A driver from Graz plugged his electric car in at Graz Airport before a business trip and left it there for two days. Weeks later the bill arrived: more than 2,000 euros for a single charging session.
Nothing was broken. Every party in the chain applied its own terms correctly. The bill is what those terms produce when they are stacked.
The number does not come from the charger
Graz Airport's chargers are run by Moon and Apcoa, and the airport was explicit that the figure was not its own blocking fee or a partner's. Their published tariffs make that easy to check.
| Operator | Energy | Blocking fee |
|---|---|---|
| Moon (ad-hoc, direct online payment) | 0.48 euros per kWh | None |
| Apcoa | 0.69 euros per kWh | Free for 48 hours, then 17.28 euros per day maximum |
Two days is 48 hours. Paying at the charger, the worst case at this site is roughly the electricity plus nothing — Apcoa's grace period covers the whole stay, and even past it the cap is 17.28 euros a day. The site's own ceiling for that visit is a few tens of euros.
The driver paid more than 2,000. Spread across 48 hours that is about 42 euros an hour.
The contract that governed was not the operator's
He charged with a roaming card. That is the ordinary way to use a network you have no account with, and it is what most European drivers reach for abroad. What it also does is substitute the card provider's terms for the operator's.
His provider bills by duration, not by kilowatt-hours. Under that model the meter does not stop when the battery is full — it keeps running for as long as the cable is connected. A car that finished charging in an hour and sat for another 47 is billed for 48.
The price the charger displays is not the price such a driver pays, and there is usually nothing at the bay to say so. Discussions over a goodwill settlement are under way, with the card operator conceding the driver is not solely responsible for the full amount.
Why this is a European problem and not an Austrian one
Roaming is what makes cross-border charging work at all, and the cost is an intermediary whose pricing model may not resemble the operator's. TeslAnt has covered the same seam from the other side: providers competing specifically on charging without a roaming markup, and Brussels introducing a rotation fee to stop cars occupying bays.
The idle-fee principle is not controversial. Tesla applies it on the Supercharger network — see our guide to idle and congestion fees — where the charge starts after the session ends, is capped, and is waived if the car is moved promptly. The failure at Graz is not that a fee existed. It is that a time-based tariff ran against a car whose owner was on a plane, with no cap and no notification.
What to do about it
- At an airport, hotel or park-and-ride, check whether your provider bills by time. If it does, treat the charger as a charger, not a parking space.
- Ad-hoc payment is often cheaper than the card in your pocket. At this site, direct online payment to Moon is 0.48 euros per kWh with no blocking fee at all.
- Read the roaming terms, not the sign on the bay. The displayed tariff belongs to the operator; the bill comes from your provider.
- Unplug before a long absence. Under duration-based billing, a finished charge costs the same as an active one.
AFIR obliges operators to show ad-hoc prices clearly. It does not oblige your roaming provider to show you what it will charge on top.