FleetCor Technologies

A fuel card sold on savings

FleetCor is a publicly traded company headquartered in Atlanta that reported $2.4 billion in annual revenues in 2018. It markets fuel cards under its Fuelman brand and through co-branded cards, to businesses whose employees use them to refuel company vehicles.

According to the FTC’s complaint, FleetCor and its chief executive Ronald Clarke falsely told prospective customers they would save money, be protected from unauthorized charges, and face no set-up, transaction or membership fees.

How the fees were structured

The complaint describes fees totaling at least hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting tens of thousands of customers, often charged per transaction or required for membership despite the promises.

The company frequently waited several billing cycles before starting to charge many fees, which made them harder to spot among normal month to month variation. Invoices often did not disclose that fees were being charged at all, requiring a customer to go looking in separate account management reports, where the fees were obscured among other information.

Payments were not always posted when received, which generated further charges: late fees on payments that were on time, and “high credit risk” fees because the customer appeared to have paid late. Some customers were charged “high risk” fees for being in trucking and transportation, the very industries that make up FleetCor’s main customer base.

The “fuel only” cards could in fact be used for anything sold at a fuelling station, including beer and snacks, and the terms of service said customers had to pay charges even beyond the limits they themselves had set. An internal company email called this “the most egregious customer impact we do as it takes customers by surprise.”

The number that matters

Advertising frequently touted 5 to 10 cents per gallon in savings. An analysis Clarke himself requested, after negative press coverage, showed customers on average saved a fraction of a cent per gallon. The complaint alleges the fees charged exceeded whatever savings the cards produced.

Two proceedings

The FTC sued in federal court in December 2019. In 2021 the Supreme Court’s AMG decision held the FTC could not seek redress under section 13(b) of the FTC Act, so in August 2021 the agency filed a new administrative complaint under section 5 in order to keep a route to recovering customers’ money.

What is not established

Both filings state allegations. The supplied documents report no finding, judgment or settlement, and the administrative complaint marks the start of a proceeding to be tried before an administrative law judge.