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Anyone else being given the runaround by BG


George Dodds
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20 hours ago, Hayzee said:

I certainly wouldn't have paid to have an EV charger for the PHEV, but being F.O.C. softened the significant inconveniences

In a parallel world where humans are forced to be honest, this would be the main marketing slogan - aka, 'it's fairly [excrement], but you'll feel slightly guilty about complaining, because it's "free", and definitely not built into the purchase price/profit calculations of the greater Toyota UK accounts....'

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On 7/14/2022 at 2:17 PM, NASY said:

I had a BG survey for my free charger which came back with a £400 charge for extras, bit of bonding and some current monitoring trick item. I decided not worth the money, asked Toyota if they would cover the extra cost who said no. Now just had a quote back from BG saying £0 for the installation. Not sure what to do now as I have become used to 3 pin charging, which never seems to take that long really as it happens when I wasn't going anywhere in the car anyway.

It's a really tricky conundrum really, as you've almost certainly paid for it already in some fashion, within the purchase price of the vehicle, as one imagines Toyota's accountants must have factored for a high percentage of uptake given the "free of charge" nature of the offer, especially given the demise of the Ozev grant. So you're left with the tricky concept of "I don't expressly *need* this right now, but it could become feasibly import at in the future re EVs, or be appealing if/when coming to sell my house, and in present circumstances anything equivalent would cost me approx a grand". 

As long as installation doesn't make a mess of your home/aesthetic appeal, I'd probably still accept it, as worst case scenario you could always have it uninstalled and flog it on eBay for a few hundred quid!! 

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The charger worked for the first two days then decided to stay in ready mode without charging the car. The app is very flakey, but I assumed I could just plugin the car and it would charge in spite of the app, but no it wouldn't. So I uninstalled to he app and tried to reinstall but no chance. Raised a problem ticket with BG and waiting for them to come back.

It was nice to be able to charge the Battery much quicker than with the granny cable, but not a critical requirement with the PHEV. Even if the dream only lasted two days it was nice whilst it lasted.

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Mike, thanks for your thoughts. I will go ahead with it.

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13 hours ago, Hayzee said:

The app is very flakey, but I assumed I could just plugin the car and it would charge in spite of the app, but no it wouldn't.

Yep, for the most part I've been fortunate with it in the sense that the app is terrible, and routinely won't respond to inputs, nor communicate with the charger, but for the first 3months it still charged correctly overnight when I wanted to, so I woke to a full Battery. Thus I was willing to forgive the exasperating app user experience. More recently, it has only part charged overnight, for no apparent reason, but again this appears for now to have been fixed by the old 'turn it off and on again routine", and eventually the app was updated to be functional again, so I'm back to tolerating it and overall being grateful for the FOC 😂

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On 7/15/2022 at 2:32 PM, Mike2222 said:

Yep, for the most part I've been fortunate with it in the sense that the app is terrible, and routinely won't respond to inputs, nor communicate with the charger, but for the first 3months it still charged correctly overnight when I wanted to, so I woke to a full battery. Thus I was willing to forgive the exasperating app user experience. More recently, it has only part charged overnight, for no apparent reason, but again this appears for now to have been fixed by the old 'turn it off and on again routine", and eventually the app was updated to be functional again, so I'm back to tolerating it and overall being grateful for the FOC 😂

Mike....Because of the problems I was having I deleted the app and tried to reinstall it, but when I tried to set up the EV charger in the app it failed to sync hence the charger doesn't appear in my Hive app. 

I hoped I could forget the app and just plug in the charger to the car and it would start charging just like the granny cable does, but no chance.

I'm away at present so will follow up with BG next week 🙁

 

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Colin you should be able to charge the car from a ‘granny’ cable by selecting the ‘charge now’ from the MID display. This is usually displayed for a short period when the cable is plugged and powered. Otherwise you’ll need to poll through the settings in the MID.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes - a new problem with BG - just taken possession of a RAV4 PHEV with the unequivocal offer that Toyota would cover the full cost of the wall-charger installation via BG.

BG call for the virtual inspection - but won't install at my house because I have 3 phase supply (one each for house, out-building and stables/workshop).

No problem with headroom in the power supply - workshop where I want the unit installed has 100A so is good for ≈ 24KW, IIUC, and I even have a 60A cable to a commando switch/socket right to the point inside where I want the charger.

The stable consumer unit, RCDs, and cabling are fully up to spec (well beyond, in fact) it's simply that the supply to the main building has 3-phase, even tho each building has it's own phase....

Has anyone else had a similar objection?

I am trying to get Toyota to offer the fee they pay to BG to another installer - waiting on response ...

 

Edited by Frazzled
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10 hours ago, Frazzled said:

Yes - a new problem with BG - just taken possession of a RAV4 PHEV with the unequivocal offer that Toyota would cover the full cost of the wall-charger installation via BG.

BG call for the virtual inspection - but won't install at my house because I have 3 phase supply (one each for house, out-building and stables/workshop).

No problem with headroom in the power supply - workshop where I want the unit installed has 100A so is good for ≈ 24KW, IIUC, and I even have a 60A cable to a commando switch/socket right to the point inside where I want the charger.

The stable consumer unit, RCDs, and cabling are fully up to spec (well beyond, in fact) it's simply that the supply to the main building has 3-phase, even tho each building has it's own phase....

Has anyone else had a similar objection?

I am trying to get Toyota to offer the fee they pay to BG to another installer - waiting on response ...

 

It seems BG's appear to be more to do with why we can not do this job rather than how can we make it work.  From the comments on here and other observations the BG/Hive combination do not seem to be a good partnership for Toyota to have picked.

Hope you can get it sorted as on the face of it your situation would appear to be ideal.

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Just cancelled my BG install as the quoted £0 fee which I eventually signed up to came back as over £400 of additional costs. I'll stick with charging by smart cable from three pin plug which seems perfectly fine.

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41 minutes ago, NASY said:

Just cancelled my BG install as the quoted £0 fee which I eventually signed up to came back as over £400 of additional costs. I'll stick with charging by smart cable from three pin plug which seems perfectly fine.

John..... what was the £400 for?

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Strangely, I had a text message from a random mobile number recently that stated that 'Local Heroes' had asked a contractor "to carry out important inspections on recent works".

The whole thing looked so like a scam that I was in two minds about responding.  Anyway, whilst they didn't say as much, it appears that BG have paid a third-party to inspect some fairly recent installations to check that it has all been done correctly, the certificates issued and buildings control informed.  It doesn't inspire confidence...

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Mark....Local Heroes parent company is the same as British Gas' parent...... Centrica. A number of the initial emails regarding my EV charger came from Local Heroes but installation was done by BG engineers.

 

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Colin, the additional costs were for the following:-

£145 for the earth bonding required

£70 for additional cable required and

£160 for an engineer assist

Earth bonding was to external oil feed pipe.  

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46 minutes ago, NASY said:

Colin, the additional costs were for the following:-

£145 for the earth bonding required

£70 for additional cable required and

£160 for an engineer assist

Earth bonding was to external oil feed pipe.  

You may want to go back to them and ask them to double check with Toyota if they'll cover some of those charges. I needed a new earthing to my water supply, and I don't know what "engineer assist" entails, but the chap needed to call a second installer for assistance on the day as parts of it were a two man job. 

I did have to pay extra for an IP-rated (ie weatherproof) matte:e box tho, as that was where I wanted/needed it (no space in fuse box cupboard so had to go thru the exterior wall and site matte:e outside), and also extra for a tethered cable (again my choice, but worth it's weight in gold imo!) 

The original BG man who did the survey checked with office about paperwork, and found that Toyota covered the other bits. 

Edited by Mike2222
Fixed autocorrect error
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1 hour ago, NASY said:

Colin, the additional costs were for the following:-

£145 for the earth bonding required

£70 for additional cable required and

£160 for an engineer assist

Earth bonding was to external oil feed pipe.  

Wow those prices are racy John! I needed the bonding uprated and there were 2 engineers at the initial install but these were not identified during the original survey, and I wasn't charged any additional costs. Guess I was lucky with the survey. Even so £145 for a bonding job that I assume would take minutes is robbery.

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On 7/29/2022 at 11:26 PM, Centaur said:

Strangely, I had a text message from a random mobile number recently that stated that 'Local Heroes' had asked a contractor "to carry out important inspections on recent works".

The whole thing looked so like a scam that I was in two minds about responding.  Anyway, whilst they didn't say as much, it appears that BG have paid a third-party to inspect some fairly recent installations to check that it has all been done correctly, the certificates issued and buildings control informed.  It doesn't inspire confidence...

I got this unannounced text last week, and like you was initially suspicious so ignored it. Though if you look up that company, they seem genuine. Anyhow, got a knock at the door today as the auditer guy was in the area. All they do is take a photo of the charger and cabling back to the matt:e box and the consumer unit. That's it. 

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  • 2 months later...

Had the virtual inspection from BG a month ago, and heard nothing since. Called BG to find out why! They say they ‘might’ need to change a switch before they can proceed….and they haven’t decided in a month! 
contacted my DNO - Northern Power Grid who were superb….called me back at 7pm, explained everything, and said BG had not contacted them to arrange a new switch…in a month.

Looking like a great call coming BG’s way at 0900 tomorrow morning….

If I pull the plug with them, could anyone suggest a better alternative please!🙏

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Pedro, since cancelling my charger I just installed an outside 3 pin socket and really wonder why I ever thought a charger was needed. The RAV has a small Battery compared with a BEV so it never takes long to charge up really. I understand the attraction of something for nothing but the BG something is not looking that good and will no doubt become obsolete by the time most of us are further nudged to BEV ownership.

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10 hours ago, NASY said:

Pedro, since cancelling my charger I just installed an outside 3 pin socket and really wonder why I ever thought a charger was needed. The RAV has a small battery compared with a BEV so it never takes long to charge up really. I understand the attraction of something for nothing but the BG something is not looking that good and will no doubt become obsolete by the time most of us are further nudged to BEV ownership.

I tend to agree but I guess most of us would accept the offer of the 'free' charger if it was offered. It just seems that BG have more than they can handle and anything that is not straight forward goes to the back of a very long queue. (and mostly forgotten)

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Just had another chat with BG…and will be raising a complaint if this isn’t sorted soon (Partners’ Tesla arrives soon!, so charger is most definitely needed).

Interesting that BG were pretty darn fast to install a new boiler last year…no months wait for the direct debit to be set up etc!!

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Looks like I won’t be getting a ‘Free charger’ either…a list of what BG require before they could proceed as follows:-

  1. We need you to get your electric meter upgraded to 100a and the tails upgraded to 25mm this can be done by your energy supplier bulb
  2. The isolation switch should also be replaced at the same time as the meter upgrade by bulb
  3. The twin and earth that then feeds your installation should be in a fused isolator a it is more than 3m in length and the inner insulation is showing. Alternately if this twin and earth were to be put into blocks after the new double pole isolation switch we would have a point of connection before your installation and could then issue a safety notice recommending the fused isolator. This can be done by your electrician or I can see if we can quote you for the additional work?

Yikes!

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The problem with getting the incoming fuse upgraded to 100A is that you need to have the right kind of fuse box design. Mine is the old pitch sealed kind and it’s a major problem.

If you have an 85A supply why would it not be possible to attach a monitor which would lower the cars charge rate so as not to overload the system? Unless you run everything on electricity and are already running on or near your max?

if you say cook on gas and have a combi boiler I’d have thought that a lower supply fuse would have been acceptable.

 

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I think it's the meter that they're asking to be upgraded too 100A (all new smart meters are 100A rated). I had to do that with my meter for the BG charger. OVO also installed an isolation switch when I requested it at the same time as the meter, both FOC.

BG also requested an upgrade to the master fuse to 100A from 50A and they requested this from my DNO (Western Power). The DNO fitted an 85A fuse (FOC) and said this was more than sufficient for my installation and they would not install a 100A fuse, saying that the Matte box that BG install with the charger is a load management box. This would disconnect or reduce power to the charger if the overall supply demand was too high at anytime. 

I finally had my BG charger fitted in July this year, some 6 months after my BG virtual survey. Delays due to BG requesting many hoops to jump through which were not highlighted during the initial survey.

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Wouldn't it be much better if Toyota just said free installation and that's what it meant, BG did their survey and then proceeded with the  installation? Generally speaking most of us don't want to get down into the weeds, we just want results and free means nada, zilch, nothing, rien.

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