Electrify America EV Charging Payment SNAFU

[paulgipe]

I wonder if EA has a glitchy auto-refill mechanism? If so, and if you're going to be in a dire spot if charging fails, then I wonder if it would be more reliable if you added more than the minimum $20 top-up to your EA account (e.g. $100).

I recently experienced that Chargepoint was happy to let my balance go "negative": I had an expired credit card on file with them, and they were unable to top-up, but the charge session still ran until it was complete.

This was my conclusion as well--glitchy auto fill. And from now on if I plan to use EA at all I will check the "balance" before I go out. You shouldn't have to do this but it's a lot simpler than fumbling with a cell phone in the wind, sun, and swirling dust.

Paul

[cwerdna]

EvGo is one that lets you pay as you go another is evconnect.

My only guess as to why chargepoint and EA take 10 dollar chunks is to earn interest on it to help with the profit. I do see stores say like a $5.00 minimum for credit card purchases or some such so that idea may have merit as well though on my chargepoint and evconnect I have it linked to my paypal.

EVgo is also quite pricey.

So I found https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credi ... fees-costs that talks about credit card processors (some take a fixed portion + %) and then interchange fees.

https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/busines ... rates.html and https://usa.visa.com/support/small-busi ... -fees.html let you see interchange fees. For example, a skim of https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/ ... t-fees.pdf for most, show $0.05 to $0.21 + a percentage.

EA does let you pay as you go w/o using their app but you'd have to use their maligned credit card readers, some of which are known to have problems (as admitted by EA). And, you wouldn't be eligible for cheaper Pass+ pricing if you did that.

[salyavin]

I agree EvGo can cost a bit more than others all things being equal (power costs and such a complex issue in rural areas).

I can only imagine how much credit card fees impact anyone with thin profit margins.