The £30 is a pre authorisation fee and you should get that back at some point.

 

Depends on the charger. If it’s an old 50kW Ultracharge unit then it might just be a pre-auth. But anything newer, or any of their HPC’s and it’s annoyingly not a pre-auth. They literally take the money straight away and then refund it later but only if you tap your card a second time to end the charge session.

BP have made some really odd decisions recently.

 

This is exactly why most people here boycott BP. Their chargers are unreliable, poorly maintained, backed up by shockingly poor customer service and their payment systems are set up in a way that’s questionable at best, when it comes to legality.

Their chargers are stupidly set up in a way that you tap your card and it charges it £30 instantly. When you tap your card again at the end of the charge session they refund you the difference. You’ll see that the second charge session will trigger a refund at some point next week.

As you’re also about to see though. The first £30 will now disappear into a black hole. Because you didn’t tap a second time because the charger was in a fault state.

What happens now, is you’ll waste so much time contacting BP asking about a refund. They’ll be dismissive and keep telling you to wait 30 days. 30 days will pass by which time they’ll hope you forgot about it, but if you don’t forget you can then escalate a complaint and they’ll eventually take your bank details or send you a cheque for the £30 after an investigation.

TL/DR - Stick to the other names when it comes to public charging. Instavolt, Gridserve and Osprey are all a much better experience.

 

If they don't refund it promptly I'd suggest a Visa Chargeback. Quick and easy to do, get your credit card company to pull the money back and as a plus the vendor also gets hit with an extra charge (£5-£15 according to Google). If it happens too often may lose their merchant account. Imagine the fun if we could get Visa refusing to do business with BP.

 

Try Zap Map you may get the detail of the charger from that. https://www.zap-map.com/live/

 

If you find the Rapid in ZapMap and click on the marker it gives the ID of the unit in the info tab. But from experience these pre-authorisation fees do drop off themselves without further action. Just keep an eye on the card transactions for a week or so and follow up if necessary. Many reports of late about this kind of thing. Which is why I now always blank BP Pulse unless its the only show in town.

 

Just had a look. Going by OP’s Road name if it’s the one at a holiday inn it’s BP-24015 apparently on Zap Map. It’s also a 50kW Ultracharge so looks like they may have gotten lucky and it is just a pre-auth that will drop off after a week too, rather than the messed up policy I mentioned above.

 

thanks Guys , ive just threatened BP with a county court judgment , i really pissed off with this could you imajine filling your can for a lawn mower with £5 of petrol and then you are charged £60 !!! when you arrive home !!! is this even legal ? i i can not walk into a bp shop and help myself to £60 of goods .

 

1) Why pay a FF company to charge your BEV? You’re funding the destruction of our planet!

2) BP’s charge-then-refund policy is well documented. Plenty of people on here have been stung just like you. I’ve read about this problem in other places too. It is a scam, they are stealing your money. Call your bank and explain you paid but didn’t receive the service, they’ll reverse the transaction.

3) Big companies couldn’t care less about CCJs. Winding up orders on-the-other hand get pulses raised!

 

It is a scam................

I don't think it's a scam. I think it's just pure incompetence. And the inability to understand how to fix it - or have the staff with the expertise to do that even if they did understand what is wrong.

It's an IT problem where they have programmed the payment system to charge £30 and replace it with the real cost when the stop button is pressed. But because the numpties who programmed that are incapable of recognising that due to the rubbish Rapids they use there are many occasions when the stop button isn't pressed. But they failed to adjust the programme to just refund that £30 after a few minutes if no electric charge is registered and no cost calculated.

It should be a simple programme tweak. Instead, that £30 remains on your account until physically cleared following either a complaint or someone in the BP back office gets round to clearing the backlog. As we know, the failure rate of BP Pulse chargers is very high so that poor guy must be run off his feet arranging refunds. The concern is that if the driver doesn't notice that charge they may not complain and if the BP guy is having a bad day as well it never gets refunded.

All other companies use the standard system of pre-authorisation which doesn't physically debit the account but instead just holds it pending. Again it's released when the true cost is known and charged but if it's a failed event that pre-auth runs off automatically after a day or so.

Another reason, apart from the dreadful failure rate of their Rapids, to avoid stopping there at any time until they sort out the reliability and also introduce a proper payment system.

We should all lobby trading standards to get on BP's case to sort it out because it is plain wrong and potentially can 'steal' money.

 

There's also a thing called "charge-back" that most debit card companies will use. You just need to provide a bit of evidence to show what the issue is, and what you've done to try and get the money back.

Credit card companies it'll probably be easier still as it's essentially not your money, it's theirs that's being held.

 

It’s just a pre-authorisation, most PAYG chargers will do the same regardless of the charge provider, they then amend the charge on your account to the correct amount.

 

What's the legislation around this?

I can understand the pre-authorisation thing, that seems to have been around for years, but always seems to be cleared pretty quickly, often as soon as the actual transaction is processed. From what I can gather, the BP problem doesn't seem to be wholly related to this, though, it's as if they are taking an actual £30 payment, not just a pre-authorisation, for every charge attempt, and not cancelling it and issuing a refund for some time.

Does anyone know for sure exactly what is going wrong with the BP system? I gather some have had a good guess, but are BP in breach of the regulations covering the use of credit/debit cards I wonder? On the face of it, from some stories here, it seems that they may be, in which case this should be a matter for the FCA to sort out, shouldn't it?

 

From my experience, Instavolt take a £15 pre-authorisation for each charge, and then take a couple of days to replace it with the correct amount.

 

Instavolt I have used with contactless, tap card to start the charge, and tap again to finish the charge.
The display tell you how much your charge cost.

It seems that is too simply for some companies!

 

I can understand the need to take a pre-authorisation on the card before starting the charge, as there is a need to ensure that the card is valid and has enough credit to pay for any likely charge cost. What I can't understand is why it should take more than a few seconds for the pre-authorised sum to be cancelled and replaced by the actual charge cost.

 

I can understand the need to take a pre-authorisation on the card before starting the charge, as there is a need to ensure that the card is valid and has enough credit to pay for any likely charge cost. What I can't understand is why it should take more than a few seconds for the pre-authorised sum to be cancelled and replaced by the actual charge cost.

That’s because they are not using the pre-authorisation method, but actually taking a real charge to your card if £30, then refunding the difference once the actual amount is known after the charging session has ended. As many others have said above, and on plenty of other forums and Rwotter etc, BP are not using ore-auths, so there will not be any automatic adjustment if the charge has failed and not completed normally. BP then run you round the houses, and most commonly tell you you have to wait 30 days and then make another request if the refund has not arrived. Then they often delay things further by issuing a cheque for the amount in question, rather than a payment back to your card.

Have a couple of unsuccessful charge attempts using contactless cards and these charges soon add up!

So be wary of using contactless on BP Pulse chargers unless you are prepared to chase hard to get your money back. Hopefully the banks will intervene if enough customers start applying for charge backs rather than put up with BPs incompetence.

 

Had something similar with BP when they changed brands from chargemaster (I think) had approx £4 credit and when they switched my account reverted to zero. Called customer service and was told they had no record of my credit. Not worth the aggro for £4 so let it go. Never use BP unless it is the absolute last option.

 

I agree. I drove an extra ten miles just to use an osprey charger the other day.

 

This point has been fully discussed in another thread. Perhaps it does need some kind of collective action to force them to address the problem.

Should we be Boycotting BP PULSE for sharp practices?

I picked up on this on Twitter from a Posting by "Kate and James" Basically what happened was that James hooked up to a BP Pulse charger, activated the charger using contactless payment and the charge subsequently failed. BP Pulse take (Ring fence) £30, as a "Pre - Authorisation" Payment from...

www.speakev.com

 

It's not just BP.

I just used Fastned for the first time a few days ago and was annoyed to find that they do a £40 pre-authorisation. A bit of a pain for someone with a 30kWh Leaf which could only ever take about 25kWh at 40p/kWh which is £10. Yes they did cancel the pre-auth afterwards but if you had less than £40 in the account to begin with the session would have failed.

As noted Instavolt also pre-auth £15 if you use contactless.

Kind of annoying that you can roll up to any petrol station and fill your car up with (depending on tank size) nearly £100 worth of fuel without even proving that you have any sort of payment method at all, and only if it turns out you don't is there a problem.

Yet charging an EV you have to prove that you have many times more money in your account than the likely cost of the bill.

And for those companies that actually take the money and don't refund the difference for several days, (vs a pre-auth) shame on you. This is not legally defensible IMO. You are literally taking and sitting on money for services not rendered.

This can sometimes even happen with a pre-auth that doesn't get cancelled for a long time, and I have had it happen to me with instavolt before where the pre-auth was not cancelled for a number of days after using the charger, (it only ever showed up as pending during those several days, not as taken and later the difference being refunded as it sounds like here) this puts a hold on the money in your account so might as well be them taking the money then refunding it later from the point of view of having less money available in your account.

 

It's not just BP.

I just used Fastned for the first time a few days ago and was annoyed to find that they do a £40 pre-authorisation........ but if you had less than £40 in the account to begin with the session would have failed.

My understanding of the petrol £99 pre-auth is that if you have less than this in your account, then a lower pre-auth can be made.
Not sure if the lower amount is offered by the bank in response to the £99 request, or the retailer has to make a separate request if the £99 fails.

 

I seem to recall using a petrol pay at the pump and had a £1 pre-authorisation payment taken. I was told it was just to check the card was valid, but that was some years ago now. £30 seems very steep to check a card or account. It needs to be addressed.

 

you’re in for a shock if you go to a self service fuel station now then. They do a £99 pre-auth.

It's not just BP.

I just used Fastned for the first time a few days ago and was annoyed to find that they do a £40 pre-authorisation. A bit of a pain for someone with a 30kWh Leaf which could only ever take about 25kWh at 40p/kWh which is £10. Yes they did cancel the pre-auth afterwards but if you had less than £40 in the account to begin with the session would have failed.

As noted Instavolt also pre-auth £15 if you use contactless.

Kind of annoying that you can roll up to any petrol station and fill your car up with (depending on tank size) nearly £100 worth of fuel without even proving that you have any sort of payment method at all, and only if it turns out you don't is there a problem.

Yet charging an EV you have to prove that you have many times more money in your account than the likely cost of the bill.

And for those companies that actually take the money and don't refund the difference for several days, (vs a pre-auth) shame on you. This is not legally defensible IMO. You are literally taking and sitting on money for services not rendered.

This can sometimes even happen with a pre-auth that doesn't get cancelled for a long time, and I have had it happen to me with instavolt before where the pre-auth was not cancelled for a number of days after using the charger, (it only ever showed up as pending during those several days, not as taken and later the difference being refunded as it sounds like here) this puts a hold on the money in your account so might as well be them taking the money then refunding it later from the point of view of having less money available in your account.

It’s worth noting that if you have an account on the app, Fastned only do the pre auth as a first time user. After that they’ll only take the amount after you finish charging, or move to monthly invoicing if you’re a regular customer and/or activate Autocharge.

Honestly I have no issues with companies doing pre-auths. Even Ionity with their £67 hold. That’s just how they work for guest users and it’s how it’s always been. If people don’t like it they can use an account or membership to avoid it… What I disagree with is what BP are doing here. It’s not a pre auth. They’re literally taking money that doesn’t belong to them, and deliberately make it difficult to get it back when something goes wrong.

The more I think about it, the more illegal it sounds.

 

One thing I remember about buying fuel in France, late at night (at the time the vast majority of French filling stations closed in the early evening) was the pumps that took banknotes when the filling station wasn't manned. Excellent fun standing there trying to iron wrinkled notes to try and get them smooth enough to fit into the drawer. Unless they were pretty much completely flat the machine would refuse to accept them. France is the one place on the planet where I've come closer to running out of fuel on more occassions than anywhere else, because so few fillings stations were ever open late.

 

Just a follow up on this bp charge theft , They have now refunded me £30 however they have kept £30 despite only being on a chademo for 5 mins , They have advised me to get The bp app that way will not be over charged , has anyone got any advise about how to get the rest of the money back ?

 

Call the card issuer and report that you paid for services that were not delivered. They’ll reverse the transaction.