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.

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.

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.

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.

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?