chargeplacescotland.org Reviews 

Tried to charge my wife's car - her app completely failed to recognise and start the charge after about 10 minutes of faffing about. Finally got it to work using my app since I also have an EV. I had registered but hadn't used CPS before. Once charging everything seemed fine. 8 days later, despite the payment for the charge having been successfully collected, I'm still waiting for the £40 preauthorisation to be released back to my bank account. CPS blame my bank but I've never had a delay of this length through my bank with any other provider. I will be giving them a permanent wide berth after this experience.

CPS chargers are awful and biased to which side of Scotland you live in. They are woefully inadequate and not fit for purpose.
Restricting charges to 45 minutes and only providing a low charge rate is a recipe for disaster. even if they work.
The West Coast chargers cost 70p kWh + which costs more than petrol. The East cost chargers, barely work, are old, rusted, displays are defunct, blocked with ice cars or council vehicle charging all week, but at least cost 57p kWh or less. Which is still more than petrol.
Also whose idea was it to put one rapid charger in at a location, then put 7kW chargers for the rest then time limit people and charge them £10 per minute or hour overrun?
Don’t penalise people for falling for your incentive to buy an electric car then limit their ability to charge it!!
Chargers are poorly placed, they have given land owners too much money for ground rent, instead of sourcing their own land for chargers.
When they had a huge pot of money to start with they should have linked up with Tesla to provide large charging hubs across Scotland.
Don’t faff around with 7kW chargers points. Give every charge point at least x3 rapids that provide at least 120kWh+
Then attach to every lamppost a 7kW charger.
Swarco better pull their finger out as charging in Scotland decline started the second they installed them and it’s currently on palliative care.

Chargeplace Scotland make it so difficult to use their EV charge points that it’s not possible to charge your EV. It’s not enough to have the means of payment or even to download an app. You have to register for an RFID card which is not possible online. Their helpline call handlers acknowledged how crazy this is but were unable to help. It shouldn’t be any more difficult to charge an EV than to fill up with petrol or diesel. Companies like this are obstructing progress towards greener energy use.

There is no point having an extensive physical network of chargers if it’s rendered inoperable by such an unreliable app. This has been a problem for a while and it needs to be resolved without further delay.

5 failed attempts to charge with RFID card left with no charge and £175 pre authorisation charges on my bank. Avoid!!!

Avoid this company. Customer service is absolutely shocking. They took £35 pre-authorisation from my back in June, but the charge failed. I contacted them to get the £35 refunded. It is now September and I still don't have my refund. It takes them 4 weeks to answer any emails and they ask for information I have already given them and is included in the email trails. Every email they send starts with the same copy and paste excuse "we are really busy". 4 weeks to reply to an email is completely unacceptable. Completely useless.

Currently in a battle with my wife whether EV or petrol...CPS have really helped her cause 100%.
1st time - Two failed charges, pre-authorisation payment taken both times, 3rd time only succeeded with help from Emma on CPS helpline. 3 days later still waiting for the £70 to be returned!
2nd time - charger woukd not connect, phoned CPS and was told the chargers at this location were not communicating, fine! So went for something to eat, on return to the carpark, one car that arrived after me had completed it's charge, and another still charging!
Lucky I drive a PHEV, but my move to full EV has really been knocked back a bit.
Come on CPS, get your act together, help desk it great, but the rest is sh.... poor.

What a joke this company is, tried chargers in Mallaig, Arisaig and two in Fort William, none worked with the Electroverse RFID card, Electroverse App or Charge Place Scotland App. The fourth one eventually worked with a credit card but only gave 18kW when it should have been 50kW. Not the fault of Electroverse. Now I have £255 of preauthorisations on my credit card for charges that never started!! Avoid this company at all costs!!

Absolutely useless Customer Service in April I moved so I called them up and they had to take my card off so I could put a new card on. I did it and once it is done it said your card has been set up every time I login it says your card has been set up, but it doesn’t tell me which card now it appears that, they didn’t update it as I asked and now I owe a big bill and they block my account and I have to go through the whole process again useless

So bad!!! I have a problem every single time I start a charge and then usually once it starts (after having to move chargers several times) I cannot get my cable out at the end. I therefore have to spend twenty minutes on the phone to the call centre at the start and the end of every charge. Usually waiting on hold for ages before anyone answers. The whole system is utterly unfit for purpose. Call centre staff generally nice and trying to help but if this is what is on offer for those trying to be environmentally responsible and move away from polluting diesel vehicles in our towns and cities then its like a bad joke.

I charged my car on the 22nd July 2024 at a cost of £1.64, which was paid for.
I then had another £17.60 taken from my account for 3 sessions on the same date, which I did not carry out.
I sent three emails and contacted CPS by phone twice, querying this charge and by the 15th August I had not received a response.
I then passed the issue onto my MSP, who contacted CPS and I received an email from CPS on the 22nd August advising they will investigate. To date I haven’t heard anything.
My advice is to contact your MSP (if in Scotland) because this is beginning to look like an issue with SWARCO.

A genuine '2 Star' rating for our 5 month 'deteriorating' experience with CPS who leave yet another dirty stain on the confidence and competence of a SNP led Scottish government (via funds to Transport Scotland).

Issues with our first charge in Fife during February 2024 was efficiently sorted with the friendly, patient kind chap on the telephone who identified that charging through the digital app was the issue and recommended a RFID at a £10 cost. This card was ordered and a Direct Debit mandate set up with my bank for payments.

No further issues was experienced using chargers in Fife and Edinburgh other than irregular Direct Debits being taken.
In a short period of time, this changed. On a journey home from work late at night, my range became too small to complete my journey. A stop at Halbeath near Dunfermline was required and waited in turn to obtain the use of 1 of 2 CCS chargers,
I was unable to use the RFID card due to Chargeplace Scotland changing their saved / recorded payment method from Direct Debit to credit/debit card. This would have been absolutely fine, only the organisation failed to let account holders know about this in advance of the change and I had not yet saved any payment card details.
I didn't have any payment cards on my person either which left me in a very difficult position. Incidentally, another EV user stated that they had noticed a message on the App. stating there would be a need to store card details however as I had not used the App for several months, I was completely unaware - perhaps Chargeplace Scotland could have handled this transition more robustly and professionally by notifying such a significant and important change to all their account holders registered email address (Simples!!!)
Having arrived home to East Fife (5 hours later) I registered a credit card which made using the RFID card and charging experience more reliable however, the billing / accounts team continued to make life harder than it needs to be by issuing a compounded invoice for 'unpaid' charges for the previous 3 months prior to credit/debit card payment. I had oversighted that they had not debited my bank account on a frequent monthly basis despite an active 'live' mandate being in place further to this they had again charged me for connection / no charge attempts. To explain this further Fife Council previously charged a connection fee followed by a KW/h fee, the former has since been removed.
I had experienced connection / no charge fees at the beginning of using CPS points and I knew that claiming this money back was going to be difficult, time consuming and exhaustive. The refund had taken nearly 8 weeks to be resolved in the past and now I have to endure the same experience again, as emails are not responded to in a timeous / acceptable timeframe (with an exception of an automated 'we will respond' promptly message).
I won't hold my breath waiting though... however, I wont stop contacting them either until the refund is issued regardless of the sum otherwise it will be redeemed as a theft from a government agency.
On a final note, Chargeplace Scotland state that they are on 'a mission to get Scotland driving electric' however half of their organisation is needing recharged with some new energy, namely competence and professionalism in the customer services pertaining to finance. The guys who answer the phones regarding faults to chargers are a good bunch who will usually resolve any issues (non financially related) immediately so they are the backbone to our national network and are swimming against the tide to make the orgainsation credible to Scotland's people who wish to improve the environment and like minded visitors. Come on Transport Scotland and SNP gov. you know this can be done.... on budget and within target time! Hmm...
:(

Seems like many others I was stung today by CPS taking two lots of £40 out my account despite the charger not charging my car. I called the helpline and like many many others below, got told I just have to wait for the money to return to my account. They couldn't help me get my car to charge, it was all connected up but nothing happened. I was told to try again in 3-5 minutes and of course they would collect another £40 for this third try.

They’re just crap - rarely work, useless app, someone sort it out

Avoid at all costs! Went to charge my electric car for the first time so used my local charger, first machine was out of order, second one connected fine, scanned my payment method and said error, tried again and got the same but 3rd time worked, checked my online banking and it has 4 pending payments, £40, £40, £40, £35, we are now 5 days down the line and still haven’t gotten the money released back into my acc, made phone calls to them, hopeless! Raised a complaint to get a manager to call me but instead he’s taken the easy option and left an email more or less claiming everyone else but their company, avoid at all costs

Just awful. Opened an account, got a card, etc. prior to going on holiday in Scotland. Almost every attempt to use a CS charger required us to call them. They took money from our account, but today, stuck in Lerwick, we're currently unable to charge anywhere, and customer services have proved utterly useless.

Tried to use charger at Brodie Castle near Forres , card would not read. Fortunately I was able to get home so not in a hurry. E mailed admin@ on Mon 12 th Aug, no reply , followed up still no reply by Friday. Tried to get through on phone , gave up after 8 minutes .

Poor maintenance of chargers and "long wait" customer support. Price have high rocketed recently and now more expensive compared to Tesla! Tried to use the newly installed chargers at Brixton services, Perth, but 4 of 6 chargers didn't work. Ended up using the Tesla charger. With so many 1* reviews, surprised to see that they are not really bothered

The billing is irregular and often get charged for use that was months before, causing havoc with my bank.
Complaint is not addressed fully. Is there a ombudsman service to look at this I wonder?

I have given CPS 5 stars due to the top class service from Michael and Mark today after I had problems with obtaining a RFID card. Mark even took the time to call me back to confirm the card was now on its way. There is problems with charge points all over and they are very fickle. If traveling long journeys E cars are not the answer until they get the charge points operating and more user friendly. Once again thank you Mark and Michael your assistance was appreciated.
Update
Received RFID card this morning ( within 2 working days ). Fantastic service on this occasion. 👏