EV general discussion

I’ve got a kink for people treating me like crap

You must have the worst luck. I certainly wouldn’t be so patient and accommodating for a Hyundai. It’s not like they are desirable, or have a reputation for good customer service. Nor do they have a reputation for building top quality cars. They are the epitome of “meh” or just average at every single level. Their customer service also reviews poorly overall.

Far too many red flags with this one already and they seem to be incredibly incompetent and even disrespectful.

I’m not saying they are terrible, just bang average and certainly not worth this kind of crap over.
 
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There seems to be a bit of self sabotage going on too tbh. Looks like they arranged collection as agreed and sent you the finance docs for signing but you didn't sign, that can't be blamed on the dealer entirely surely.

Best thing is probably to start over now though given all that's happened
 
In general yes, you should be signing 24-48 hours before agreed collection to ensure a smooth handover. But it’s not uncommon for finance agreements to be signed at collection, especially if you have never inspected the car. Typically credit checks would have been completed long before collection day.

This is more about the funds being released to the dealership before collection. The 14 day cooldown periods starts when you sign, not when you collect. So as is typical, all the risk “trust” is placed on the buyer.
 
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So, here’s a fun one: we came away on holiday last week to a house in Cumbria for a family get together. From Cheltenham it’s just over 200 miles, plus another 20 to join up with the folks near Preston. In the current weather, just about doable in the OH’s EQC. Add in a car full of stuff, toddler’s toys and roof box and it starts to get a bit hit and miss!

I’m a firm believer in charging when you can and not when you need to, so I was never going to risk it and knowing there wasn’t charging available at the property we pulled into Keele services and stuck it on charge.

Well, I attempted to - the Gridserve refused to connect and the Tesla next to me wasn’t having much luck either so we gave up and went ten miles north to try again.

Lots more chargers, several in use so I was confident of getting some electrons - 5 chargers later and absolutely nothing, either failure to connect or a brief charge and then stopping again 5 seconds later. It left a brief niggle of “is it me?” in my head…

The boy needed his nap and I knew there was good chargers near my parents that used before so we carried on up to the M55 and I dropped them off to go and try my luck. Another 6 chargers later and I now knew the car was the problem, with an occasional red charging lock indicator around the plug and exclamation on the dash but not much else. Having seen these before a few times in the last couple of weeks but having had no issues AC charging my head turned to a problem in the DC system and I started making calls to the local MB dealerships as I was sat on 18% and at the start of a holiday.

Both local ones in Blackpool and Preston robbed me off and refused to look at it that day or even get back to me at all, and the local independant couldn’t do EV work that deep, which left me in a bit of a pickle and thinking of all sorts of scenarios with hire cars and recovery trucks etc.

Then had a lightbulb moment (no, not @danlightbulb) and figured that the AC charging had worked that night before I left, so why wouldn’t it be working now? Zapmap found me a 22kW charger less than a mile away and when I plugged in the car was taking the full 11kW quite happily, so I sat the for an hour till I had enough range to get to our holiday home (plus a buffer), picked up the family and then went full EVangelist sitting at 50-60mph behind a lorry all the way up the M6 :D

Charged it locally on some public AC in the Lakes and we haven’t done much driving here anyway so I can get home no problem and it’s booked in to the MB garage down there to figure out what part of the DC system is knackered.
 
Charged it locally on some public AC in the Lakes and we haven’t done much driving here anyway so I can get home no problem and it’s booked in to the MB garage down there to figure out what part of the DC system is knackered.

Could be the comms on CANBUS not talking properly from the DC/DC convertor to HV battery, One thing you could try yourself is a hard reset of the car, remove the 12v negative for 15-30 mins then pop it back on try again on DC, if the same failure then probably is related to the above if faiiing the handshake but chargiong fine on the AC.
 
Sounds like an adventure alright. I had the opposite with an Audi E-Tron 50 that would only DC charge.

I have done entire 600 mile weekend road trips around completely unplanned AC destination charging. I used AC car park charging when doing touristy stuff, like boat trips or sight seeing tours, eating etc. Usually get back after 2-4 hours and even at 11kWh it means another decent chunk of range added.
 
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Could be the comms on CANBUS not talking properly from the DC/DC convertor to HV battery, One thing you could try yourself is a hard reset of the car, remove the 12v negative for 15-30 mins then pop it back on try again on DC, if the same failure then probably is related to the above if faiiing the handshake but chargiong fine on the AC.

One thing I did find that worked online was the suggestion simply leave the car turned off for 15 minutes then try again, and when I did that it started charging for a few seconds then failed, then consistently failed over and over.

While interesting, the rest of it im leaving for the dealership to sort out. I used to change my own cambelts, but I’m not touching the electrics on this thing :D

Sounds like an adventure alright. I had the opposite with an Audi E-Tron 50 that would only DC charge.

I have done entire 600 mile weekend road trips around completely unplanned AC destination charging. I used AC car park charging when doing touristy stuff, like boat trips or sight seeing tours, eating etc. Usually get back after 2-4 hours and even at 11kWh it means another decent chunk of range added.

They are quite abundant even here in the Lakes, plus a hotel had a 7kw I can just leave it at overnight. It’s only charging at 4.2 but that’s enough to live with.
 
You must have the worst luck. I certainly wouldn’t be so patient and accommodating for a Hyundai. It’s not like they are desirable, or have a reputation for good customer service. Nor do they have a reputation for building top quality cars. They are the epitome of “meh” or just average at every single level. Their customer service also reviews poorly overall.

Far too many red flags with this one already and they seem to be incredibly incompetent and even disrespectful.

I’m not saying they are terrible, just bang average and certainly not worth this kind of crap over.

Their exec customer service team are great, and have been completely shocked at how I’ve been treated by them.


I’ve asked to see if the deal can be transferred to another branch.


If not, back to square one. Seemingly impossible to find a company with customer service these days.

Not good customer service, just any level of customer service.
 
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Their exec customer service team are great, and have been completely shocked at how I’ve been treated by them.


I’ve asked to see if the deal can be transferred to another branch.


If not, back to square one. Seemingly impossible to find a company with customer service these days.

Not good customer service, just any level of customer service.
You are dealing with unit shifting mass market car brands unfortunately. Number one priority for most is "What are the monthlies?". Actual customer service ranks WAY down the list, to the point where people can have absolutely shocking service from a brand then still go back for more if Leaseloco throws a '99 Amazing value' score at a particular deal.

The only good dealership experiences I've heard of locally in recent times are BYD and Toyota, although seeing the state they thought it was OK to leave the bonnet trim on my dads Avensis (only two clips fitted and the thing bouncing off the engine) I'm not too sure I'd be as glowing of Toyota.
 
You are dealing with unit shifting mass market car brands unfortunately. Number one priority for most is "What are the monthlies?". Actual customer service ranks WAY down the list, to the point where people can have absolutely shocking service from a brand then still go back for more if Leaseloco throws a '99 Amazing value' score at a particular deal.

The only good dealership experiences I've heard of locally in recent times are BYD and Toyota, although seeing the state they thought it was OK to leave the bonnet trim on my dads Avensis (only two clips fitted and the thing bouncing off the engine) I'm not too sure I'd be as glowing of Toyota.

Yeah you’re absolutely right.


Makes me incredibly proud to work where I do though. The senior management team is full of people like myself who are hell-bent on delivering top class customer service, and we are always looking to do better.


The downside is I have a similar expectation elsewhere :(
 
Yeah you’re absolutely right.


Makes me incredibly proud to work where I do though. The senior management team is full of people like myself who are hell-bent on delivering top class customer service, and we are always looking to do better.


The downside is I have a similar expectation elsewhere :(
Same. Our business has a limited customer base, is reliant on repeat business and I look after the customer support.

As you say though, it does raise your expectations of others and you are frequently left disappointed.
 
The customer support tends to find the lowest tolerable level people will put up with in the pursuit of a good deal.

Basically the lowest level they can get away with, then go a bit lower.
 
Same. Our business has a limited customer base, is reliant on repeat business and I look after the customer support.

As you say though, it does raise your expectations of others and you are frequently left disappointed.
This is probably the difference. Car salesperson will likely never see you again so they do the bare minimum. Especially as sales and servicing are so detached from each other.

Still, it is frustrating when they are crap lol
 
This is probably the difference. Car salesperson will likely never see you again so they do the bare minimum. Especially as sales and servicing are so detached from each other.

Still, it is frustrating when they are crap lol
Car salespeople are likely to be less bothered about customer service because in their mind by the time you come to look at buying your next car they will be sales manager at Bentley... if the general mentality of most salespeople I've come across is anything to go by :p
 
Slight tangent but virgin media recently got done £28m for making it night on impossible to leave them and £24m for treatment to vunerable customers.
It's like their customer service skills could do with improving as well
 
Slight tangent but virgin media recently got done £28m for making it night on impossible to leave them and £24m for treatment to vunerable customers.
It's like their customer service skills could do with improving as well
My annual bill with VMB is £500k, i'll just add.......... what customer service skills?...........
 
haha need to do the math...this is very general fag packet maths ofc
assumptions:
all ICE cars need to go to a station to fill up, an ICE car can fill up 0-full tank in about 5mins
not all EVs need to go to a rapid charger to fill up, it takes 30 mins to "fill" 60% of the battery (20-80)
an EV has shorter range...assume half the usable range of an ICE if babying the battery (80-20)
so, for the same range, an EV will need to go to a charger twice vs once for an ICE filling up to full each time

say 100,000 cars for the same distance
ICE = full tank -> drive -> fill -> drive
EV = 80 -> drive -> fill -> drive -> fill -> drive

so, if there were 100% ICE cars vs 100% EVs
ICE = total 500,000 minutes spent at the pumps (100k x 5 x 1)
EV, taking your 20% home charging = 80,000 needing to use a rapid charger
= total 4,800,000 minutes spent at a charger (80k x 30 x 2)

fag packet maths says will need about 10x more EV chargers than petrol pumps to avoid larger queues
the reality is probably a lot more nuanced though

EVs needing to charge at a rapid 80% of the time seems massively pessimistic! Obviously everyone's usage is different, but in 6 years/~50k miles of EV ownership I've had to charge on a rapid maybe a total of 20-30 times
 
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