Chargepoint is putting outrageous temporary hold charges on all charging stations. Probably some MBA fucking another business up.
Hi Person,
We’re writing to let you know about an important update to how payments are processed at ChargePoint stations.
As part of your use of ChargePoint services, a temporary hold charge of $50 for AC stations and $75 for DC stations will be placed on your payment method for each applicable charging session. Once the applicable charging session ends and the hold charge is removed, you will only be billed for the actual charging cost.
For more details, please see our FAQ: https://www.chargepoint.com/drivers/support.
Thank you, Team ChargePoint
What’s the infuriating part here? Most gas stations do this same thing. Its not charging you money. There’s no interest charges accruing or anything, and its just for the length of time you’re charging.
I paid over $200 in over draft fees due to these asinine holds from gas stations when I lived in the US. Luckily the banks in NZ aren’t allowed to do that shit.
Europe and basically anywhere else does this too. It just makes sure you actually have the money in the account.
My problem was the hold would stay for almost 2 weeks. It’s fine to hold for an hour or 2 but I’d spend $15 on gas but have $60 hold I couldn’t use until it was time to go get more gas
Ah, yeah. That’s an unreasonable amount of time. US banking networks are so slow compared with the rest of the world.
Because the “holds” never clear as instantly as the charges are incurred, but usually take around three business days to be available in your account again - during which somebody’s using your money to add to a pile of holds to earn interest from (instead of you). This is especially onerous if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck as so many are nowadays. It’s legalized theft that they get away with because they return the money they stole each time, but only after they’ve used it to make more money for themselves with.
but usually take around three business days to be available in your account again - during which somebody’s using your money to add to a pile of holds to earn interest from (instead of you).
I…think you may be misunderstanding how credit cards work. Here’s a super simplified version. There are two steps to a credit card transaction: authorization and settlement
Authorization is where you give your card to a merchant that then communicates the amount of money they want for the sale of whatever product or service to your credit card’s issuing bank. This amount is deducted from your “available balance” on your credit card however, the merchant hasn’t taken the money yet, and you aren’t being charged any interest yet. This is the “hold”. The reason for this step is to check if you have enough remaining credit to cover the purchase.
Settlement is where the money is actually given to the merchant, and where you start getting charged interest (or at least when your grace period starts).
So when you’re using an actual credit card the only negative impact you might have from a hold being placed is if you are running right up to your credit card limits. As an example, if your card have a $10,000 credit limit, you have a balance on your credit card of $9,950, you start a transaction that places a $50 authorization (hold) but don’t complete it, you won’t be charged interest on that $50, but your available balance will be zero and you won’t be able to put anything else on your card until the authorization expires.
Now, with some of the other things you said leads me to believe you might be talking about debit cards tied to your checking account instead of credit cards. In that case, yes its worse for you because in our $50 example, the Authorization step does tie up $50, but its not actually transferred out of your account, and it is no different than the bank making money from interest when that money is in your checking account. This is a problem with debit cards, not the way merchants use authorizations.
For many MANY reasons I highly recommend against using debit cards. This is just one example of how they suck.
I hate using credit cards, so yeah this type of transaction expecting a credit card for mundane things like paying for fuel is absurd. Gas doesn’t do this. We are probably talking about a tenth of one percent of all chargepoint transactions here with the need for this update.
I hate using credit cards
Can I ask what you don’t like about credit cards?
The notion of the credit card industry as they are helping to ensure poverty through deceit.
Okay, so your opposition is that credit cards can be misused by people trapping them in debt. Is that right?
What is this? A deposition?
Yeah, also in the eu the maximum session duration is 24 h. After 24h if the final payment hasn’t been requested the full authorization price will be applied and the session will be terminated, so the funds cannot be held more than 24 h. But maybe that’s also a difference between credit and debit cards?
Then what the hell is the point in the context of chargepoint? They didn’t do this before and did require a payment method on file for all charging sessions. I use a chargepoint charger every week, it is a free charger but requires a payment method. I’m willing to guess that even these sessions will place the hold.
Then what the hell is the point in the context of chargepoint?
If a customer runs up a huge charging bill using Chargepoint, Chargepoint wants to make sure it will get paid for it. Thats what the *authorization * (hold) does. It allows them to do a settlement where they actually get paid.
This looks ok, so that the merchant can be certain of payment. If putting a hold has bad effects otherwise, then that’s the infuriating part
That’s fine in normal cases when holds get removed in a timely fashion. The problem is there aren’t any rules ensuring that’s the case. Companies can take 3-5 days to clear that hold, which could allow a low balance account to overdraft despite having enough money for all real charges.
These holds are becoming the new charge structuring scam by banks.
That’s fucked, but not really the fault of this company guarding against customers trying to not pay with virtual cards or whatnot
