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> The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car Wait. A 115 VAC socket exposed to the elements with no meter? How do you pay for it? Was i

> The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car Wait. A 115 VAC socket exposed to the elements with no meter? How do you pay for it? Was it under lock and key?

WorldMaker 7y ago
Yes, normal wall outlet. On the outside of buildings since forever for grounds keeping tools like electric leaf blowers. You see them all the time on buildings (and homes!) every so many feet in those little plastic boxes where they just flip up and are rarely with any sort of lock or key. When I've used such outlets in my travels, I've made sure to clear it with the Manager first before ever plugging in, which as I said was often a fun conversation. In my small assortment of times asking the question the majority of the time the answer, after a lot of confusion about what I was asking and sometimes which Manager I should talk to in a multi-Manager situation was "Sure, I don't see why not." A few times it was "No, I'm not sure we'd allow that," or "The person you could ask isn't in this week," and I respected that outcome. In all the times I asked, paying for it never came up. Admittedly, when I was asking it was always a "nice to have it" request and at least to some degree I hit a sweet spot between "Hospitality companies want to agree to things that are easy for them to provide to make customers happy" and "this is new enough and uncommon enough a question that they aren't going have written policies on it yet". I was also making sure to only do it with businesses that I had an established customer relationship with (I'm staying in this hotel and/or Since I'm paying for parking here anyway). Much of the time the extra bit of electricity I was using was a drop in the bucket of the business' usual utility overhead, and/or a drop in the bucket compared to my existing expenditure (the cost of a hotel room, even the cost of parking). (Aside rant: I think it's a scam to meter some Chargers at all. Chargers in some of the parking garages I've used or attempted to use had some outrageous surcharges to make it seem like metering was a useful value add to the process. Use something like $0.75 in electricity, tops, get a combo of $12+ in surcharges from three different middlemen [the garage, the charger company, a bonus kickback to the power company], all on top of $15-$30 parking fee just to get into the garage. You could easily cover $0.75 of electricity in that $30 parking fee.)

> The hotels didn't even know they had spots that could charge a car Wait. A 115 VAC socket exposed to the elements with no meter? How do you pay for it? Was it under lock and key?

WorldMaker 7y ago

Yes, normal wall outlet. On the outside of buildings since forever for grounds keeping tools like electric leaf blowers. You see them all the time on buildings (and homes!) every so many feet in those little plastic boxes where they just flip up and are rarely with any sort of lock or key. When I've used such outlets in my travels, I've made sure to clear it with the Manager first before ever plugging in, which as I said was often a fun conversation. In my small assortment of times asking the question the majority of the time the answer, after a lot of confusion about what I was asking and sometimes which Manager I should talk to in a multi-Manager situation was "Sure, I don't see why not." A few times it was "No, I'm not sure we'd allow that," or "The person you could ask isn't in this week," and I respected that outcome. In all the times I asked, paying for it never came up. Admittedly, when I was asking it was always a "nice to have it" request and at least to some degree I hit a sweet spot between "Hospitality companies want to agree to things that are easy for them to provide to make customers happy" and "this is new enough and uncommon enough a question that they aren't going have written policies on it yet". I was also making sure to only do it with businesses that I had an established customer relationship with (I'm staying in this hotel and/or Since I'm paying for parking here anyway). Much of the time the extra bit of electricity I was using was a drop in the bucket of the business' usual utility overhead, and/or a drop in the bucket compared to my existing expenditure (the cost of a hotel room, even the cost of parking). (Aside rant: I think it's a scam to meter some Chargers at all. Chargers in some of the parking garages I've used or attempted to use had some outrageous surcharges to make it seem like metering was a useful value add to the process. Use something like $0.75 in electricity, tops, get a combo of $12+ in surcharges from three different middlemen [the garage, the charger company, a bonus kickback to the power company], all on top of $15-$30 parking fee just to get into the garage. You could easily cover $0.75 of electricity in that $30 parking fee.)