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How are Podpoint allowed to do this?

18K views 81 replies 24 participants last post by  Brian G 
#1 ·
I used a Podpoint charge point at a hotel a couple of weeks ago, not used one before. Had a devil of a time trying to pay for the charge, as there was next to sod all signal in the hotel car park. Eventually got the car charging OK, and got a notification later telling me that the charge had cost £6.95. Checked my bank statement a few days ago and found that Podpoint had taken £20. Emailed them to ask what the hell was going on, they just emailed me back to say that they were hanging on to the £13.05 balance.

It strikes me that this is like paying for something in a shop with a £20 note and the shopkeeper refusing to give you any change. Being very generous I could class it as sharp practice, but if I'm honest it seems damned close to being taking money by deception. I've demanded they refund the money immediately, but don't hold out a lot of hope that they really will.

I've had pre-authorisation fees show up a few times when charging, but in every single case they've cleared very quickly, always the same day. This doesn't seem to be a pre-authorisation charge, it's showing on my bank account as a completed payment.

I'm certain that if I hadn't spotted the payment on my bank statement they would have just kept the money. How on earth can they get away with doing this?
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Perhaps you signed up for a payment scheme that requires you to open an account and deposit funds in there so that you can draw that down in misc smaller charge sessions. The minimum is usually a £20 deposit for those and they also have an auto-top up so that if your account balance falls below, say £5, then they claim another £20 top-up so that you have funds available to continue drawing down smaller charge sessions. I suspect that you have an account with £13.05 in there that is waiting to fund your next Podpoint visit. From past experience the only way to get your cash back is to close your account, claiming to have sold your EV is a good excuse, and ask for a refund of your account balance.

I fell for a similar trap with Chargepoint and still have a credit balance with them of £9.04 there that I can use at my next Instavolt visit. Again with the risk that if that next visit is £8 ish then they will take another £10 from my bank to carry forward a credit balance.

So, probably not a scam or even sharp practice. Just a manifestation of how the system that you signed up for works.
 
#4 ·
Perhaps you signed up for a payment scheme that requires you to open an account and deposit funds in there so that you can draw that down in misc smaller charge sessions. The minimum is usually a £20 deposit for those and they also have an auto-top up so that if your account balance falls below, say £5, then they claim another £20 top-up so that you have funds available to continue drawing down smaller charge sessions. I suspect that you have an account with £13.05 in there that is waiting to fund your next Podpoint visit. From past experience the only way to get your cash back is to close your account, claiming to have sold your EV is a good excuse, and ask for a refund of your account balance.
It's possible, I had a heck of a time getting the charge to start, combination of almost no signal and bright sunshine, making it hard to see what was going on in the app (I was on an iPhone, not that I think that should matter at all). In the end I entered my payment details via their website in my room, on a laptop with a wifi connection, just copied the website address from the app, theres a link there to use if the app wasn't working (which it wasn't, probably just a connectivity thing). I had absolutely no idea I was opening what sounds like a "lets keep your money" scheme with them, I just assumed that the £20 was a pre-authorisation when the website said that was the payment that would be taken.

I'm going to avoid Podpoint like the plague from now on anyway, simply because I think their business model stinks. I thought the days of charge point operators using a subscription model were well and truly over, and that they had all switched to direct payment.
 
#5 ·
Back then I didn't try to close my Chargepoint account because the card that they issued appeared to be quite reliable when a machine failed to accept others. Could be useful as a backup. Also, not sure that closing and asking for a refund would work seamlessly either. An option that occurred to me was to wait until I needed at least £9 worth of electrons. Cancel my card details on the edit function to prevent any more cash from being taken under their top-up system. Then use their card to run up a £9 bill at a Rapid to zeroise my account that way. That might work. But only when I was away and needed a 20 kW battery fill.
 
#44 ·
Geniepoint used to be pre-pay with optional automatic top-up, but they changed everyone over to pay-as-you-go once their pre-pay balance had been used up.
The old Polar Instant was pre-pay, but I think that's now defunct. No, I can't remember what happend to the pre-pay balances when they shuttered that. Certainly, the old Polar Instant app no longer works, it looks like they've disconnected the api server it used.
 
#8 ·
I don't have any sort of account, AFAIK. This was a charge point in a hotel car park, with a website link to pay for a charge. I went on to that link, entered my card details, clicked the "claim this charge" button and assumed I was only going to be charged the amount that was notified when the charge completed, which was £6.95. Instead the buggers took £20 out of my account.
 
#22 · (Edited)
Clearly we are aggrieved because these accounts in credit represent money that's in Pod Point's account rather than ours, benefiting them through interest. In every sense it's like money in our bank accounts which benefits the bank rather than us but allows banks to give us free banking and develop their business. You could look at it from the point of view that the small amounts we all pay to Pod Point to keep our accounts in credit help them to develop their business and improve the charging infrastructure.
 
#23 ·
You can get your own back, @Jeremy Harris - unlike some other providers, PodPoint don't autocharge your card when the balance falls below zero. So, assuming that you have inadvertently opened an account with them, you can charge until your balance is negative and then you'll have their money. You can't start a charge with a negative balance, but can easily get to negative by charging from a low starting balance. Poetic justice, perhaps.
 
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#29 ·
If they are refusing to pay it back contact your bank to get it back. Then report them to the OZEV or whatever the government department is. It's theft. You can't be forced to have a credit balance as a guest user.
Sounds like you might want to try your credit card for recourse. If it was a credit, rather than a debit, card then it might be easier.
Success here will depend on the terms of the contract you agreed to to start the charge.
... I had a heck of a time getting the charge to start, combination of almost no signal and bright sunshine, making it hard to see what was going on in the app (I was on an iPhone, not that I think that should matter at all). In the end I entered my payment details via their website in my room, on a laptop with a wifi connection, just copied the website address from the app, theres a link there to use if the app wasn't working (which it wasn't, probably just a connectivity thing). I had absolutely no idea I was opening what sounds like a "lets keep your money" scheme with them, I just assumed that the £20 was a pre-authorisation when the website said that was the payment that would be taken.
I'd try to find out the detail of the terms. My experiences with Pod Point, which have been through their customer support services for a home charger and, granted, not for those for public chargers, have been positive.
 
#28 ·
Sounds like you might want to try your credit card for recourse. If it was a credit, rather than a debit, card then it might be easier.
 
#39 ·
They've not given any justification so far. The email isn't well written, just says that they can confirm that the cost of the charge on 6th June was £6.95 and that they are holding the balance of £13.05. I first contacted them about this last Friday (17th June), when I checked my bank statement and saw the £20 payment had gone out on the 6th June. I got a reply yesterday afternoon (21st June)
 
#43 ·
Just been looking at the detail of the law, and it's not 100% clear, IMHO. The wording of the relevant section is (my highlight on last sentence):

"Recharging points: intelligent metering and ad-hoc access

5.—(1) After 17th November 2017, an infrastructure operator must ensure that all recharging points for which that operator is responsible incorporate intelligent metering systems which comply with the requirements specified in paragraph 5 of the Schedule.

(2) An infrastructure operator must provide to any person ad-hoc access to—

(a)all recharging points deployed after 17th November 2017; and

(b)all recharging points deployed on or before 17th November 2017, no later than 18th November 2018.

(3) In this regulation—

“ad-hoc access” means the ability for any person to recharge an electric vehicle without entering into a pre-existing contract with an electricity supplier to, or infrastructure operator of, that recharging point."


The key seems to be the interpretation of the final sentence, and specifically whether allowing easy access for 15 minutes, and then requiring a user to enter into a membership contract, is compliant. I believe the intent behind this law, and specifically this sentence within it, was to ensure that people didn't have to pre-pay or enter into a subscription or membership contract in order to be able to charge. If that is the case, then it would seem that Podpoint may have deliberately set out to circumvent the spirit of the law.
 
#47 ·
Why not contact "Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS)", contact details on Regulations: alternative fuels infrastructure, and ask whether PodPoints procedure is an acceptable interpretation of the regulations?
I'd do this.
Like I said above, Pod Point's policy may have been deliberate and, if so, it's a bit shady. Jeremy, I can tell you are vehemently anti their policy from the wording of your messages and this opinion is, of course, valid; you feel that you've been duped.
I feel somewhat more generous to them because I can see their tactic as a way of, first, being more able and necessary to have this policy in a situation where public charging is/was rare (and so revenues are small compared to set-up costs) and second, because the free first 15 minutes are a hook to get new customers; this free period is very useful if, for example, you're just popping into a shop. However, in the case of destination chargers, it's less and less relevant. Until recently, Budgens Darsham (Zap-Map's name) was free to use at 50kW and it was Pod Point but, of course, the electricity costs were borne by the shop.
But, like I've said, a business model should be developed as the market evolves. I suspect now that the model may start to alienate more customer's than it encourages. Opinion on this post certainly suggests this...
 
#49 ·
TBH, I've almost always only used destination charge points at hotels, and we choose hotels to stay at now based partly on whether they have charging facilities, just because it's more convenient when on holiday to not have to stop and charge somewhere else. This is the first time in several years of doing this that I've encountered a Podpoint, and I'm certainly not happy with their business model. Paying to charge is fine, but paying close to three times the actual price to charge isn't, IMHO, and right now I just want Podpoint to refund the money they've taken and stop doing this in future.
 
#54 ·
Other service providers use a similar pre-payment model. Greggs for instance have an app which requires you to have credit to use but does give benefits such as occasional freebies. Provided the pre-payment amount is modest in comparison to the average transaction price I don't have a problem with this. Over the period I've had the Greggs app I have probably spent over £1000 but received £100 of benefits so if I was never to get back the few pound credit on the account when say I die I could live with that (well I couldn't if I was dead but you get what I mean...)

PodPoint should be more open about their T&Cs, and if I was them I'd have a system to refund any credit to a dissatisfied customer (and maybe prevent them from opening a future account if it wasn't a model for them). But like all the many people I've bought drinks for that I'll never get bought back, life is too short and my time is too valuable to worry about things like this.
 
#55 · (Edited)
There really is no mystery here. And no nefarious scam in play. The t&c's explain it. You can become a 'member' or a 'guest'. If you are a member you have access to all of Podpoints' sites. Some are free to use and some are at a cost. Most need the app to 'claim' the charge session, but I believe there is also a rare RFID card.

To use a paid-for site as a member you need to have a minimum of £1 credit in your account to claim that charge session after the 15 minutes free period. That 15-minute period is to give you time to open up an app and log in at the chosen site. Credit is applied to your account using the app to transfer funds from a chosen bank card.

I strongly suspect that in the OP's case he opened such an account and 'agreed' ( albeit unwittingly ) to place a £20 deposit to pay for not only that charge session, but also any future sessions until that credit had been used up. This will mean that the balance in the account is now £11.02 and is sitting there waiting for him to visit another Podpoint unit for some more electrons.

When that credit is run down to less than £1 the next session would then require a top-up payment into the account before it can be started. And in other cases, where a session takes that credit balance down to zero they will stop that charging session at that point and ask for a top-up. A minimum of £5 is possible.

The way forward here is to 'spend' that £11 in a couple of visits to other Podpoint outlets and then decline to top-up again if this system is not what is wanted. Run the balance down to nil and then leave it open just in case you need another Podpoint session at some time.

In any case, it is also possible to visit any Podpoint outlet as a 'guest' and PAYG by entering the relevant card details at each visit. The accounting credit system avoids the need to register a payment method at each visit. But does not steal money from you. Just holds it available, to make the next visit a bit easier to start.

Or you could write to them to say that you wish to close your account for personal reasons. Could be a sale of the EV, or emigration. No need to explain. And ask for a refund to be made. That refund is to be processed within 10 days back to the card that made the deposit in the first place.

Here are the t&c's where the above is explained.

Terms :: Pod Point
 
#56 ·
I strongly suspect that in the OP's case he opened such an account and 'agreed' ( albeit unwittingly ) to place a £20 deposit to pay for not only that charge session, but also any future sessions until that credit had been used up. This will mean that the balance in the account is now £11.02 and is sitting there waiting for him to visit another Podpoint unit for some more electrons.
I could well believe this but for it to be true Jeremey would have had to enter some kind of password to secure the account or be sent an email with a link to activate it. Did/have you had either of these @Jeremy Harris ? If not then there is no way that an account has been created/allocated and as such, how does he access his account?

IIRC didnt we see issues with this or another CPO who rather than taking pre-auth was taking a full transaction and then taking a long time to return the excess? Is this not the same issue?

I would presume legally, if they are holding your funds on account and you want them returned, they have to do so in a timely fashion. Either by way of closing your account (if one is open), and in the case you dont have an account, they are holding your funds against your will and should be compelled to return them. If you paid on a credit card you could have initiated a chargeback (which is one reason I always use a CC for most payments), and I've had great success in the past with both Tesco Finance and HSBC with very swift chargebacks.
 
#58 · (Edited)
Same thing happened to me with the Chargepoint app used by Instavolt - it was not made clear before I created an account for the app that they would keep a "float" of credit in the account and auto top up to (from memory) £20 when it went below £5.

I ended up emailing their support in disgust to have the account closed and the "float" balance refunded and went back to using contactless with Instavolt, which does pre-auth but only charges the exact amount afterwards.

Shitty practices on the part of charging vendors IMO that do nothing to further adoption of EV's - no ICE car driver has to deal with this nonsense at a service station. I don't understand why charging networks think they're something special that they can dictate weird requirements like signing up for accounts just to be able to charge a car, and then have the cheek to hold a float balance of your money at all times.

Sure - there is a way around it in both these cases (use contactless for Instavolt, or pay as a guest for podpoint as someone pointed out above) but it's not always obvious if you're in the dark on the side of the road somewhere just needing a charge to get home and you're mislead into thinking you need to sign up to an app to get a charge.

Public charging is still the worst part of the EV experience for me by a country mile, and the frustrating thing is that most of the annoyances such as payment methods are easily avoidable, if someone cared.

Universal no-account contactless payment at the point of use should have been mandated by law (as one of the payment options, not necessarily the only one) and was proposed by the government but they backed down due to pressure from charging networks saying it would cost too much to do a full retrofit to meet the contactless requirement on every charge point.

We're still living with the consequences of that backing down now.
 
#60 ·
Sure - there is a way around it in both these cases (use contactless for Instavolt, or pay as a guest for podpoint as someone pointed out above) but it's not always obvious if you're in the dark on the side of the road somewhere just needing a charge to get home and you're mislead into thinking you need to sign up to an app to get a charge.
This seems key. There's a big button on the website for claiming the charge, it seems the guest option is just a tiny link, and it's not even clear what the guest option is. It seems to be a deliberately deceptive practice, presumably because the aim is to get people to pay more money than they need to so the company holds more cash than it would if it only took the correct amount for a charge. AFAIK, charge point operators aren't regulated in the same way as banks, so if they are holding customer's money like this then is it as well protected as if it was in a bank account?
 
#68 ·
How would supporters of giving companies money for nothing react if they were still driving ICE cars and needed to have two to three times the cost of a fuel fill up as credit in an account with every fuel supplier in the country before they were allowed to fill?

Say there are a dozen different filling station fuel suppliers, an average car costs £80 to fill up, and every one of those dozen fuel supplies required that you keep an account with them, topped up to, say, £200. That would mean everyone in the country having around £2,400 permanently locked away in the coffers of the fuel suppliers. Imagine the same thing applied at supermarkets, with every supermarket demanding that you have an account and keep it topped up with two to three times than the cost of the weekly shop. How might consumers react to that business model?

The few CPOs that are still using this daft business model are getting to hang on to around two to three times the cost of a charge from every customer using their services, and in some cases (like mine) there's a good chance that money will be held for years (in over 8 years I've never needed to use a Podpoint before - there just aren't many of them around where we normally go).
 
#70 ·
How would supporters of giving companies money for nothing react if they were still driving ICE cars and needed to have two to three times the cost of a fuel fill up as credit in an account with every fuel supplier in the country before they were allowed to fill?
I don't disagree with your argument but the scaling up of the Pod Point thing into the scenario of petrol stations isn't really valid. The retention of generally quite small but many deposits will have been an 'earning' factored in to Pod Points investment strategy - having to set up an infrastructure from scratch with nascent technology.
What is clear going forwards is traction is going to build against this deposit thing and it'll have to be rethought. Whereas in the past charger availability was scant - any port in a storm - now people have the opportunity to avoid companies that they don't like.
 
#69 ·
You use the web link as a guest and that's supposed to be for a one off charge with no information retained and no power to take money in advance for any subsequent charging activity. Being forced into agreeing into T & Cs to get a one off charge isn't on frankly.

If they made an account for a contactless card and just hung on to the whole £20 nobody would think that was ok.
 
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