Ford EV charging no longer working with Charge Anytime - what's happened?

I find it difficult to comprehend that all the necessary permissions were not sought prior to rolling out the Charge Anytime offer for owners of EV’s.  That is a huge hole in the Programme Management and should be addressed as a priority not left to fester for months as is the case. In the meantime all customers are expected to just cough up the dosh as usual. Martin Lewis might be interested in this.

As far as anyone knows, those permissions were sought upfront. Ford is just being fussy about it. OVO has a strict rule - both OVO and the other party e.g. Ford MUST be willing to play ball before Charge Anytime support can even be considered, let alone advertised.

The fact remains - and we’ve probably now said this at least 50 times - that Ford booted EVERYONE out, not just OVO Charge Anytime. This is a Ford issue, not an OVO one. But OVO and everyone else has been left with the blame because most of you wouldn’t see the other effects from elsewhere.

HI I've just spoken to ford Apperley they are in the final stages of sorting this out , she also told me you can still charge your car on the cheap rate all that happens is you have to call back up after and unblock your account 

I have a call booked with a Ford Manager today and will be obviously querying their take on the issue.  I can understand your frustration, receiving these complaints, but as I am sure you will appreciate we the customers are again the ones left holding the can, draining cash from our pockets. 

But for us, the constant “me-too” posts are also kinda draining. Please understand that as volunteers, we give our time for free and we don’t get paid to do this. It’s cool if you’ve got useful stuff to add, but it’s preferable if you can avoid just piling on otherwise.

I feel your pain. I think I would have stopped volunteering by now. Guess we need to blast someone for this debacle and unfortunately you’re in the firing line. Good luck is all I can say and sorry for wasting your time.

I have a thick skin and can tank hits like this pretty well. tbh I’d rather be the one who gets blasted instead of basically anyone else.

All we ask is that if there’s a Best Answer attached to a thread like this one, then that is probably where you should look first, rather than having us explain things again. Our time is limited, and it’s preferable that we can focus it on those who need us the most.

It looks like manufacturers restricting the volume of third party control could become a major problem. Currently issues with JLR and VW with Octopus. So it’s important to remember that it’s not the electricity suppliers that are causing the issues - they are the ones trying to fix them.

I am sorry, but volunteer or not, this is a public open forum and people should be able to post if they feel they want too…

I am one of those “me-too” post you are commenting about, and without people posting these then others would not realise the magnitude of the issue…

So, please stop making forum users feel that they are not important by telling them off for wanting to put their hand up showing they have an issue!

Also, I wander how many people since this issue began have signed up with OVO expecting that it would work with their car…? I would have liked to think that someone in OVO would have realised that they are still advertising that the service works with Ford vehicles, but this has not happen. I would hope that this is an oversight, because regardless of who caused the issue, Ford or OVO, continuing to advertise a service that doesn’t work I am pretty sure is frowned upon…

Actually, there is a rule about it. It’s an unwritten rule that forms part of forum etiquette for just about every forum and forum-like platform e.g. Discord, Slack and GitHub/GitLab, along with the many other forums out there. If you want to “me-too”, just use Reactions such as the Like button. That way, it gets your point across without generating unnecessary - and unhelpful - noise that adds nothing to the conversation.

Many such places will actually delete such comments as spam and potentially issue warnings or bans to those who keep doing it. The moderation here is a little more relaxed about that, but there is still only a finite limit as to how much time we’ve all got to patrol this place - which can eventually mean such threads get a little more limited in what can happen on them.

Free speech is a thing here, I agree with that and fully support it. But at the same time, there are expectations that exist on every forum of this type - you’ve gotta bear in mind that you’re blasting the helpers who give their time for free which can be extremely de-motivating for them.

You need to understand that I get literally hundreds of notifications from this forum every week, many of which are from folks desperate for help - it’s not helpful when they’re compounded by noise from folks piling on just because they can (which doesn’t mean you should!). That’s where our frustration comes from with threads like these. They just become a race to see who can create the most noise.

By “me-tooing” on this forum about something OVO is already very aware of, you’re not going to make the fix magically appear any faster, nor are you realistically telling us how much magnitude there is - we already know because OVO’s teams have magic dashboards that can tell them precisely how many users are affected. What you are instead doing is diverting Forum Volunteers and Forum Moderators attention away from those who actually need our help and drowning us with alerts that don’t help much. Ultimately, it’s more annoying than helpful - and it doesn’t just affect Forum Volunteers. It affects absolutely everyone who’s posted on the thread and may well be trying to monitor it for a solution. But they might not see that update because it got drowned out by all the noise from everyone else.

We get thousands of visitors per week on this forum, some of whom are absolutely desperate for help in ways that they cannot get from anywhere else. We try to focus on getting to them first, but when our resources keep being diverted, it makes it harder and slower for us to reach them.

If you have new info to share such as workarounds or fixes, then please, by all means go for it - that stuff helps a ton.

This is what the Best Answer on this thread is for - it’s constantly updated with the latest info we can share. If it’s not changed, it’s because we have nothing more to tell you right now. If it has changed, it’s probably because there’s been some progress or another update of some kind that can be shared with everyone.

We get it. You’re not happy - we know you’re not happy and we’re not happy about it either. And we really do understand that (seriously!). And yes, we already KNOW the magnitude of the issue at hand - this is a case of Ford nuking Smart Charging access for absolutely everybody under the sun - so if you want someone to moan at, go moan at Ford for pulling the plug in the first place, rather than the forums of energy suppliers  who are desperately trying to fix this mess.

By the same token, would you like it if I came into your house and fitted an “Everything’s OK!” alarm with a 130dB klaxon that basically only stops sounding if there is a fire? Given the chances of a fire are on average fairly low, the alarm would literally never stop sounding and would drive you mad. That’s effectively what “me too” posts do here - except the victims of the noise are the most active forum members who are, more often than not, the ones who try to help out.

All I ask is please be patient. We’re not trying to hide anything here - we too want to see this fixed because we care an absolute ton about great experiences. It’s just that we can’t do that if all our time is spent typing the same answer over and over again because folks don’t read the existing one.

There WILL be an update posted here as soon as it’s available. That is a promise and we intend to keep it. You just have to wait until we can deliver upon it.