Crappy Experience at COS supercharger
I hate to complain since I just read this thread and people are (seemingly) pretty happy. But here's a perspective of someone not local to COS:
I have used about 10 SCs around the Rocky Mountain west, and I was not following this thread before this morning. I was going to be passing through COS yesterday and looked on the map, seeing a SC there, which was going to make it easy to reach home (near Boulder CO). I was taking a friend to COS to buy a new car (not a Tesla, of course) at the Subaru dealer in COS. So our morning went like this:
Meet Jacob (salesman) at the Subaru dealership. When test-driving the Subaru, my friend and Jacob followed me 2.2 miles to the SC location on Cascade and Bijou. None of us had been to this SC and we drove around the block (me in the MS and them in Impreza) looking for it. We were on the phone and I was saying, "It will be obvious... there will be white towers with TESLA written on them."
We couldn't find the superchargers. I concluded that the map must be wrong and the SCs must be elsewhere, so we parked in front of the parking garage and got out to walk around. Then Jacob, the salesman, spotted them through the glass windows of the parking garage. Aha! I had never seen a covered SC before!
So now my friends wait while I attempt to enter the garage. I had about 100 miles of range left, so I really wanted to charge; I could maybe make Park Meadows if not, but we had an hour to kill and leaving the MS here and picking it up later would mean I'd have a full charge to get home. So this was perfect. Except...
... I couldn't figure out how to get into the garage. There were 5 different signs: one with the rules, one on a box asking for cash, another saying "Push for Ticket" and another saying "Tesla owners see attendant for refund" (or something like that). Of course, there was no attendant: the booth was empty. It was a Saturday, so I suppose that's why.
I had people waiting for me, so I was trying to quickly get into the garage and start charging. But pushing the button on "Push Button for Ticket" did nothing. The machine was just dead.
Another machine looked to be an intercomm with a button, so I tried pressing that, hoping I could talk to a human and figure out how to get in. But that button also got me nowhere. Just silence from the speaker.
After a few minutes of this, I told my friends to take off: I would have to figure out how to get in, but it wasn't going to be easy. They drove away and I was left at the entrance of this garage on my own.
Next I decided I would just go in through the exit since there was no rollover strip. But then I saw there was a gate-arm there as well, so that wouldn't work.
Then I decided I would just try the cash-accepting machine that was asking for $1, hoping maybe that would work, but I didn't have cash with me less than a $20. The machine did not take credit cards. So I parked the MS outside on the street, and walked around the corner to a small restaurant and got change. Returned back, and voila, a $1 fee opened the gate and I was able to charge.
An hour later I picked up my fully-charged MS and easily made it home (after a 1 hr sit trying to get through Larkspur-area traffic... wow).
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Had no idea this was a new SC. Next time it will be easier.
