Had something in mind today, but didn't work out, and more evidence of lets say an irritating charging network.
I had a conversation with Pod-Point, who partner with LIDL and others and have a few useful locations around the north-east for their charging stations. All currently inaccessible to us seeing as we dont have a smartphone.
I had an idea that if I registered an account on line, which I did and primed it with £10 credit, that on arriving at one of the LIDL rapid chargers I would be able to phone the number and get them to start a charge. This possibility was explored with them on the phone before we left, and we would give it a try.
Arrived at Consett LIDL about 4.00 ish and tried to get them to activate the charge. It soon became clear that the person I was speaking to couldnt do this because she was part of the "out of hours team" , and only the "main office" would have access to my account information. Irritating and off-putting.....am I going to bother trying the "main office" during "main office hours" to see if they can start my charging session remotely and take appropriate payment for it from my credit balance
Who knows, certainly not at the weekend and can I put myself through the irritation of trying to get round a system they have set up which requires all users to have a smart phone and "the app".
As many including me have said on the thread before it needs to be easy and all charging points should have a PAYG option with a bank card. Or even a voucher with a code for the charger you can get with some grubby cash you hand over at the Lidl Tills.
The other point of the day re chargers was having to wait. Charger 1 was occupied with a car on 35% ish charge which was going to take ages to complete. Had to drive 5 miles to the next one....bingo charger free. Then the LIDL one, the charger was occupied when we arrived, so we were waiting half an hour for the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV driver to come back, even before the failure to get POd Point to remotely start the charging session.
Not a good couple of days for the North East Charging network although today we did stop off at Morrisons Geniepoint at Blaydon which we knew would be working and was also vacant to correct the Consett debacle with Pod-Point. Its a decent run economically wise from Consett to Blaydon mostly downhill and the milage left guessometer invariably goes up
REgards Neil