When Charging Goes Wrong: Why Hospitality Matters More Than Penalties

A story has been making the rounds in EV communities lately. An owner plugs in at a public charging station, walks into a nearby store to grab a few things, and returns to find their session failed after three minutes. The charger malfunctioned. But here’s where it gets interesting: despite the equipment failure, the network automatically charged the driver a penalty fee for “idling” at the station. Nearly $6 in fees on top of less than a dollar of actual electricity delivered.

The driver contacted customer service. After a lengthy wait, they reached a representative who acknowledged the error but couldn’t resolve it without escalation to another department. The whole experience left a question hanging in the air that every EV owner has asked at some point: Why does charging have to feel like this?

The Problem Isn’t the Fee. It’s the Philosophy.

Let’s be clear about something: the concept behind idle fees makes sense. Public charging stations are shared resources, and when someone finishes charging but leaves their car plugged in, it prevents others from using that charger. Managing station turnover is a legitimate operational challenge.

But the way most networks implement these policies reveals something deeper about how they think about their customers. When your equipment fails, and you charge the customer a penalty anyway, and your customer service team can’t resolve it quickly, you’ve told that customer exactly where they stand in your priorities.

This is utility thinking. It treats charging as a transaction where the primary relationship is between the customer and the machine. The customer is a potential problem to be managed through penalties and automated systems. When something goes wrong, the burden falls on the customer to prove they shouldn’t be penalized.

“The hospitality industry learned long ago that how you handle problems defines your brand more than how you handle success.”

What Hospitality Thinking Looks Like

Consider how a well-run hotel handles a guest whose room key stops working. They don’t charge a “room re-entry fee” while the guest waits in the hallway. They apologize, fix it immediately, and often comp something for the inconvenience. The guest leaves feeling valued rather than victimized.

Hospitality thinking starts from a different premise: the customer is a guest, and our job is to create an experience worth returning to. Equipment will fail sometimes. Weather happens. Plans change. The question isn’t how to penalize these situations but how to handle them gracefully.

This distinction matters because EV charging is maturing past the early-adopter phase. The people buying EVs today aren’t enthusiasts willing to troubleshoot equipment failures and negotiate with customer service. They’re regular people who expect the same quality of service they get from other premium experiences in their lives.

The Real Cost of Getting This Wrong

Comments on stories like the one above tell a consistent tale. “This happens to me a lot.” “Their charger failed and they blamed me.” “I’ve given up on that network entirely.” Each of these comments represents a customer lost, often permanently.

The charging industry sometimes forgets that it’s no longer operating without competition. When the only options were one major network or charging at home, customers tolerated poor experiences. Today, alternatives are multiplying. New stations from different operators are opening regularly. And customers have long memories.

More importantly, the reputation of public EV charging affects the entire industry. Every bad experience becomes a story shared at dinner parties, posted on social media, recounted to friends considering an EV purchase. “I heard charging on road trips is a nightmare” has kept more people in gas cars than any range limitation.

A Different Approach

At Rangeway, we’ve spent considerable time studying these dynamics, and they’ve shaped fundamental decisions about how we’re building our network.

Start with the physical experience. Most charging happens in parking lots, which means customers are left exposed to weather, with nowhere comfortable to wait, limited visibility of their vehicle, and no good options if something goes wrong. This setup creates anxiety that feeds the entire problem. Of course customers wander off. There’s nothing for them at the station.

Our solution is the Driver’s Lounge: a climate-controlled indoor space at every Rangeway location. Not a nice-to-have at flagship sites, but a guarantee across our entire network. When you’re comfortable, connected to Wi-Fi, and can see your vehicle through the window while enjoying quality coffee, the dynamics of a charging stop change completely. You’re not desperate to escape. You’re not wandering into a store where you can’t monitor your session. You’re present.

This isn’t just about comfort. It’s about solving the underlying problem that idle fees attempt to address, without treating customers as adversaries. When the charging experience is pleasant, when you actually want to be there, station turnover happens naturally because people charge efficiently and move on satisfied.

Building Trust Instead of Penalties

Our Pathfinder Rewards program reflects the same philosophy. Instead of penalizing customers for problems, we reward loyalty. Everyone pays the same straightforward rate. As you charge more frequently across our network, you earn status that unlocks credits back toward future sessions and experiential benefits like complimentary beverages, partner discounts, and member events.

The difference is subtle but meaningful. A penalty-focused system asks: “How do we make customers afraid to do the wrong thing?” A hospitality-focused system asks: “How do we make customers excited to do the right thing?” Both might achieve similar operational outcomes, but only one builds the kind of relationship that sustains a premium brand.

We also think about customer service differently. When something goes wrong (and something always eventually goes wrong), the question isn’t whether to help but how quickly and gracefully we can resolve it. Our team members are empowered to make it right on the spot. No escalations for obvious equipment failures. No making customers prove they deserve a refund.

The Bigger Picture

The idle fee controversy is really a symptom of a larger question facing the EV industry: What kind of experience do we want to create for the millions of people transitioning to electric vehicles over the coming decade?

One path treats charging as a utility, a necessary transaction to be optimized and monitored, with customers as variables in an operational equation. The other path treats charging as hospitality, a service experience that should leave customers feeling good about their choice to drive electric.

We believe the hospitality path is not only better for customers but better for the industry. Premium experiences command premium loyalty. Customers who feel valued become advocates. Word of mouth turns from “charging is a hassle” to “you have to stop at Rangeway.”

The networks that figure this out first will earn the trust of the next generation of EV owners. Those that don’t will find themselves competing on price alone, a race to the bottom that nobody wins.

Where Charging Becomes Part of the Journey

We’re building Rangeway for the drives where the journey itself is part of the destination. These are the trips where a bad charging experience can ruin an entire vacation, and where a great one can become a fond memory.

Every decision we make comes back to a simple question: Are we thinking like a utility company or like a hotel? The utility company asks how to move electrons efficiently. The hotel asks how to make guests feel welcome. We know which approach we’d rather experience as customers, and we suspect you do too.

Because at the end of the day, the best way to solve the “idle fee problem” isn’t better penalties or smarter algorithms. It’s creating an experience so good that customers never want to leave, but always do, because they can’t wait to come back.