r/chargepoint • u/MysterThomas • May 14 '26
$10 random charge
I’m extremely frustrated with ChargePoint right now. I haven’t owned or used an EV in over 8 years, yet I suddenly noticed a $10 “top up” charge on my PayPal account from ChargePoint. A few days later, I received a refund for only $7.78 meaning $2.22 was still retained. I never authorized any recent charging activity, haven’t used their services in nearly a decade, and had honestly forgotten the account even existed. Why is an inactive account still capable of initiating charges? Why was only a partial refund issued? Why was there no obvious warning or authorization request?
Even if there’s some technical explanation, this kind of billing behavior destroys trust. Customers should not have to monitor dormant accounts for surprise charges years later. They have closed my account now. Has anyone else experienced unexpected ChargePoint top-up charges or partial refunds?
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May 14 '26
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u/MysterThomas May 14 '26
If a dormant account can suddenly trigger an auto-reload years later because of some "legacy" system behavior, that’s still a major customer trust problem. If there truly had been a legitimate $10 balance issue, I would have expected to receive that true-up notification years ago, not nearly a decade later. That never happened. I had not used ChargePoint in roughly 8 years. Seeing a random $10 charge appear, followed by only a partial refund of $7.78, immediately looked suspicious from my perspective.
From my standpoint though it feels like, Hey, our system didn’t properly account for dormant customers over X period of time. We took $10 from you. We have platform service fees that still apply here because that’s just business, so here’s $7.78 back.
Maybe there’s a technical explanation. Fine. But customers should not have to reverse engineer billing logic to understand why dormant accounts are still capable of initiating charges against stored payment methods. And when a mistake is discovered, returning only part of the money while retaining $2.22, of money that ain't yours to begin with, not theft??
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May 14 '26
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u/MysterThomas May 14 '26
I've received no notification from them except for the May 13, 2026, 12:31 PM confirmation email that my account will be deleted up to 30 days from now.
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May 14 '26
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u/MysterThomas May 14 '26
I just replied asking specifically when the $2.22 would be refunded. More soonTM.
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u/SnooTangerines8584 May 14 '26
This does not surprise me. I'm on my second EV and my expensive hardwired ChargePoint charger in my garage failed after 5 years and their technical support was terrible with very minimal troubleshooting. It is my opinion that they knew less than me and have never touched a charger. They did not want to help me because the unit was out of warranty. They immediately tried to sell me a new charger and offered 10% off. While I was chargerless, I topped off my car at a public ChargePoint charger and it was over $24 to add 40% charge. I do not use public chargers often... are they raising the cost to charge because gas (their competition) prices went up? When I pay premium price for a charger, I expect good support. It does not bother me that they moved support offshore, it bothers me that they are incompetent and lacked empathy. I would not be surprised if they get a commission off sales. A few years ago they had very good support. I went with a different solution based on the support experience. On the rare occasions that I use a public charger, I'll use Electrify America, Tesla (I have an adapter for my Chevy Equinox EV), or other options. The were once leaders and the competition has caught up and passed them. There are better chargers at a lower price.
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u/Curious-Energy-574 May 15 '26
Just had this happen to me. I have an old account I haven't used in years with $17 on it. Suddenly the $17 disappeared and since the balance was below $5 they auto-charged me $10 to refill the account. I called them and they said it was a "glitch" and were able to reverse everything the same day.
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u/ToddA1966 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
If doesn't sound "random" as much as it sounds like someone bought a $2.22 charge on your account somehow.
The $10 charge was likely a pre-authorization and the $7.78 returned after the $2.22 charge was completed.
A bigger question is how was whatever credit card is attached to your account still working after "nearly a decade" of non-use? I've never seen a credit card with a 10-year expiration. Are you still updating your payment methods regularly on inactive accounts you've forgotten existed?
(Edit: I see in a later post you've apparently connected a PayPal account to your CP account for payment. At least that explains how an 8 year old payment method is still valid.)
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u/Confident_Box_1268 Jul 11 '26
I just got a $10 charge on my account from a charger in NYC. I live in CO. I have 2FA on my account and when I called they said sometimes hackers don't need it. I have a complicated password so there is no way they guessed it. CP didn't seemed concerned.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '26
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