SC Idle fee...??

[BulldogsRus]

I charged my car yesterday at a SC for approx. 20 minutes, didn't even get to my 90% charge and yet received a notice of a "waived" idle fee despite not even fully charging. Has anyone had this happen to them, is this just a one-off error on their part? I went from 200 to 240 miles, far short of the 280 at 90% and was only there for 20 mins. I also had an issue a month earlier when it stated there was no card on file...despite there being one on file with a zero balance. Is it just Tesla being Tesla?

Just seems odd and there is no way to notify/question this, only a FAQ page.

 

[DerbyDave]

Did the car stop the charging, or did you stop the charging? The App should have warned you before the charging stopped if the car stopped the charging.

 

[BulldogsRus]

Did the car stop the charging, or did you stop the charging? The App should have warned you before the charging stopped if the car stopped the charging.

No, when I came back it was still charging, I pressed the handle to eject and it stopped. About an hour later I received a notification. Just chalked it up to Tesla gremlins, also had random issue where it wouldn't unlock from the charger even via the dash.

 

[DerbyDave]

Very Strange. If it happens again and you get charged, I'd open up a service ticket. I'd probably open up a service ticket now. That should not happen.

 

[Grabthar]

Some superchargers, regardless of time spent charging, will limit to 80%. So if you pull in at 70% and want to go to 90%, it will stop at 80% and then you have to manually re-start charging to get to 90%.

 

[LoudMusic]

Some superchargers, regardless of time spent charging, will limit to 80%. So if you pull in at 70% and want to go to 90%, it will stop at 80% and then you have to manually re-start charging to get to 90%.

More accurately, if the site is busy it will adjust the vehicle to an 80% limit, which the driver can immediately change again if necessary.

 

[Lasttoy]

If it happens while parked call help desk, 8777983752, select super charging option

 

[Jaybird]

There is all sorts of problems with the idle fees. Most recently I started supercharging and got the 80% warning. I immediately increased the charge limit to 100%. At 96% the charging stopped (no I did not stop it). I got a message that it stopped and immediately disconnected from the supercharger. I got a $2.50 idle fee. Makes no sense to me.

Another time I disconnected and reconnected at the beginning of supercharging. The entire session registered as idle even though I disconnected at the end of the charging near immediately. $18.50 idle fee was waived because from the times and amount I charged, it wasn't even possible to be idle that long.

I have lifetime supercharging on my 2014 car. I wish I understood exactly how these idle charges are calculated, but it is not as simple as $0.50 per minute with a five minute grace period, I can assure you that. It seems the only safe thing is to manually stop supercharging before 80% is reached in all cases.

One other thing, the calculation for charge finish time is very inaccurate. In the most recent case, it said I had 35 minutes left, a few minutes later it said 20 minutes and about three minutes after that the charging stopped prematurely at 96%. This makes it nearly impossible to leave your car until it gets close to being fully charged. So why does Tesla put so many superchargers in shopping and food areas? Duh.

 

[Jaybird]

You might want to read the second to last update at end, before hearing this story.

So I am on the phone with Tesla Roadside Assistance and what the rep is saying is blowing my mind. He has indicated that the third paragraph at https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharger/idle-fee, specifically:
"Idle fees only apply when a Supercharger station is at 50% capacity or more. Idle fees double when the station is at 100% capacity,"
is indicating that at some superchargers they can charge you an idle fee that is a percentage of what you charge even if you have lifetime free supercharging AND you do not leave the car idle without charging (in other words, even if you disconnect before it has finished charging. In addition he is telling me that although a supercharger may indicate 80% max charge and you can change that, some superchargers may stop charging at a different level such as 95% even though you got the warning that for 80%. Also, my saying that I wasn't notified of either the fee for just using a supercharger that is labeled as "idle fee" nor the supercharging stopping at.

Update: Then he came back on the phone and apologized for being incorrect and said I was correct in everything I explained to him. Still no explanation of why my car stopped charging at 96% even though I had it set to 100% (I changed to this after the initial 80% change warning).

Update 2: Was told the explanation of why even though I disconnected immediately after seeing a notification on my phone that the charging had stopped, that may have been after the grace period due to the notification not being received by my phone for over five minutes (notification delay).

This is my second idle fee I had waived and I believe neither situation was my fault (the other was a super charger charging my car while simultaneously charging me an idle fee for 39 minutes).

I now have a service call scheduled to find out why my car stopped charging at 96% as there may be an issue with the battery or calibration.

One other thing they made clear, when you go over the grace period of five minutes, you are charged the excess minutes over five AND the five minutes for the grace period. So if you disconnect from the charger after six minutes after your charging stops, you get charged for six minutes of idle time (not one).

 

[GHammer]

It's not unusual for cars of this age to not charge all the way to 100% even on level 2 connections. My '14 would only go to 96% until I did several <20% to full charges now it goes to 100 again for now. My '15 stops at 98%. It's the cars BMS doing this, not the supercharger. Also, as point of reference, I have logged well north of 2000 supercharge sessions covering every state and I've never received an idle fee.

 

[Jaybird]

Some superchargers, regardless of time spent charging, will limit to 80%. So if you pull in at 70% and want to go to 90%, it will stop at 80% and then you have to manually re-start charging to get to 90%.

This is not my understanding. The supercharger will immediately warn you that you will be limited to 80% and you can immediately after that reset it to a higher percentage. You should not have manually restart later.

 

[Jaybird]

It's not unusual for cars of this age to not charge all the way to 100% even on level 2 connections. My '14 would only go to 96% until I did several <20% to full charges now it goes to 100 again for now. My '15 stops at 98%. It's the cars BMS doing this, not the supercharger. Also, as point of reference, I have logged well north of 2000 supercharge sessions covering every state and I've never received an idle fee.

This is good to know. My car stopped supercharging at 96% tonight and although I disconnected as soon as I got a notification, somehow that was six minutes after the charging stopped (late notification?). When I called supercharging support, they suggested a service call because the battery system (calibration?) should always let a car charge to 100%.

 

[Rice&Curry]

As far as I know Tesla recommends that you don't charge it to 100% unless you have a need ( ahead of a long trip). BMS governs the charge % which the battery will accept under normal condition. Putting the car to deep sleep at different SoC % helps the BMS re-calibrate the battery and sometimes get a better % charge during regular or super charging. There are lots of articles in this forum on BMS .

 

[Rocky_H]

I wish I understood exactly how these idle charges are calculated, but it is not as simple as $0.50 per minute with a five minute grace period, I can assure you that.

The pricing schedule is that simple. You are looking at an outcome, but then are assuming the cause incorrectly. The rate schedule isn't the problem. It's issues that have been kind of notorious about Tesla not having very reliable or timely data coming in about how many stalls are in use to determine that 50% usage level, and also about the status of whether the cars are charging or not or when they finished.

And two other things about this that I suggest are in your control a bit:
Relying on getting that notification on your phone at the exact right time and seeing it at that time is pressing your luck a bit. I check my app occasionally while I'm eating and my car is charging, to see how close it's getting.
And the second thing is that yes, I move my slider up to 100% just to try to allow some time if I'm taking a little longer than I expected, but you are risking a very tight window if you are expecting to actually try to get it to all the way full AND be able to stop it right then within a minute or two after. When traveling, somewhere around 80-90% should do, and if it goes a little over, sure, that's fine, but trying to hit that bullseye at full is risking an idle fee if something doesn't go just right.

One other thing they made clear, when you go over the grace period of five minutes, you are charged the excess minutes over five AND the five minutes for the grace period. So if you disconnect from the charger after six minutes after your charging stops, you get charged for six minutes of idle time (not one).

Yeah, that's just like furniture stores that do the "90 days same as cash" financing kind of thing. If you pay it off within that 90 days, you're fine--no interest. But if you take 92 days, you missed your grace period, and you pay all 92 days of the interest.