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Fun with Chargemaster/Polar - A Cautionary Tale

9K views 65 replies 33 participants last post by  GTE 
#1 ·
Just thought I'd share with you a recent miserable experience I had with Chargemaster/Polar which gives you a fair idea of the 'quality' of the company. Here's the email I sent them after my misadventure:

Dear Chargemaster,

As you know, last night you kindly remote-controlled the EV charger at Seacourt Park & Ride for me, so that I could charge my Nissan Leaf while I visited Oxford. It was unfortunate that my existing RFID card is no longer valid and no replacement was issued. Anyway, when I returned (as discussed) at 10.30pm I was unable to unlock the cable because of my defunct RFID card. I was also unable to contact customer services to get them to do it for me. I called seven times, between 10.30pm and 11.44pm and each time just went through to an answering machine. I left (increasingly irate) messages each time, including my mobile number. You have to understand that it was literally freezing at that time, zero degrees. In the end, I felt I had no alternative but to give up, abandon the cable, retire to a nearby hotel and try again in the morning. I was not prepared to drive all the way home to the Cotswolds and leave £500 worth of Type 2 cable lying around in the hope that your company would retrieve it and return it to me.

This morning, I returned early to the Park&Ride, called the customer service number again and … amazingly still got no answer. Finally, your engineer Mark called me back at about 7.40am and unlocked the cable remotely.


So, attached is the invoice for the hotel and the call logs. I stayed in a Travelodge to minimise expense. I also had to pay a second parking fee of £2.00 to retrieve the cable. Please therefore send me a cheque ASAP for £81.00 to cover my expenses caused by your company’s inability to operate a 24 hour customer support line as promised by your website, app, etc. As you can imagine this was a very disagreeable and annoying experience.

Regards,

They called yesterday and left a message. I called back this morning. They (surprise, surprise) admitted it was their fault, said they'd disciplined the engineer (naughty boy!) but declined to cover my expenses as they claim they, of course, would have 'immediately' despatched an engineer to retrieve my cable and then have returned it to me (at, presumably, far greater time and expense than just sending me a cheque for my miserable hotel room.)

Hmmm ... can you imagine me calling them the next day asking them to retrieve my cable and return it to me? It would either be a no, or cost me more than the cable.

But then again, what did I expect? This is evidently a cynical and small-minded company which has presumably made quite a tidy income until now from soaking up government grants by installing unsuitable EV chargers in (often) unmarked bays and then failing to maintain them, or offering 'free' home chargers to people who don't even have EVs ... well, good luck to them trying to charge EV owners for their 'service.'

I take consolation in the thought that cynical business practices and dubious business models do sometimes (sadly, only sometimes) lead to failure. For example, see their inability to list on AIM in 2013 (unable to find investors who agreed with their valuation). Hopefully, once there are no more low-hanging and ill-advised government grants to be picked off and exploited, they will founder and make room for more genuine market participants, such as Ecotricity.

Finally, a word of warning, if you plan on relying on a Chargemaster/Polar EV charging post, then maybe you'd better carry a cold chisel and a hammer with you to make sure you can get your cable back.

Eugene the disgruntled
 
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#3 ·
Sorry to hear of your troubles but it is no surprise to most people here. Chargemaster/POLAR has behaved like this right from the very start and I can't see them changing.

I will not use POLAR/Chargemaster except in a dire emergency and only when my only other course of action is a flat bed truck.

Glad you got it sorted :)
 
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#5 ·
Does that mean that anyone (if tried) can remove your cable from the post?
 
#7 ·
I'd go through a small claims court to get your £81 back.

Compare and contrast Ecotricity. I took their man's advice after multiple rapid charge failures in March and ended up in a god-awful multistorey car park in Ilford with an empty battery at 10.30pm and at least a 5-hour wait for the car to charge. Their on-line guy,after a bit of pressure from me it must be said, obtained authority for me to get a taxt to Maidstone (£85-ish) and retrieve my car the following morning. Total cost £108 (parking £7-ish, train fare £16-ish) and their cheque arrived almost by return of post.

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome is your friend. It would cost them more to defend the case than it is worth.
 
#9 ·
Agreed ^And write to discharge master with a letter headed " Letter before Action " detailing what you want back for their incompetence and deceit as outlined in copy of email!:D

Demand your data and all call information under a "Subject Access request." (Data protection act) They must send it in 40 days minimum, if not...

Keep a copy of the request ad letter and have it ready for the ombudsman as they will reimburse you and force CM to pay albeit after about 6 months!

Have won 3 out of 3 cases with insurance companies with this approach:).
GBEV v RBS, Direct Line and Lloyds.:)

Amazing what working on gliders and powered aircraft teaches you!
 
#10 ·
Well, thanks to everybody for the advice. The (satisfactory) end to this story is that I wrote Chargemaster a letter pointing out their folly and advising them that unless they settled my reasonable expenses I would be taking them to Small Claims Court. I gave them two weeks to respond before I started my action (it's all done online as Wowbagger pointed out https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome and cost-effective). And, lo and behold, I received the following communication from them yesterday, with cheque.

Text Line Font Document Paper


Do I think Chargemaster now see the error of their ways? Oh, I doubt it. They knocked back my email/verbal request for compensation and presumably only settled after I threatened court action, presumably after consulting their oily lawyers. Hopefully the cheque won't bounce.

If anyone in a similar situation would like to see the letter I sent them, then get in touch!

A small victory for EV drivers ...

Eugene
 
#15 · (Edited)
there is a hole, an actuator pushes a pin into the hole.
cut away the thin strip that leads to the hole so that it can slide in the newly cut channel.
or cut the entire end of the plug off , but you only need to cut away the thin strip
 

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#18 ·
Yes thanks I have now done the job. Cutting end off seems a bit extreme. I suspect Eugene may actually have been using a brick. When a polar locks one of them in you are a bit stuck. A short plug and socket that could be sacrificed in extremis would be one solution. A crowbar would be criminal damage I imagine.

PS re-reading his post I see it was type2.
 
#24 ·
I know an ex-employee of Chargemaster. Do you realise that the on-call engineers at CM work all day out in the field, and are then expected to be on-call all through the night too for 7 days at a time. When you lot call the help line, you are not calling a call centre where there are half a dozen engineers, you are actually calling ONE SINGLE ENGINEER AT HOME, who has been at work all day and then expected to answer the phone all night all for £75 a bloody week....... I think you lot need to wind your necks in, pick you rattles up off the floor. You've sussed what the company is like, so use your EV brains to try and work out how employees are treated there... Not good I can tell you... You have probably cost that engineer £81, the stinking rich boss is unlikely to pay it out of the company money, I'm reliably informed that this is not the way this man works. But, may I also add, when my friend worked for CM, customer's cables were released FREE OF CHARGE and either returned to their home address, place of work or any place of their choice.... So get your facts straight.
 
#25 ·
To be blunt, that's not our problem. Yes, I have sympathy for the engineers if that's how they are treated, but it's unreasonable to expect the public to cut a company - who appear to have been gifted bucket loads of tax payer cash - any slack for shoddy service.
And, frankly, no I would not have been prepared to trust that my £200+ cable would probably be returned at Chargemaster's convenience. Whose to say that OP didn't have a pressing need for that cable the next day?
 
#26 ·
@nigel farquaharson. I see you say ex employee, so they have obviously done the right thing and left then!!!

In my occupation, we get loads of stick being at the bottom of the food chain and being out in the field all day, but if I didnt like it, I wouldn't do it...

People are entitled to their own opinions on things in this world, it's the joy of paying Chargemaster my £20!!!
 
#27 ·
All I'm saying, is that the engineers get the crap for CM's poor management... And as you know very well, it's not that easy to walk out of one job into another.... Every time an engineer is forced to leave, they take on new, inexperienced staff,which in turn leads to even worse customer service. IF the company treated their staff better, no one would leave, and therefore a more professional attitude would be taken and a much better service would be given to EV owners... What they need is a dedicated night team that ONLY do nights, and not expect an engineer to work 24 hours a day alone ( which I'm sure is against the law ) maybe a few helpful suggestions to CM ( rather than shooting the messenger ) would help back the engineers up, and in the process give you guys a much improved service. Luckily, my friend has found a company that respects him. If only CM was the same, then everyone would be happy!
 
#28 ·
OK, that's fair enough, but I think there have been attempts to engage directly and constructively with Chargemaster and it appears (as you mention in your first post) that the CEO couldn't give a monkey's. Therefore, unfortunately, the company (and, by default, its staff) are on the receiving end of lots of anger and ire.
 
#35 ·
The real problem here seems to stem from RFID card / charge-port reliability, if that was fixed, no need for on-call engineers. I can't imagine what I'd be like stuck in a carpark in freezing conditions with a stuck cable; fuming probably. Well done on the result, I've tried small claims court in the past and it was a waste of time and money.
 
#40 ·
On pod-point units switching the main breaker in the bottom of the pedestal will unlock both plugs. I got my cable trapped in London couple of weeks ago (damn underground carparks). Source-London/pod-point were very quick to respond and get their on-call guy out which I can't really grumble at.

Interestingly the pod-point guy said they have been looking to replace the units in poor signal areas with ones that are less prone to locking cables in - I assume ones without locking pins entirely. Apparently they have tendered them, and something should be happening soonish - but I am not holding my breath.
 
#43 ·
So, am I right in thinking that if the local mobile phone mast goes down, all the rfid card activated hi-tech data collecting charging points will also fail, leaving us either unable to connect or to release our cables?

I think the prime reason for connectors being locked in is to stop arcing and wear on the contacts (and possible explosion risk in a car park where there may be petrol fumes around) if a connector is removed while under load - but as the pilot pin is are shorter, as the connector is removed the pilot circuit should break first which should then cause the contactor in the charging post to drop out.
 
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