Payment declined error at Electrify America

fullmetalbaal

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I picked up my Taycan a few weeks ago and it's been a bumpy start to say the least :confused:

One of the most annoying parts is that I don't seem to get EA charging to work.

I have Plug& Charge enabled on the car, I have a CC registered on myPorsche, and I have Charging NA installed and logged in to my Porsche account. Porsche Charging Service shows as active in Porsche Connect app and in the myPorsche sites.

I've tried just connecting, and in that case it does it's thing and about 3 min in says "Payment declined".
I've tried using the charging NA app, which errors out with "Unexpected error" and "Unexpected error, please repeat your last action" (thanks, so very helpful :mad:). I've tried 3 different chargers, multiple times each.

I'm taking the car to the dealer tomorrow, but wanted to see if perhaps anybody has seen this behavior and could point me to a solution.
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One of the most annoying parts is that I don't seem to get EA charging to work.

I have Plug& Charge enabled on the car, I have a CC registered on myPorsche, and I have Charging NA installed and logged in to my Porsche account.

Have you called EA to troubleshoot? Have you called your credit card company to see if they have record of the decline(s) and the reason?
What is the model year / build date of your car?
Does your car have the 19.2kW AC charger option?

Even if you have the 3 years free charging with EA, as I understand it, a credit card transaction is still prepared for each charging session in case it goes over 30m. So if there is some issue with your CC company, e.g. like fraud detection gone amok, then you’ll need to deal with that.

If you do have the 19.2kW AC charger, then be aware that there is a known issue with it in Taycans < MY22 that interferes with Plug and Charge on Level 3 DC chargers. Counterintuitive that the AC charger could impact DC charging, but it was a thing. Resolved in model year 22 builds, but AFAIK not yet resolved in a warranty fix for affected cars. The workaround is to disable Plug and Charge and initiate charging manually / through the Charging NA app.
 
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fullmetalbaal

fullmetalbaal

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Thank you for the tips!

I didn't succeed in calling EA at the location (it's underground parking at Bellevue Safeway and my phone doesn't have reliable reception there) - I'll try again today or try for a location above ground.

I doubt it's Amex, but I'll call them anyway. I haven't had false fraud detection related issues in years.

(It's a MY2021 without 19.2kw charging, I just picked it up August 6th, build date is June 22nd I believe)
 

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Thank you for the tips!

I didn't succeed in calling EA at the location (it's underground parking at Bellevue Safeway and my phone doesn't have reliable reception there) - I'll try again today or try for a location above ground.

I doubt it's Amex, but I'll call them anyway. I haven't had false fraud detection related issues in years.

(It's a MY2021 without 19.2kw charging, I just picked it up August 6th, build date is June 22nd I believe)
Someone else mentioned on a similar thread that Porsche told them there can be a conflict (sw) between the Porsche NA Charging app and the EA app - they told him to delete the EA app and retry, and apparently the Porsche charging app then worked - no idea if this is universal or something specific to that chap's account!
 
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I was back at the EA location today, this time calling EA for support (same behavior: payment declined for plug and charge and unknown error for the app).
After restarting the station 3 times, having me move over to another station and trying via app and plug & charge they gave up and told me to call Porsche. I'm convinced that the stations are flaky there and will try another location. At least I had company, a person 2 stations over was having issue getting their id.4 to charge too.

(I tried deleting the EA app, behavior is unchanged. I tried with the car on and off. etc.)

Now I'm in the "our call is important to us" (but not important enough that we hire enough people) loop on Porsche support (2nd attempt, first time I gave up after waiting ~15 minutes).

I'm glad I'm doing this ahead of time and not during a road trip. That would have been such an unmitigated disaster.
 


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fullmetalbaal

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Porsche support on the phone was useless ("bla bla go see a dealer"). The dealer told me it's going to be a month to get the car seen if it's hardware, and otherwise just did some basic checking (whether there's a pending recall on the VIN, etc.). I got the feeling that all their folks that new anything about the app/systems side of things were out of office (if there are any).

I just noticed that Track My Dream still thinks my car is on the way, does anybody know whether that means that Porsche systems themselves might be messing up things here? i.e., they think I don't have the car yet, so the charging isn't enabled fully?
 

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As one of the OP's neighbor, I went to his EA station today (Bellevue Safeway, EA 150kW) to try and figure out if the problem is EA, the Porsche-EA coordination, or his car. It was also my first time really doing a big DC charge since getting my car 4 weeks ago, so just thought I'd share my experience. Destination was set via Nav for battery pre-warming. Here was the car status just prior to charging.

Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6545.JPG


The biggest hurdle was finding the right parking spot. There were 5 spots (2+2+1) but the first two fattest ones were taken by an Audi ETron and Bolt. The remaining spots were a bit tight and my proximity sensors were barking like crazy. Finally found this one spot which technically is not one of the EV parking spots that worked for charger #5.
Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6546


First try and it connected fine. Activated via Porsche Connect app. Probably took a total of 1 minute from physical connection to get to obvious electron flowing. Also took a picture inside the car to confirm we're getting a pretty decent rate for the 150kW charger.
Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6547.JPG
Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6548.JPG


At this point I went inside the Safeway to get a few things. Approximately 8 minutes after I started charging I checked the Porsche Connect app, and instead of it showing charging it said the charging is complete at only 30'ish%. I tried to use the app to restart the charging but it wouldn't work. After I bought the groceries and went back to the car, however, it actually was still charging and didn't seem to be interrupted; the Connect app showed the correct charge % (it was up to 60%) but did not indicate it was still charging. Whatever. If I were smart I would have checked the EV America app but I forgot.

The good news is that even at 60-66% it was still drawing over 110kW. Pretty good.

Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6550.JPG
Porsche Taycan Payment declined error at Electrify America IMG_6552.JPG


Finally stopped it at 20 minutes on my watch. I guess EV shows 22 minutes but not sure if that included the part during initial connection and the end part of wrapping up. But my first DC fast charge experience was pretty good, and shows I could take this car on a road trip if (fingers crossed) other chargers work as well.
 

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As one of the OP's neighbor, I went to his EA station today (Bellevue Safeway, EA 150kW) to try and figure out if the problem is EA, the Porsche-EA coordination, or his car. It was also my first time really doing a big DC charge since getting my car 4 weeks ago, so just thought I'd share my experience. Destination was set via Nav for battery pre-warming. Here was the car status just prior to charging.

The biggest hurdle was finding the right parking spot. There were 5 spots (2+2+1) but the first two fattest ones were taken by an Audi ETron and Bolt. The remaining spots were a bit tight and my proximity sensors were barking like crazy. Finally found this one spot which technically is not one of the EV parking spots that worked for charger #5.
I've been to that location. I hated it. Got just as angry as you did trying to figure out which charger to park next to. GRRRRRRR
 


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fullmetalbaal

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Further trial and error: I can get it to charge on EA if I disable Plug & Charge (with some re-trying on the app, and ignoring errors in the app if the car is charging regardless).

The car charges reliably on EvGO without fussing.

This leads me to a question: do all EA stations support Plug & Charge? Or only newer ones?
 

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I charge at this location as well , and have never got the included taycan charging to work . I thought it was only to find out it billed the pre loaded EA card I had to make to get the account going.
I get the payment declined each time - can activate via EA app but it’s doesn’t recognize the included / free payment. Suuuuuppper annoying .

so you are using a different app from the ea and my Porsche to get this to work ?
 
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fullmetalbaal

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I charge at this location as well , and have never got the included taycan charging to work . I thought it was only to find out it billed the pre loaded EA card I had to make to get the account going.
I get the payment declined each time - can activate via EA app but it’s doesn’t recognize the included / free payment. Suuuuuppper annoying .

so you are using a different app from the ea and my Porsche to get this to work ?
I wish I had better things to report. It's been such a time sink that I've given up on making it work.

I rarely road trip with the Taycan now, and I make sure to charge at work or at home.
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