Shopping at Lidl has cost Peter Jansen dearly. Peter parked his car a few times at the charging station at that supermarket in Kaatsheuvel. At the end of the month he was presented with the bill: almost 500 euros. That was shocking and it has everything to do with the blocking rate. In addition to charging the necessary kilowatt hours, today’s motorist in many places also pays for the extra minutes if the battery has long been filled. And that’s where things went wrong for Peter.
Peter was astonished when he took a closer look at the bill of almost 500 euros. The high amount could not have been due to the amount of kilowatt hours (kWh) charged. Peter doesn’t even have a fully electric car, but a plug-in hybrid. “My wife always took the car off the charger when it was full after four hours, we are certainly not charging station sticklers,” says Peter to the ANWB.
Converted, the bill of 500 euros would be a rate of no less than 11.39 euros per kilowatt hour. However, the official rates of the charging station showed different prices: not 11.39 euros, but 66.6 cents per kWh.
Peter and his wife had checked in advance in their app what the rates for the relevant pole were. They could even charge for free. “It later turned out that two chargers were shown in the app at that location,” says Peter. “The one with the right, high rates and this free charging station. In reality, however, there turned out to be only one charging point: the one with the high rates.”
“From now on, I will no longer start charging sessions with the charging card.”
It later became clear that the charging point had been taken over by Lidl and that the original operator had not deregistered the pole.
In response to questions from the ANWB, Lidl announced that a time limit of 40 minutes has been introduced to prevent abuse. If you charge for longer, there will be a blocking rate of 54.6 cents per minute and there is no maximum.
As a service to its customers, the supermarket chain has installed a number of charging stations at the store. After all, “Highest quality, lowest price” is Lidl’s slogan. Peter Jansen now thinks very differently about this. “From now on, I will start charging sessions via the app and no longer with the charging card, so I can be sure that I am at the right pole from now on.”