Well, some lessons in charging here.
Monday, heading down to The Manor Hotel for some R&R, we stopped and charged at Gloucester Services (same folk who own the marvellous Tebay).
Perhaps the best chargepoints we have used in over 50k miles (* note we do the majority of our charging at home though 😉). Super easy to start.
Coming back today, we thought we would stop at Sainsbury’s Exeter. 12 new “SmartChargeEV” chargers.
Ought to work a treat, right?
A spot of lunch would give us enough charge for our onward journey👍
Well….the first one refused to take my Apple pay RFID card, and my wife’s physical card.
Great 🙄
Moved to another unit where it started up okay.
Went instore, only to find the cafe permanently closed 🙄
Okay, get a meal deal and sit in the car.
As we paid, we see on the remote app that the car had got just 3.59kWh then ended.
FML.
Decided to give up on them and head to a nearby Tesla place that had lots of chargers.
Told the app which bay we were in, plugged in and immediately ramped up.
Lovely inside the “showroom” - zero pressure, free coffee and toilets.
Had lengthy chat with a service guy there and another customer before leaving.
Why is it that other companies cannot give such a simple experience.
The service guy suggested that it might be because the Tesla super chargers report their status to Tesla, so if there are any issues, an engineer will already be on the way: with others, it will be down to people to tell the company their “pump” is broken.
Either way, it was a salutary lesson learned.