Guests charging electric car with our house electricity.!!

[Hells Bells]

Cost of charging is apparently about a £1-£1.20 on a standard Uk tariff for a full charge, and there is a charging timer to chare overnight on cheaper rate electricity. uses just less than 10kW for a full charge, and cuts out when full, so does that really explain the increase in usage by them?

[cleanforum]

Yes, well I think it may explain it. They lunch at the villa. That gives them the oportunity to give a boost before the afternoon ride. The prices you quote are not particularly relevent as we are in Spain. However the 10Kw would be about right since we are seeing about 20kw extra each day over a usual, heavy, rental usage.

So today they leave, we are about to go up to the villa clean and do an inventory. Of course we will read the meter and try to draw some conclusions about the extra "km" the villa has done in the last week.

My real worry now after reading all these replies is having to check the entire villa contents not so much the power usage!!!

Luckily we don´t have an immediate follow on rental so can take our time. I will report back.

[kevsboredagain]

Cost of charging is apparently about a £1-£1.20 on a standard Uk tariff for a full charge, and there is a charging timer to chare overnight on cheaper rate electricity. uses just less than 10kW for a full charge, and cuts out when full, so does that really explain the increase in usage by them?

Exactly my opinion too. On a 1200 Euro rental, it's not exactly a major issue. Yes the cost of electricity in Spain is different but not by a huge amount.

I'm afraid you lost my sympathy when you said they were heavy users "taking 2 showers a day". So they use a lot of electricity, as some guests always do but being able to charge the same rate for all months outside July and August, I would say you're coming out way ahead.

[CSE]

Ignore the intolerant views, based upon nationality.
Not everyone can be tinted with the same colour of s*** as made out here.

[Essar]

Ignore the intolerant views, based upon nationality.
Not everyone can be tinted with the same colour of s*** as made out here.

I agree this topic is becoming very anti-Dutch and should stop now. You cannot throw away the whole barrel because of a few bad apples - all societies & nationalities have their good and bad. My experience of the few dutch guests I have had has always been very favourable.

[AngloDutch]

Ignore the intolerant views, based upon nationality.
Not everyone can be tinted with the same colour of s*** as made out here.

I don't see any intolerant views being expressed here. As one of the few NL-based contributors on here, I chipped in with our experiences of many of our Dutch guests using electricity to charge their cars and bikes, very often without permission and our unfortunate experiences with some of our Dutch agency guests (often people who usually stay on camping sites and who have never stayed in a holiday home before and who are looking for a cheap last-minute getaway). Several other posts have been quoting what is widely known in certain parts of France, that many French regard Dutch tourists as 'penny-pinching'.
When you think about it, practically every nationality in Europe has views on their neighbouring nationalities, some of them quite unfounded. Here in the NL, there is constant ribbing going on between people in the different provinces and how they perceive people who don't live in their province. But most of it is made in jest (or should be ayway!)

[CSE]

Unfortunately (and from experience), many of our Dutch guests will use anything on site, whether it's part of the rental or not. Many will not ask permission to do so either. Pluging their electric/hybrid cars into our power supply or charging 9 electric bikes via splitter from our AC outlets in the sheds is a regular occurrence here. To help cover this, we charge €10-13 per night (depending on season) for gas and electricity usage to agency guests. This is calculated into the rates on our listing site ads.

Before 2010 most of our guests were locals and we had toys, DVDs and CDs disappearing on a regular basis. The covers of the CDs would be left behind, but the discs would be removed. The best DVDs would not be there when we checked the library. We do not leave many cleaning products in the farmhouse because they have a tendency to just disappear.

Sorry, but it is you that changed the subject by starting writing about your views on the Dutch clients using everything on site (as above).
The the original post was about a hybrid car and what is considered overuse /and guests asking about the use of electric. Yes the guests are Dutch, but that is neither here nor there when it comes to the subject matter.
We are all on board about how we should cover the matter. It has been a very useful lesson for quite a number of the members here about the future. We have already expressed our views on this "heads-up". We will be changing our T&Cs because of this.

[AndrewH]

Regarding electric and hybrid cars if, as Helen says, a full charge costs in electricity only around £1.20 (and assuming a similar sum in other currencies and countries), I would want to turn the whole thing around and welcome these eco cars as a selling point. Good for guests and good for the environment.

There are just a few of these cars for hire on the island where I live, but if numbers ever increased I think I would install a dedicated circuit with an outside power point correctly placed, which was primarily for that use. I would mention it in any advert. but I wouldn't alter my terms and conditions on account of it.

[e-richard]

Following Andrew's theme, I'm reminded of similar discussions a only few years ago on how much to charge or whether to offer WiFi in the holiday rental and we know where that subject went.

I predict this will go a very similar way.

[Hells Bells]

I believe you can get a charging point installed for not a lot of dosh. It was free, but not sure what the score is now, and if it applies outside of the UK. Unless I can have it installed right on my parking space, it wouldn't be something I would be able to offer, as it is not right by my apartment. Otherwise it would be something to offer as a USP I think.

[Circé]

Getting back to the original topic:
I thought these cars wot need charging had to be hooked up to dedicated charging sockets. Can they just be plugged into any old plug-hole?
Thinking about the unreliability of power supplies to many of the houses we manage, and the sensitivity of the 30A trips to anything like cheap adaptor plugs and extension leads I can foresee a lot of tripping-out and maybe socket burn-out problems if we do get folk arriving in these machines, aside from cost of the elec itself.

[AngloDutch]

Sorry, but it is you that changed the subject by starting writing about your views on the Dutch clients using everything on site (as above). The the original post was about a hybrid car and what is considered overuse /and guests asking about the use of electric. Yes the guests are Dutch, but that is neither here nor there when it comes to the subject matter.

My first reply was in response to Zebedee and not the original poster:

You would not expect a guest to remove and take home all the cleaning products, tinfoil, kitchen roll dishwasher liquid etc etc that we provide for guests and expect to be used by a series of guests during their stay until they are used up, and then we replace them at our expense.

I would not expect my guests to use my heating oil to fuel their diesel cars and take my supply of logs home for their log burner.

The majority of our guests are Dutch. What I wrote are our actual experiences. Before 2010, we were not subscribing to HA and just about all our non-repeat guests were from Eurorelais/Belvilla. Many of the groups we had stay were 'tokkies' (from wikipedia: 'The epithet tokkie is used in the Netherlands as a pejorative noun for lower-class people who often are seen as likely to engage in anti-social behaviour, similar to the British and Irish chav and the Australian bogan') and were disrespectful of us and our property, and yes, these groups were Dutch unfortunately.
Nowhere did I use the term 'the Dutch' or 'all Dutch are...'. Unfortunately some posters seem to have then taken our experiences as being 'typically Dutch', which I then did my best to correct in further replies.

So, Ian and Irene, by your replies, you obviously have a Dutch background. No need to take offence just because the nationality of the individuals taking the electricity without permission and our DVDs happened to be Dutch (they could have been Brits or any other nationality). And tokkies/chavs, cheeky people and downright thieves are everywhere unfortunately. Over and out....

[CSE]

Denying the truth in what you have written does not change the facts.
Our point is is not just about the Dutch, it is about members of this forum posting generalisations, adding them into "collections" based upon country where they come from.
Ultimately it is about the people that give you an earning.

[AndrewH]

Getting back to the original topic:
I thought these cars wot need charging had to be hooked up to dedicated charging sockets. Can they just be plugged into any old plug-hole?
Thinking about the unreliability of power supplies to many of the houses we manage, and the sensitivity of the 30A trips to anything like cheap adaptor plugs and extension leads I can foresee a lot of tripping-out and maybe socket burn-out problems if we do get folk arriving in these machines, aside from cost of the elec itself.

Circé, I imagine you as a delicate French lady not capable of such words. Am I wrong? Or are you a delicate French lady who has had 10 too many?! Yes, I believe you can plug the car into any old household plug-hole, but you may be right about circuits tripping and about burning out. I really don't know the answer, but a 45 amp outlet might be the way to do it (just don't put your fingers in it).

[Circé]

Getting back to the original topic:
I thought these cars wot need charging had to be hooked up to dedicated charging sockets. Can they just be plugged into any old plug-hole?
.

Circé, I imagine you as a delicate French lady not capable of such words. Am I wrong? Or are you a delicate French lady who has had 10 too many?! Yes, I believe you can plug the car into any old household plug-hole, but you may be right about circuits tripping and about burning out. I really don't know the answer, but a 45 amp outlet might be the way to do it (just don't put your fingers in it).

How sweet of you, and no, I most certainly had not had any too many, I'd been out driving my very green 45 year old car. Why green? Well, much of the pollution generated in the lifetime of a car comes from the manufacturing process and the disposal of the dead vehicle, thus if you keep an old car on the road you're doing the world a favour. And making people smile as you drive along, they like to see classic cars.