Opinion: why do public charge point providers make it so complicated to buy electricity?

Hello and welcome to the EV charge facility at PastyLand, Cornwall’s favourite pasty based theme park! This facility is operated by Chargerine, the West Country’s most exciting and least reliable provider of public charge points.

To get started, simply download our easy to use Chargerine app to your mobile phone. This is listed in the app store under a completely different name that makes it sound like a super-niche dating site, and boasts a single one-star review. Please note the app is not compatible with phones that are a) running iOS 10 without the later security upgrade, or b) black.

The limited mobile signal near PastyLand can make it tricky to download the app. If so, the lady who owns the sandwich shop down the road will let you use her wifi, so long as you purchase a Chunky Lad Meal Deal. While you do this, a traffic warden will ticket your car for parking in an EV bay without charging.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, you’ll need to register your account by providing personal information. The usual stuff: name, date of birth, address, retinal scan, a bunch of financial info you don’t even get asked when you apply for an actual mortgage, a quickfire round about national flags, and a whole bit that gets oddly specific about your ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

You may of course exercise your right not to divulge these totally unnecessary personal details, whereupon Chargerine will exercise its right not to sell you any electricity, and there’s no other public charge point within a 30-mile radius and you’re on six per cent battery, so what are you going to do, tough guy? Once registered, Chargerine will take a deposit of £100 from your account. If you’re wondering when we might refund this, that’s a great question. If, at any point during the charge process, you have to unplug and reattach the charge cable, you will of course be charged another £100.

Next, locate the PastyLand charge facility on the in-app map, which will keep insisting you’re in Los Angeles. You are not in Los Angeles. Once located, choose in the app which one of the eight PastyLand chargers you wish to use. You’ll notice that, in keeping with our understated branding philosophy, we haven’t physically numbered our chargers. And if you’re thinking, well, logically they’ve got to be numbered sequentially from left to right, or maybe right to left, boy are you in for a treat. Hint: for some reason there are three number sixes!

After a period of exciting trial and error, you will discover that seven of the charge points appear not to function, and the only one responding makes a creepy fizzing noise and smells strongly of burned hair. Now’s the time to call our handy helpline number and talk to Pete, who’ll inform you that the PastyLand charge facility hasn’t actually worked for the past six months, but should hopefully be back up and running some time in 2025. Hope to see you then!