Andersen EV charger support

[Itidiot]

Bad news for Andersen EV Customers. Anyone who has an open order should cancel asap.

Auto supply chain crisis sparks end for British EV charging group

A supplier of residential charging points for electric vehicles has gone bust after falling victim to the global automotive supply chain crisis.

news.sky.com

 

[Chris CG]

Looks like I'll be controlling the charging from within the car from now on then! Buggar - The Anderson App was so easy to use too!

 

[browellm]

Oof. Seriously looked at one of those at the time too.

 

[Durzel]

Had an Andersen A2 for nearly 3 years, haven't really had any hardware issues to speak of but have lost functionality when their servers have gone down.

I guess that's going to become a permanent thing soon, and my charger will turn into a dumb one that I can't turn on or off. That sucks.

 

[Mrklaw]

Is there no way you can control it locally eg with home assistant? I wish more companies with cloud approaches would commit to removing those dependencies if they stop selling or supporting it

 

[Rooster6655]

There is most defiantly more to it than 'suppressed sales', sounds more like an unsustainable business model.

Well I guess this means anyone with a warranty is now stuffed, the charger itself was great but I already had one replaced within 18 months so I guess I will need a completely new one if this one breaks now.

Is there no way you can control it locally eg with home assistant? I wish more companies with cloud approaches would commit to removing those dependencies if they stop selling or supporting it

There is no way to control the charger sadly, the chargers connect to AWS and the app connects to the AWS servers.

Badly setup really, people should have been able to access the chargers without internet access locally, not really on internet connectivity for the charging schedule.

I expect if the company is taken over and they want to continue working with existing customers then there will be a premium price to pay for the app, as they were likely to start charging after the 3 year period from what I heard.

Looks like I'll be controlling the charging from within the car from now on then! Buggar - The Anderson App was so easy to use too!

Hope its and easy process!

 

[Durzel]

The news article suggests they've been unable to find anyone to take it over as a going concern.

Probably a good idea for anyone who has a schedule set up on it to remove it while the cloud servers are still available. The article suggests 40 people have been made redundant, which could potentially be most if not all of the actual day-to-day staff.

 

[Durzel]

Hopefully the mods don't mind me uploading this - for anyone who might need it in the future and finds this thread.

 

[Winner365]

I bought mine 4months ago on my Amex credit card. If this becomes defunct does anyone know if we could I be entitled to claim this back? They weren’t cheap units so that money could be handy right now.

 

[browellm]

I bought mine 4months ago on my Amex credit card. If this becomes defunct does anyone know if we could I be entitled to claim this back? They weren’t cheap units so that money could be handy right now.

Definitely worth a shot I would say. CC companies are pretty generous when it comes to this sort of thing. You have nothing to lose asking.

 

[Matt125]

Definitely one of the better looking EV chargers out there - a shame! I ended up going to PodPoint based on cost, but if I was to invest in a new house I'd have picked up one of these for the aesthetics!

 

[Rooster6655]

I bought mine 4months ago on my Amex credit card. If this becomes defunct does anyone know if we could I be entitled to claim this back? They weren’t cheap units so that money could be handy right now.

Your charge will still work even if the app goes down, after something like 15minutes of being disconnected the charge should act dumb and turn itself on, you can probably achieve the same by disconnecting it from the wifi or resetting it.

I don't think you will be able to claim due to lack of app support seeing as the charger would still technically be working, unless of course you could claim that you wanted to return it but might be a challenge. If the charger stops working within 3 years (expected warranty) I would think you would have more of a case with the credit card company but still might not be easy.

 

[amnlinc]

If it goes dumb I think I will be trying a section 75 on my credit card. Losing all the "smart" services means it isn't what was purchased and a good chunk of functionality is broken

 

[thewishy]

I assume there is no Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) support?

 

[Leejmoff]

Oh rubbish, I hope this doesn't cause a problem with my Octopus Intelligent scheduling.

 

[Rooster6655]

I assume there is no Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) support?

Apparently OCPP 2.0 not sure what that means in terms of accessing the chargers though

 

[Durzel]

Yeah OCPP 2.0 apparently, but I've never seen anything from Andersen in terms of how you access it, etc or whether it actually does OCPP 2.0. I definitely remember seeing API access touted when I got mine in late 2019, but it was never actually a thing as far as I'm aware.

 

[Ceih]

Oh biscuits. That's really annoying considering the cost of the A2 in the first place :/

 

[MrT3]

There is most defiantly more to it than 'suppressed sales', sounds more like an unsustainable business model.

Agreed, EV sales are still growing YoY in the UK. Possibly not the ramp up they were counting on but I suspect it's because it is a premium product without any tie in to chargers that are packaged with Salary Sacrifice schemes so they market is too small.

 

[Winner365]

Mine did have an issue where it would charge despite being fully powered and green light on. It needed a hard reset at the breaker. Had to do this twice now and so I emailed them last month and they just ignored it. Perhaps I could pursue this as an avenue with credit card company instead