No more free electrons from Tesco's

So who's been to a Tesco ? What's happening are the chargers still occupied. Have the serial freeloaders that don't shop gone away ?
 
Gomev said:
So who's been to a Tesco ? What's happening are the chargers still occupied. Have the serial freeloaders that don't shop gone away ?
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Aye my wife and I are going to Tesco tomorrow as usual so we’re keen to see that too. Will the office workers still drop off cars and go back to work in the ICE “taxi” ??
 
Gomev said:
So who's been to a Tesco ? What's happening are the chargers still occupied. Have the serial freeloaders that don't shop gone away ?
Click to expand...
We made our normal Tuesday shopping trip to our local Tesco’s this week.
All four EV bays where in use ( as normal ) and one was occupied by the regular white EV van !.
Another regular, is a white Audi “Fat e.Tron” but it was missing this week !.
Has the penny dropped it’s not free now ?.
I was just wondering 💭 if the other regular users, where still not aware of the fact that they where NOW being charged for their regular charging session from this week 🤣.
I guess we may need to leave it a few weeks, in order for them to realise that they are now being billed for the juice !.
I am not really a public charging person myself.
We are very lucky enough to be able to charge at home, from our own wall box on a much cheaper overnight tariff from EDF.
I assume that the revenue now being taken at the once free to use Pod Point branded posts, is now going back directly to Tesco themselves ???.
Or is Pod Point themselves receiving a cut from the money taken from these units now ??.
After all, Tesco is suppling the juice to run them of course.
Like I said above, I am not a public charging user myself, so don’t understand who gets what from the revenue this units produce.
There was definitely some charging “free loading” going on !.
Evidence of some practice of EV’s cars getting dropped off and then collected again hours and hours latter for example.
I mean, come on !.
If you offer something for free, then some people are going to spoil it for others.
The EV bays at our Tesco’s had no time restriction attached to them, so this promoted a bad practice of cars blocking bays all day long.
Bad enough in itself you may think, but these people where not even shopping in the store.
Can Tesco afford to still offer free juice to their customers, given the profits they report.
I guess they could, but in the case of our local store, the chargers have been providing free juice for about six months now.
It that time they have had time to analyse if store takings have increased as a result of installing the charging posts, to help off set the cost of the free juice.
Clearly, this has not been the case hence they are now charging for this juice.
Increases in the price of electricity has not helped the situation one bit either.
It must have not gone unnoticed that this facility was being totally abused by some folks as well.
All too common really, you provide a feature, then it gets abused,.
End result, the free facility becomes chargeable or even removed.
 
Of course, they could just be parked there without being on charge... Ages ago I complained to the info desk about ICE cars blocking the bays (which are close to the store) but they said they didn't have authority or manpower to challenge them. I don't go there often now but not noticed that recently.
 
smokie said:
Of course, they could just be parked there without being on charge... Ages ago I complained to the info desk about ICE cars blocking the bays (which are close to the store) but they said they didn't have authority or manpower to challenge them. I don't go there often now but not noticed that recently.
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Don’t worry 😉 I have checked !.
All of the ones I have checked, are pulling juice alright.
 
You can only be charged (money) if you registered a payment method (I never did).
You still have to confirm the (electricity) charge and hence the payment so it can't come as a surprise unless you are on autopilot and just pressing buttons on your phone screen without reading. Second thoughts, there will probably be a lot of people surprised!
 
Demand still seems high.
Just checked my local Tesco and 3 out of 4 are in use.
 
Alb said:
Demand still seems high.
Just checked my local Tesco and 3 out of 4 are in use.
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My car is not here yet but as I cannot home charge this what I will be doing as part of my grazing charging. I will be doing my weekly shopping so might as well charge.
 
4ND said:
This is the type of behaviour which contributed to the demise of free chargers:

www.minif56.com

Selfish EV Owner

www.minif56.com www.minif56.com
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I know that charging point it’s at Birchwood nr Warrington and he’s not the only one doing it. There are 4 more pod points around the other side of the building and from very early morning very often they to are all taken for many hours office workers I think, but as you say the rail station is only just across the road can’t see anyway you can stop them myself the car park is free and unlimited as far as I know.
Les
 
Others will know more about how this works in detail but I'm just back from Portugal (without my EV!!) and it seems there you get charged an amount per unit of electricity and also an amount per minute you are hooked up.

It would be a very good solution to this, and other, problems with public charging. And obviously the software exists and works.,
 
ZTT said:
My Tesco only has 7kw chargers so I won’t bother in future as the cost is the same as a standard domestic tariff.

The advantage was I could replace the miles driven there and back whilst I was shopping but you can’t put enough charge in whilst shopping to be bothered now.
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I’d agree with that - we’re nine miles from our Tesco and a charge during our lunch and shop replenished what we used on the return trip plus a wee bit. That’s assuming we could actually access a charger that wasn’t being hogged by local office workers 🤦‍♂️
 
Les burrows said:
I know that charging point it’s at Birchwood nr Warrington and he’s not the only one doing it. There are 4 more pod points around the other side of the building and from very early morning very often they to are all taken for many hours office workers I think, but as you say the rail station is only just across the road can’t see anyway you can stop them myself the car park is free and unlimited as far as I know.
Les
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Apparently in the thread, a poster said something about them going to be sticking number plate recognition in the car park and having a maximum stay limit?
 
4ND said:
Apparently in the thread, a poster said something about them going to be sticking number plate recognition in the car park and having a maximum stay limit?
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A grand idea I’d say if they also changed the chargers to CCS type so you can get a reasonable charge in the hour or whatever is allowed.

Archev said:
A grand idea I’d say if they also changed the chargers to CCS type so you can get a reasonable charge in the hour or whatever is allowed.
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Electric cars were missing today
Since Tesco said we have to pay
The office workers all around
Now shun where they once saved a pound
So other folks can shop and lunch
And charge if it really comes to the crunch
But a rapid charge though costing more
Would be more helpful at the store
A CCS would charge up quicker
And make the process so much slicker
Time limit and penality
Would help the mentality
And make it worthwhile
Taking on more miles
 
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