@CYC Continued to have a poor experience with your chargers today...
We drove to Manchester, expecting to take the kids to the Museum of Science & Industry...
- Your map shows a charger called "Hulme Street". There is indeed a charger on Hulme Street, however on your map, it is shown on a completely different road (River Street). It took us many minutes of driving around (River Street is one-way) trying to find the charger. A picture showing this charger (blue, on the left) and where Hulme Street actually is (to the right) is attached.
- Your website and app clearly state "Parking free of charge" for this charger. However there is a clear sign next to it that says "Electric car charging, must pay and display at machine". A picture showing the "free parking" note is attached (unfortunately we did not take a picture of the sign next to the charger, because we were frustrated and trying to find a charge).
- This charger appears to have a poor mobile signal, because we failed to start a charge for over 10 minutes. Our mobile signal was fine and the app worked fine retrieving lists of chargers etc.. The step that always failed was the one that connects to the charger and starts the charge.
Because of this experience, we ended up leaving Manchester and heading for the Traffod Centre instead because we had barely any charge and knew there were significantly more chargers there. After the experience at Hulme Street, we didn't dare try the other chargers nearby for fear of them failing for the same reason, and us not having enough charge to get anywhere. This is the first time between our two cars in almost three months we've ever had to leave a charger without charging (all but one of our previous charges have been with other networks).
When we got to the Trafford Centre (with 2 miles of charge), we had the same frustration trying to start the charge for 10 minutes, before the app eventually managed to connect to the server (again, our signal was fine, this was the connection to the charger). Fortunately, we managed to get a charge.
We really want to be happy with CYC/GMEV, but with the terrible experiences, and being told that despite frequently visiting Manchester we can't have a card for the advertised cost, it's becoming increasingly difficult. We've never had these sorts of problems with any other charging network.
I'm now trying to find out whether the RFID card would resolve these issues (even though I'm incredibly reluctant to pay £20/year when every other network is free, and we've not had issues with theirs), but can't find any information on whether your charger still needs its connection to your servers to start a charge (eg. to verify the RFID card is live). There's absolutely not point having the RFID card if it doesn't remove the weak link, which is your own chargers data connections. Really, you need to work on this. I've always told people that say EV infrastructure is ready that they're wrong; but now I really couldn't recommend an EV around Manchester with the state of your chargers.