A brief convo with Chargepoint

In amongst the thick pile of paperwork that came with the new Kona was a little
Chargepoint-branded folder, conraining an RFID tag. All the enclosure said was that the
tag needed to be "activated". Knowing that some charging networks have been cutting
special deals for the drivers of certain makes, my first question was along the lines of
"okay, is this some batch of free charging fron Hyundai or something?" Trying to email
that question yielded a bunch of "we received your request" robo-responses but no
actual answers.

Note, I already have my own tag, having set up a Chargepoint account almost two years ago.

So I tried calling ... and had to simply put the phone aside for over half an hour
before finally getting a human. Who had crying children in the background, still clearly
WFH. Customer disservice. The answer on the tag is that no, there's nothing special
about it, it's just another RFID that I can add to my own existing accout and have as a
backup or something.

The only manufacturer-specific deal that CP is dabbling in at present has something to
do with Volvo. Frankly, the way these "deals" are generally implemented is piss-poor and
only brings an attitude of divisive exclusionism.

But the more important thing I learned was that CP tags should interoperate at DCFC
stations from Flo, Greenlots, EVgo, anc Blink. In fact, if you look at Chargepoint's own
[dog-slow] website map, there's a filter option to show only selected "brands" of network,
or all four. The rep assured me that a CP tag would start a charge at all of the others.
[Dunno if the reverse is true, e.g. if my EVgo card would enable a Chargepoint box]. I
have not had any opportunity to put this to any test, but would ask the community to
post what they know about this and report new results.

Note that I'm only talking about RFID tokens, not apps. I don't know how apps would
supposedly behave in any of these scenarios. The stupidity around apps is why I don't
mind having a fistful of RFID tags, as long as they'll reliably work. Anyway, I registered
the tag from Hyundai to my pile and will eventually have some opportunity to test some
of this in more depth.

The rep could not answer my other sharp question as to why they're not hiring enough
callcenter people to handle their normal load in a competent manner. They should fully
realize that there's a storm a-comin' ...

_H*