Geniepoint sinks even lower

[Gomev]

Received an email the other day from them informing me that they're raising their pre-auth charge from £8 to £35 for PAYG customers. For those with an account a mere £25.
Not seen this reported on here so apologies if it has.
I will continue my avoidance of anything that bears their name, but if you have to use one and it's actually working then i suggest either use a card such as Electroverse or at worst a credit card. Avoid debit cards at all costs as you're likely to end up with 2 or more charges.

 

[siteguru]

Applegreen charge points (such as those at Gretna Green services) charge a pre-auth of £30 ... I fell foul of this one time when it took 3 goes to get a charge working; there were 3x pre-auths which resulted in 1x genuine charge amount, 1x pre-auth that didn't drop until I emailed to complain, and 1x spurious charge amount which I've no idea what happened (and which they refunded when I complained).

 

[Rolfe]

Applegreen charge points (such as those at Gretna Green services) charge a pre-auth of £30 ... I fell foul of this one time when it took 3 goes to get a charge working; there were 3x pre-auths which resulted in 1x genuine charge amount, 1x pre-auth that didn't drop until I emailed to complain, and 1x spurious charge amount which I've no idea what happened (and which they refunded when I complained).

I had a similar experience there, three £30 pre-authorisation charges and no electricity. They went away in the end. Gridserve, which did give me a charge, only took £1 pre-authorisation.

I tried an Applegreen charger at Abington last week to see if I could get it to work. First thing I noticed was that the chargers now had a sticker saying that the pre-authorisation charge, which is now £40 thank-you-very-much, was only to check the card was valid and that there were sufficient funds, and it would go away, to be replaced by the charge for the actual electricity drawn. I wonder if they've had complaints.

My first thought was to use my credit card, so that I wasn't tying up money in my current account. However the chargers were having nothing of that. I think the card readers were malfunctioning because a lot of people were having trouble and shifting between chargers. I got the third charger I tried to work with my debit card, but only after both cards had been waved at several chargers several times.

Surprisingly, when I got home and checked my bank account, there were no authorisation charges to be seen, and only the debit for the small amount of electricity I had actually drawn.

 

[Shrink Proof]

As ever in this marvellous country, this is all the wrong way round. We should be credited with a pre-authorisation charge, paid by the companies who run the chargers. Putting say £50 on our card in case the charger is broken or malfunctioning, as so often happens. If the charger then comes up with the goods, the pre-authorisation money evaporates. This would protect us from the excess costs we incur from their inefficiency, such as driving out of our way to another charger and extra phone calls, as well as compensating us for our wasted time.

 

[ARealHuman]

This is easy ammo for the anti-EV brigade (and yes I know some places that sell fuels for ICE vehicles also do this).