At the beginning of April, I ordered a new £28,000 Renault Zoe electric car from my local dealer. As part of the deal, a company called BP Pulse was supposed to come and install a charger at my home.
I have been trying ever since to get it installed. The dealer has put in the request twice, but nothing has happened. As I need to get this before the car arrives, I took up the battle but am no nearer to getting it done.
After a great many phone calls, I was finally able to submit the required online application at the start of May. A few days later, I received a warning that my application had failed, and finally a message to say “we are sorry to see you go”.
I have no idea why I got this as I didn’t end the application.
The whole thing has been hugely frustrating and I’ve wasted hours of my life trying to get this resolved. We live in a rural area and the nearest public charger is 17 miles away.
I am within an inch of cancelling the car purchase and starting a fight to get my deposit back.
WK, North Yorkshire
This is the first significant complaint we have received about BP Pulse (or Chargemaster as it was previously called), but your tale is a long and unhappy one.
I suspect that part of the problem may be that you don’t have a smartphone, although there should be a system for such users.
In fairness to the company, it immediately got on the case, and your charger was installed this week – complete with an isolator for which there would normally have been an extra charge.
The company says: “We’re so sorry about WK’s very poor experience. Somebody made a mistake when her application was received and we then made things worse by not spotting the original error. While not at all typical of the normal service we provide, it isn’t acceptable and we’ll learn the lessons.”
The company has also apologised to you directly and offered you six months’ free charging on its public network.
You are just happy that you will be able to charge the Zoe, which is an excellent and practical choice.
Your next move should be to switch your home electricity tariff to a specialist EV deal.
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