ESB charger failure reporting?

McGiver

Hi folks,

Anyone knows how/where to report ESB ecar charger that's out of order?

KCross

The number is on the charger and obviously the eCars website. Google is your friend.

It also helps if you have the charger ID which is also on the charger... usually a silver plate with a few letters and numbers which uniquely identifies it.

unkel

I reported the faulty CCS on the Efacec in Lucan last night. Again. It's been out for at least 3 weeks. The busiest FCP in Ireland. Seems the manufacturer has been involved and they've swapped out several of the boards. Still faulty. Shower of incompetent tossers.

Why on earth the ESB went with Portugese Efacec charge points when they could have gotten proper reliable ABB ones is anyone's guess :rolleyes:

Here's the ESB ecars numbers. Not that it will help: 01 258 3799 / 1890 372 387

Bring on that Ionity network, I stopped relying on the ESB one over a year ago and I wouldn't want to drive past the range of my car these days. If it ain't faulty, chances are there will be a L40 or two in the queue ahead of you, forcing several hours of delay...

McGiver

KCross wrote:

It also helps if you have the charger ID which is also on the charger... usually a silver plate with a few letters and numbers which uniquely identifies it.

Yeah, I've taken a snap of it.

KCross wrote:

The number is on the charger and obviously the eCars website. Google is your friend.

I did Google not obvious place on the esb website telling me that. Cheers.

McGiver

unkel wrote:

I reported the faulty CCS on the Efacec in Lucan last night. Again. It's been out for at least 3 weeks. The busiest FCP in Ireland. Seems the manufacturer has been involved and they've swapped out several of the boards. Still faulty. Shower of incompetent tossers.

Holy sh*t. Can you imagine that say water, electricity or similar public service would be out service for 2l3 weeks?

McGiver

unkel wrote:

Here's the ESB ecars numbers. Not that it will help: 01 258 3799 / 1890 372 387

Anybody still calling in this age, I don't. It's year 2018. They should have an email or, better, a button right on the charger to report fault. Irish government 50 years behind as always

Gumbo

McGiver wrote: »

Anybody still calling in this age, I don't. It's year 2018. They should have an email or, better, a button right on the charger to report fault. Irish government 50 years behind as always

Button on machine - kid will press it consistently.
Email - possible to do but with the call you get to talk to a physical person as it’s manned 24/7.

I don’t see an issue with this. If there was just an email, people would give out that you can’t call in.

slave1

It's not just the out of action that's the issue, the Athlone FC has been out a few times this year but still okay on their app or the web, then you phone them and they say we know, then you ask them to update their chargepoint system and they say they will and then you ask them how long it will be until it's back working and the response is always the same, we have no idea.
Honestly can't remember the last time we had a public charge, actually I can, it was the beginning of the Summer on a Dublin trip, rapid in Enfield in June, you just can't depend on the system

McGiver

kceire wrote:

Button on machine - kid will press it consistently. Email - possible to do but with the call you get to talk to a physical person as it’s manned 24/7.

Really? Press button when you logged in of course. Seriously folks, it's 2018, you know automation, AI and stuff. Actually, the charter should report the fault itself. But what I suggested would be OK as opposed to calling someone. That's a total joke.

McGiver

slave1 wrote:

It's not just the out of action that's the issue, the Athlone FC has been out a few times this year but still okay on their app or the web, then you phone them and they say we know, then you ask them to update their chargepoint system and they say they will and then you ask them how long it will be until it's back working and the response is always the same, we have no idea.

Looks like a proper state owned Irish enterprise!

unkel

McGiver wrote: »

Looks like a proper state owned Irish enterprise!

Yeah might as well just sell it / abandon it at this stage and hope commercial charging companies (like Ionity and FastNed) will take over and provide a reliable network

McGiver

unkel wrote:

Yeah might as well just sell it / abandon it at this stage and hope commercial charging companies (like Ionity and FastNed) will take over and provide a reliable network

They won't abandon it, they'll just let it get dilapidated. It's already happening. The usual Irish government approach

KAGY

Market square ininLongford's been down for at least 6 months, another one in Longford has one side that works intermittently but a colleague was told they won't fix it until it's a permanent fault

McGiver

KAGY wrote:

Market square ininLongford's been down for at least 6 months, another one in Longford has one side that works intermittently but a colleague was told they won't fix it until it's a permanent fault

Fantastic.

How does this stack up with the Irish government's commitment to have 10% EVs of all cars by 2020? Pure lunacy. Goals need to be ambitious but realistic.

unkel

Goals are only realistic if you commit to actively working towards them. Neither of these things have been the case in Ireland. If clear goals had been set out in 2014 (when we were out of the recession), a goal of 10% EV and 80% renewable electricity by say 2022 would have been doable with relatively little government (net) investment (but a lot of government nudging and some fairly heavy handed carrot and stick approach)

Very few Irish politicians with balls unfortunately.

McGiver

what_traffic wrote:

There is no logic to it - unless Discodog can produce some kind of logic that has evaded Transportation Engineers Worldwide for decades now.

Called ESB Ecars yesterday regarding faulty Chademo. Nice guy - "I'll check it out for ya, OK I'm rebooting it". Didn't help. He'd actually said "I see multiple faults with it, needs an engineer on site, he will come at some stage next week". Lovely.

So I wonder why the bloody machine doesn't report faults itself and they just run a report of faulty ones (daily?). Or maybe it does, they do have a report but they don't give a damn and aren't in hurry to send a person to fix it. You know free service, state owned company, why hurry, go online strike, don't do anything extra.

ED E

The sad thing is ESBN are fantastic when it comes to the mains grid. Small faults (500 premises say) are routinely dealt with within 45 minutes. Employees keep the response vans at home and are able to get most places fast. If only a small percentage of field staff were trained to work on CPs they'd have a first class service for the cost of a few man hours a week.

unkel

Busiest FCP in the country now out of service for 6 weeks. What a joke.

ELM327

Cant wait until they sell the network on (as per CRU decision paper) and someone competent can run it.
Morons.

unkel

Well in this case we can't blame the ESB. The Portugese manufacturer (Efacec) of the triple head charge point have been trying to fix it for several weeks. Unsuccessfully :rolleyes:

I hope Ionity will install more reliable chargers. ABB maybe?

ELM327

unkel wrote: »

Well in this case we can't blame the ESB. The Portugese manufacturer (Efacec) of the triple head charge point have been trying to fix it for several weeks. Unsuccessfully :rolleyes:

I hope Ionity will install more reliable chargers. ABB maybe?

Efacec are perfectly reliable units. ABB too. Once we don't get DBT units I don't mind.
I'd wager many pounds that the issue is not with Efacec but with ESB not contacting them at all.

Cienciano

I'd advise you to post it to their twitter account. ESB Networks has one. An email can be ignored, twitter is public. Keep reporting broken charge points, put up photos of them and get others to like the tweets, remind them weekly that it's still broken etc.

I guarantee you'll get more action than a phonecall or email that will be logged somewhere that no one can see and can be ignored/forgotten about.

unkel

ELM327 wrote: »

Efacec are perfectly reliable units.

Not much good having a good reputation for being reliable but when it breaks down the manufacturer can't fix it.

I've seen engineers at that charger before. I can't be certain, but I got the impression they could very well be Portuguese. I spoke to them and they didn't really understand me. Probably flown in. Also that charger has had its card reader replaced several times over the last year or so. You have probably experienced that yourself at that charger.

McGiver

unkel wrote:

Well in this case we can't blame the ESB. The Portugese manufacturer (Efacec) of the triple head charge point have been trying to fix it for several weeks. Unsuccessfully

Hey hang on folks, Chademo user here. CCS that way

McGiver

ELM327 wrote:

Efacec are perfectly reliable units.

Is there any hard evidence for this?

McGiver

unkel wrote:

I've seen engineers at that charger before. I can't be certain, but I got the impression they could very well be Portuguese. I spoke to them and they didn't really understand me. Probably flown in. Also that charger has had its card reader replaced several times over the last year or so. You have probably experienced that yourself at that charger.

You must be joking? Which European government would sign a tender with a provider of relatively simple technology which requires engineers to be brought from 2000kms away from abroad in case of fault? Common sense would dictate to select provider where you can fix stuff with local workforce as much as possible.

McGiver

unkel wrote:

Busiest FCP in the country now out of service for 6 weeks. What a joke.

Which one is that?

unkel

Lucan. But don't worry, it's just the CCS that is kaput. CHAdeMO is working fine

ELM327

McGiver wrote: »

Is there any hard evidence for this?

Anecdotal experience based on what's down and why.
Compared to the older DBT units, the efacec were a huge step up.

unkel wrote: »

Not much good having a good reputation for being reliable but when it breaks down the manufacturer can't fix it.

I've seen engineers at that charger before. I can't be certain, but I got the impression they could very well be Portuguese. I spoke to them and they didn't really understand me. Probably flown in. Also that charger has had its card reader replaced several times over the last year or so. You have probably experienced that yourself at that charger.

Yeah the card reader was a bit dodgy alright usually takes a few attempts to get it to work. To be honest I don't use the public network at all anymore, I have work charging with home as a backup and if we're going outside the range of the car (unless there's destination charging overnight or something) we take herself's prius.

liamog

McGiver wrote: »

You must be joking? Which European government would sign a tender with a provider of relatively simple technology which requires engineers to be brought from 2000kms away from abroad in case of fault? Common sense would dictate to select provider where you can fix stuff with local workforce as much as possible.

There is local support for the chargers, but at some point you need to escalate to the vendor. It's a 2 1/2 hour flight. They only have around 60 rapids to look after, so it doesn't make sense to set up a satellite office.

I run support for a software company, we have boots on the ground in all the countries we have customers, but occasionally I have to fly experts out to assist.

unkel

eCars said Efacec had already swapped out several logic boards. Probably not something local staff on the ground would do (and have the spares to do)

McGiver

liamog wrote:

I run support for a software company, we have boots on the ground in all the countries we have customers, but occasionally I have to fly experts out to assist.

That's completely different. This chargers are a relatively simple technology.

McGiver

unkel wrote:

eCars said Efacec had already swapped out several logic boards. Probably not something local staff on the ground would do (and have the spares to do)

And is that the reason for the delays?

liamog

McGiver wrote: »

That's completely different. This chargers are a relatively simple technology.

The thing about support is that everything is relativley simple until the moment that it's not. Clearly the local support has not been able to fix this charger, at which point flying in an engineer from another part of Europe is reasonable.


It's quicker to get to that rapid charger from Lisbon than from Dingle.

McGiver

liamog wrote:

The thing about support is that everything is relativley simple until the moment that it's not. Clearly the local support has not been able to fix this charger, at which point flying in an engineer from another part of Europe is reasonable.

The question is why they are not able to fix it locally. Or rather why the solution is so unreliable that it results in faulty which cannot be fixed locally.

DrPhilG

I've been harassing eCars for over a year now about their reporting process.

They refuse to mark a charger as faulty until an engineer has visited. Meaning that it could be down for days or weeks with unsuspecting drivers arriving at it and its still marked working on the map.

I understand that eCars can't just take someone's word that a charger is down, they might be hoaxing (why?) or the driver might be thick and not doing something right.

But they could either put a question mark on the map if it has been reported in, or they could mark it faulty once it has been called in by 3 or 4 different people.

ELM327

DrPhilG wrote: »

I've been harassing eCars for over a year now about their reporting process.

They refuse to mark a charger as faulty until an engineer has visited. Meaning that it could be down for days or weeks with unsuspecting drivers arriving at it and its still marked working on the map.

I understand that eCars can't just take someone's word that a charger is down, they might be hoaxing (why?) or the driver might be thick and not doing something right.

But they could either put a question mark on the map if it has been reported in, or they could mark it faulty once it has been called in by 3 or 4 different people.

This is why I use Zap Map. the ecars app is not reliable.

KCross

DrPhilG wrote: »

I've been harassing eCars for over a year now about their reporting process.

They refuse to mark a charger as faulty until an engineer has visited. Meaning that it could be down for days or weeks with unsuspecting drivers arriving at it and its still marked working on the map.

I understand that eCars can't just take someone's word that a charger is down, they might be hoaxing (why?) or the driver might be thick and not doing something right.

But they could either put a question mark on the map if it has been reported in, or they could mark it faulty once it has been called in by 3 or 4 different people.

And the elephant in the room... if the charger is broken it wont be reporting any successful charge sessions so surely thats a simple, reliable indication that the call-in is not a hoax.

Its just a case of "computer says no" from their call centre.

DrPhilG

KCross wrote: »

And the elephant in the room... if the charger is broken it wont be reporting any successful charge sessions so surely thats a simple, reliable indication that the call-in is not a hoax.

Its just a case of "computer says no" from their call centre.

I arrived at the Galgorm Hotel a few months back, plugged in at the charger for an overnight stay (left my number in case anyone arrived in the wee hours). It started fine, but unbeknownst to me it cut out 2 minutes later.

I didn't find out til the morning (I didn't have it set up on the app to inform me) but when I called eCars they cheerfully informed me that they had been receiving reports about it for months!

Every time they check the records they see that it has been used successfully. They couldn't (or didn't bother) check how long each successful charge was or they would know it was about 2 limits each time.

So they had been getting users (and the hotel staff apparently) calling in reporting it faulty, and all they would do is check the log, see a successful charge, refuse to do anything and the cycle continued.

Only after a very long and irritated conversation with me did they agree to mark it faulty on the map.

McGiver

liamog wrote:

It's quicker to get to that rapid charger from Lisbon than from Dingle.

Not to Killarney