Customer reports unexpected charge at St1 service station in Lahti, Finland

A customer in Lahti, Finland, Karoliina Heinonen, encountered trouble on Sunday evening when her card payment was declined due to a zero balance on her account, despite having funds before refueling at a St1 service station. “I only filled up for thirty euros, yet my account was drained to the last cent,” Heinonen explained.

This incident was not due to the typical reservation issues often associated with gas stations. When customers don’t specify a fuel amount, the system automatically reserves 150 euros. Typically, this reserve is released post-transaction without deducting additional funds. The aim of this system is to ensure customers have sufficient funds for the transaction; if not, the refueling will fail.

Heinonen selected a maximum amount of thirty euros, which made the unexpected withdrawal of over 95 euros puzzling. By Sunday evening, her account balance returned to normal.

Heinonen was not alone in questioning her account balance; St1’s customer service reported a quadrupling of removal requests for payment holds compared to normal. Juha Vanninen, Head of Sales and Network at St1, noted that around forty removal requests came in on Monday, whereas typically there are only about ten per day. The issue stemmed from disruptions in the services provided by Nets, a payment processing company.

Customers faced repeated payment failures, with about half successfully completing transactions. Professional drivers reported even higher failure rates. Some customers were unable to fuel up without alternative payment methods like Mobilepay or cash.

Søren Winge from Nets confirmed that the disruption was due to hardware failure at a data center operated by a Finnish telecom provider. The issue primarily affected stations in Finland and Sweden and was resolved late Sunday night. Vanninen remarked that such service interruptions are rare.