thought that was included in the fuel price!?

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

jgmusic wrote:

Agreed! However, it seems that many airfields with TOTAL pumps are able to accept ordinary credit cards, and some have recently invested in brand new machines that make self-service a breeze, so maybe things are changing…?

AFAIU it is not the airfield that makes these investments. It is TOTAL that owns the fuel station and the equipment, including the tank, and they pay for the installation and maintenance. On smaller fields it is often an aeroclub that is responsible for the day-to-day management of the fuel station. They are bound by contracts for so many years.

@Vrh will know more about how this works.

LFPT, LFPN

Why would any merchant not accept the usual range of cards?

The only charitable reason is to keep the CC company commissions. For example at work we accept all except Amex because they take too much, about 4% versus 2.5%. We used to pay 1.8% for the latter, but eventually got crippling PCIDSS compliance procedures if running an online shop so we went to ripoff PayPal for CC processing. A big user can get that down to about 1%.

The only other reason I can think of for the TOTAL card being the only acceptable one is not going to result in a positive reaction in some quarters, if posted Especially as historically it was almost impossible for foreign pilots to obtain.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I paid a 400 € deposit for 2500 l/year on the TOTAL card in late 2016. That is way less than one tank (380 l) worth of avgas, and you get something like 3 weeks credit. The counterpart I suppose is that TOTAL makes money on your deposit, and they do not have to pay commissions to the credit card companies.

When I provided the 2500 l/y figure, I estimated my annual consumption would be 5000 l, half on BP and half on TOTAL. Of course, since the field where I am based has a TOTAL fuel station, I exceed the 2500 l/y on the TOTAL card.

I have seen new TOTAL payment terminals start to pop up, that supposedly also accept Visa/Mastercard, and where you can choose language. At LFPT where there are two pumps, one of the two pumps has the new terminal (transition period I assume, to remove all wrinkles), but currently Visa/Mastercard payment is not enabled.

LFPT, LFPN
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