The newsletter I almost didn’t write
I share a gripe which could have dire personal ramifications
There are some brave journalists who risk their lives to tell important stories. They take on the rich, the powerful, and the corrupt knowing that some stories are greater than the individual. That there are truths that must prevail no matter the cost.
I am so not one of those people.
Frankly, the biggest risk in my day-to-day life is my laissez-faire attitude to used-by dates on dairy products.
But for this letter I am going to take a step out of my comfort zone. I’m going to poke at an Australian industry giant: the NRMA.
If you’re not in the media the risk I’m taking might not be immediately apparent. Allow me to enlighten you.
Every year the NRMA puts on the best event: a massive boozy Christmas party for journalists and producers. It’s happening this Friday and I’m invited.
It’s no small thing to host Sydney’s media scene. Collectively we are a bottomless, insatiable maw trying to fill a void with free booze and food. You’d be better off inviting a particularly biblical plague of locusts to an event.
I’m not sure why NRMA has volunteered as tribute to host this hard-drinking, underpaid, freebie-loving crowd year-after-year. But they have. And it’s an excellent night.
I just wish the NRMA could run their wireless charging stations as well as their Christmas parties.
I had my first run in with NRMA’s fast charging network a couple of weeks’ ago while driving the blisteringly-fast Kia AWD EV6. Because I had been thrashing this car in GT-mode from Sydney to the Southern Highlands, it needed a little top up.
The car kindly brought me to a NRMA charging station which was housed in an RSL car park.
There were a couple of payment options which needed to be activated before charging. I could use the Tap and Go terminal or I could download the app.
I abhor the fact that everything is an app these days. They exist for no other purpose than to harvest your personal details, make you into a demographic, and then send you chirpy marketing emails every second day until the end of eternity.
Because I wanted my relationship with NRMA to begin and end with them providing me $15 worth of electricity, I chose Tap and Go. Of course it was broken.
My choices were then limited to: use the app or push the car home.
I can tell you now, option two would have been less painful.
I honestly believe that if I got a bunch of arsehole developers into a room, gave them a million dollars, and asked them to create a user experience intentionally designed to bamboozle and infuriate, they wouldn’t have done better than the NRMA.
The app is buggy enough that the NRMA preemptively sends an automated text message explaining an error code will appear if there’s no payment method added. That’s fair. But where are the payment details for EV charging? Fuck you that’s where.
It took an extended phone call with their helpline before I could finally start charging my car.
While I waited to get the EV6 back to 80%, I helped another bamboozled couple set up their app. As I was leaving they were negotiating a different error message to the one I had. I wished them luck.
The NRMA is just one charging station provider. There are plenty of others in Australia, all with their own fucky apps and fucky marketing emails.
As I made clear in last week’s newsletter, EVs are here to stay. But we still need some serious improvements to the infrastructure in Australia. NRMA think they’re the people to do it and the Government seems to agree. They’ve been given $78.6m of Federal money to install an Australia-wide network.
In theory I have no problem with that, so long as they’re not funnelling thousands of Australians onto their data-farming apps. I can buy a tank of petrol at Ampol without having to set up passwords and tell them my address, email, and mobile number. I would like that courtesy to be extended to EV drivers as well.
I would also like to still be invited to the Christmas party. Please.
That’s this week’s rant done and dusted. The Car Pit website has a few fun updates worth checking out, including our thoughts on the undeniably cool Tesla Cybertruck teaser video.
Take a look and I’ll you next Monday!