False Electrify America Idle Fees

[fmtexmme]

I was on a trip last week and I stopped at a six charger Electrify America station with 44% remaining battery charge. I pull up to charger #2 and I plug in. Everything seems to go fine at first. The charger recognizes my car and shows me the screen with the pricing (which is irrelevant since I still have my free charging bundle). I select continue and a message "Initiating charging" comes up .... and stays up for nearly a minute but nothing happens. Then another message comes up "Connecting to vehicle" and the whole process starts again. I again select the continue button and again the "Initiating charging" message comes up but nothing happens. I hit cancel and disconnected the charger. I moved to charger #4 and successfully charged to 80%, adding ~32 kWh.

End of story, or so I thought. Later that day I get a receipt from Ford and it has a session fee of $8.32. I also don't see anything in the email they deducted from my balance. I thought this was odd since I've never been charged before and I know I have plenty of balance left to cover the session. I call Ford and they assure me they will get everything fixed and credit the charge back to my credit card. A couple days later I get a message from Ford that the charge was for idle fees and they would be unable to refund my money. Thing is, my car was not idle on the charger. I stopped the charging at 80%. I can only assume this had something to do with the issues on the first charger I connected to.

Since Ford hasn't responded my messages about this, I have disputed the charge with my credit card company. Just be sure to watch your receipts when using EA. I haven't had issues before this and hopefully this will be a one time thing.

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[TheSteelRider]

I was on a trip last week and I stopped at a six charger Electrify America station with 44% remaining battery charge. I pull up to charger #2 and I plug in. Everything seems to go fine at first. The charger recognizes my car and shows me the screen with the pricing (which is irrelevant since I still have my free charging bundle). I select continue and a message "Initiating charging" comes up .... and stays up for nearly a minute but nothing happens. Then another message comes up "Connecting to vehicle" and the whole process starts again. I again select the continue button and again the "Initiating charging" message comes up but nothing happens. I hit cancel and disconnected the charger. I moved to charger #4 and successfully charged to 80%, adding ~32 kWh.

End of story, or so I thought. Later that day I get a receipt from Ford and it has a session fee of $8.32. I also don't see anything in the email they deducted from my balance. I thought this was odd since I've never been charged before and I know I have plenty of balance left to cover the session. I call Ford and they assure me they will get everything fixed and credit the charge back to my credit card. A couple days later I get a message from Ford that the charge was for idle fees and they would be unable to refund my money. Thing is, my car was not idle on the charger. I stopped the charging at 80%. I can only assume this had something to do with the issues on the first charger I connected to.

Since Ford hasn't responded my messages about this, I have disputed the charge with my credit card company. Just be sure to watch your receipts when using EA. I haven't had issues before this and hopefully this will be a one time thing.

Did you call EA? Ford is just a pass through.

 

[Monke]

When I used EA along I-20 West of Ft. Worth, many stations did not close out the previous charge sessions so the specific charger was not available. In the past, some stations lost Internet connection, I could charge my MME and EA did not charge me because it could not determine how long I was at the charger. EA was still charging people by minutes. The app still showed that I was at the charger for hours after I left the station. That meant that charger would not be available until it disconnected from my app and that happened eventually. That created a nightmare for me if I had to charge again at the next station using the app while the previous session had not closed out.

Last time I charged at EA, some stations showed as not available on the app but some of those were available. I think all of those stations lost the connection. The only way to charge was to use a credit card. No more complimentary sessions.

If you call EA, they might be able to see the connection issue. Obviously, you were charging at another station during the idle time on the first station.

 

[fmtexmme]

Did you call EA? Ford is just a pass through.

I have not. I wasn't quite sure how it would work with the Ford intermediary. I will try that.

EDIT: I called EA and they pulled up the charging session and told me the charge was for sales tax, not idle fees. I asked why I was charged sales tax for that session when I have never been charged for previous EA sessions that used my free charging bundle and they couldn't answer that but they are looking into it.

 

[4wheeldog]

I have not. I wasn't quite sure how it would work with the Ford intermediary. I will try that.

EDIT: I called EA and they pulled up the charging session and told me the charge was for sales tax, not idle fees. I asked why I was charged sales tax for that session when I have never been charged for previous EA sessions that used my free charging bundle and they couldn't answer that but they are looking into it.

Sales tax? Did you get over $100 worth of charge? Because over $8 sales tax would be for a significant amount.

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