Charged twice for a charge at a Super Charger - Tesla states battery cold

[dontbuythis]

me too, got charged twice. I was only at the supercharge station for my very first time to test and bench how fast supercharge station is.
So I watched the time closely, I only stayed there ~25min (including setting up the the port and stuff) but I got the bill and they charged me twice, saying I was there for 45min. (20min for HIGH Power, and 25min for LOW power)
So I spoke with Tesla via their chat... they gave me a random made up reason.

 

[GtiMart]

That is not charged twice. That is two-tier pricing depending on the amount of power you pull and it is described. High power is when you pull 60kW or more, and Low power is under 60kW. The car pulls a different level of power depending on the battery temperature ,state of charge etc.

This invoice indicates that you spent a total of 45 minutes plugged at that charger. There is no made up reason, they detected you plugged for 45 minutes and charged as such. If you really were not plugged 45 minutes then something is wrong. I don't believe we've had anyone else on the forums report such a case?

 

[Rocky_H]

This invoice indicates that you spent a total of 45 minutes plugged at that charger. There is no made up reason,

That IS the made up reason.

If you really were not plugged 45 minutes then something is wrong.

He already stated exactly that:

I only stayed there ~25min (including setting up the the port and stuff) but I got the bill and they charged me twice, saying I was there for 45min.

The most they could have possibly charged should be the high power for the full 25 minutes.

Let's go with Tesla's general notion of the battery being cold and then needing to warm some before charging as a separate billed category. OK, but then that 25 minutes TOTAL of real time would be divided somehow. Like 5 minutes and then 20 minutes. Or 15 minutes and then 10 minutes. But 25 minutes is the entire length of time, so you have to split that in two. You can't charge for 20 + 25. I agree that Tesla has an error in their billing logic somewhere, and you have a legitimate problem.

 

[GtiMart]

Tesla gave the cold battery as an explanation that there was some tier 1 pricing involved. They have not commented on the 45 minutes length, at least from how I interpret the message above.
So we have a situation where we don't have all the information. The Tesla invoice reports 45 minutes of total charging. "dontbuythis"'s first post on this forum says that is not true. That's all we have to go on. I'm thinking that maybe the total time felt like less but it was 45 minutes. Sometimes time flies quickly.

EDIT: I think the OP should contact Tesla again, putting the emphasis on the 25 vs 45 minutes. Maybe that was said at the beginning of the exchange but we don't see the initial question.

 

[Rocky_H]

What else can we do?

Ask them to elevate it to an engineering case to look at their code for time measuring during the charging sessions. It may somehow be reading the two properties of battery heating and battery charging and accidentally putting them into two separate time counters, when they should only be counted once where they overlap.

And really, a customer service human is just reading from a script or the screen they have. I don't have a lot of confidence that they actually understood what @dontbuythis was trying to explain, that there was literally only 25 minutes there.

I'm thinking that maybe the total time felt like less but it was 45 minutes.

But yes, this is based on: You'd better be sure it really was only 25 actual minutes. If that's really true, then there's no question that Tesla has a billing logic bug.

Tesla having software bugs is not unusual and is far more likely than calling it a "scam".

 

[GtiMart]

You know, I'm in agreement with getting engineering involved. But seriously, there are hundreds of people around here that arrive at Superchargers with cold batteries. My local facebook groups are loaded with people asking if superchargers are broken because they only get 10-20kW of power. If there was a billing bug in that situation, I believe it would have gotten out way before now.

 

[MLXXXp]

There could be different pricing rules for someone who's charging from Space

 

[brkaus]

If you happen to have teslafi or similar running, you would have a log of start/stop of charging.

 

[MY1stEV]

I saw this post yesterday and just assumed it was a troll post with a fabricated story. Perhaps I'm just cynical.

 

[moa999]

Go back and ask for the time codes used for the low and high rate then.

Do you use a tracking app that says what time you were plugged in?