Monta Reviews 4,371

I used the charger at a Haven site 4 days ago (a Friday and today is Monday eve). I am still waiting on nearly £40 being held from my current account despite the £7 odd charge I used being taken. Had I had known this I’d have used my credit card. I can’t believe after reading other reviews I’m going to be waiting nearly 10 business days for my pending transaction to be cancelled.

I have been in Denmark for a week now.
I tried 8times to fully load my hybrid car.
Only once I succeeded. All the other times, it stopped charging after 3 KW. Terrible.
Worst ever.

Almost 2 months later and still waiting for a call or email from the mythical sales team. Support actually reply but cannot help with Sales enquiries. Moving all my chargers to another company.

Why have support when they cannot help?

I rent a parking spot with a charger, the usage of this charger is invoiced through Monta.

At first everything worked as I wanted. As long as the cable was connected, the car could get energy from the charger. Only when I disconnected the charging cable was the charging transaction terminated and billing happened.

Then Monta made some change and as soon as the car suspended charging the transaction was closed and billing took place.

This is when I started the first support case to get back the old behaviour.
More on the support below, but no they didn't solve the problem, nor acknowledged that anything had changed.

I gave up. The workaround was to start a new charging transaction from the app if I wanted to increase the charge in the car.
Clunky but workable.

Then Monta did change number two. After closing the transaction they mark the charger as busy and you cannot start a new session. Even if I am the last user surely I should be able to start it again. The only solution is to physically go to the parking and either disconnect the cable or use an RFID chip.

Eventually it might time out and you can restart the session again, but that happens randomly.

So why is this important for me, and for many EV owners?

1. An EV vehicle should not have a high state of charge as this wears the battery -- depending on the battery technology used. Thus I never charge to 100%, but when I go on a longer trip I want to charge it to a higher percentage.

2. When preconditioning the car, I want it to draw the power from the net and not from the battery.

3. If I use sentry mode on a Tesla, the power consumption is rather high and to keep the state of charge the car needs to be able to charge from time to time.

So basically what I want is for it to work like it used to and according to the Open Charge Point Protocol, see e.g. version 1.6, page 16
Note the word "irrevocably" in the spec. I am fine that the transaction is stopped when the cable is disconnected or the session is explicitly stopped, but not when the car just suspends the charging.

So when I had to physically go to the car to restart charging I opened suport case number two.

So what luck did I have with support cases. None at all.

The personel do not know the area
They come with all kinds of guesses or irrelevant points
They only want to close the case
They will not acknowledge that anything has changed
They will not acknowledge that it isn't working according to how it should
They will not even forward a bug report when I write it for them
They are reluctant to forward it to second line support or engineering and cannot give any more details when it has been forwarded (if that happened)

Monta really should look how they recruit personel, train them, give them the opportunity actually solve cases, if there is metrics like time to close a case used to evaluate the personel then this will not help the customers, let the support personel talk with engineering etc.

Had trouble with integration between the Volvo app and the Monta app, our car is not currently compatible. But Emil A was incredibly helpful, in first trying to get us integrating and then getting us charging when we established that our model wasn’t compatible. Emil A was clear and sent through lots of information to help in what was a bit stressful with no other way to change.

Site was at the end of our range and so we charged mid journey to the destination

Experience was ruined by the lack of ownership of the EV chargers - a simple piece of advice would have helped - tell the guest it is best to set up and test the functionality with your car locally before you arrive at the Lake District remote location

Support is very poor. I had and still have a problem with the Monta connection. Support doesn't solve anything, they just keep repeating like crazy that it's my problem and I have to read their manuals. It seems like they don't have any IT team.

Worst app ever to use. Non helpful company, keep saying it is not their problem its a Rolec problem. You have to wait 12 hours for a response from their customer services. Don't know why Rolec changed from Vend-Elec to Monta, most probable cost and you certainly get what you pay for....and if Monta was the cheapest...you can tell. Speaking to Rolec, Monta has not been out that long!!! What a bad mistake Rolec....won't be installing any more Rolec charges if you continue to use Monta

Office manager at work decided to trial this software, i received the team invite via email over 3 weeks ago. However still haven't received the confirmation email to enable me to log in on the app or charge my car. Worked fine before implementing this software.

Still haven't refunded my unused money, despite communicating with them and providing evidence. Cant speak to anyone verbally. Would not recommend or ever use this company again

Thanks for response Paula, but the request for the return of the reserved amount was made in April and I am still waiting/chasing for its return. Absolute rubbish

Having trouble getting my connection and was reluctant to go to the chat app on Monta but I ended up using this and Sophia was friendly helpful and sorted out my problem in no time. Highly recommend them for their support.

Stay well clear of these guys, you have to pay £30 upfront to use there public charging just to then have it not work and be available. Very poor app, and zero customer support with no contact number, and no online chat. Just AI from ChatGPT, that says it will put you through to a person but never does! Absolute day light robbery, and will be reporting company as fraud / scammers along with getting a charger back from my credit card provider

Installed this charger today by a fully qualified electrician. Of course the expectation that you might actually be able to plug the thing in and start charging was a ridiculous one. First download an app than answer 100’s of questions. Before moving on you are Forced to advertise where your charger is located. WHY, I didn’t buy it as a public charging network! Then it tells you it can’t connect. Try online chat. No surprise utter waste of Time. Operator simply copies and paste nonsense telling me to contact my IT engineer. Who has there own IT engineer. After pulling all my hair out swiftly taken off the wall and returned to shop.

QR codes dont work to select a charger in the app. Not intuitive to use the app. Also it's taken a week so far to refund my deposit amount.

This is not a well designed app in any way. Took me a long time to download it and then went through trying to match to my car. Appeared to require a lap top to do this. I almost gave in, but managed to avoid having to match my car. No idea why you have to make a deposit - surely if a credit card is added it just needs to use that. Once it was set up the first time it worked. Subsequent two times it started and then stopped for reasons I do not understand. I have never had one single issue with Tesla chargers - you plug in - it charges and they take the money. Why is this so difficult. I try to only use Tesla now - unfortunately I’m in Scotland where there is limited Tesla coverage so had to use this app and service. The initial charge (while it worked) took 17 hours - although the price was reasonable. The two subsequent charges although quicker both failed.

Very impressed installation went very smooth, setup was very quick and easy. the portal works well and gives you all the information you need. Staff/engineers were very helpful.

Customer service is virtually non existent, with only a “chat” option available until you insist on communicating with a human.

Like previous commentators, I’m unable to get a refund of £10 from a faulty charger in Scotland.

The app says its “pending”, and its well over a week now since I provided the IBAN, card details, phone & email addresses TWICE!!!!!

So, avoid them like the plague if possible.

I tried to use this company's chargers recently. Added £30 to my account wallet. The charger wouldn't work! Now I can't access the account I created despite numerous attempts. You can only access support once logged in. The website has no email address, no phone number, no explanation of how to make a complaint. Absolutely awful. But the owners have made a cheap £30 as I can't withdraw it so I'm sure they are pleased.

Never ever again!!!if I could give them 0 stars I would..parked at a shopping centre and attempted to charge my car . They pre authorised €40 which was supposed to be released and I was ‘supposed’ to only be charged for what I used..the charger initially didn’t work and I was charged €40. Made another attempt to charge and had to pay €30 pre authorisation. It should have taken 2.5 hours to charge..after two hours it has only charged to 6.5 kw which was €3.20. So I was charged €70 for pretty much NOTHING. Contacted customer services who stated that the money would be refunded to me in 7-10 BUSINESS days!!! What a complete waste of time and money. Stay clear, it’s a complete scam.