Airbnb owner claims holiday makers running cables out the window is theft if electricity.
It’s not theft unless the owner specified in the conditions of the rental that car’s couldn’t be charged at the property. (Even then “Theft” is a strong word!)
That being said - there is obviously a big difference in charging your phone and charging a car and really we are at a point where this should be clear in all holiday rental agreements one way or another.
I don’t think the owner would be happy if someone just turned on all the taps in the house and left them running for the entirety of their stay. There is a sort of “fair use” which is assumed (if not actually in writing)
Question comes if car charging should always be assumed “fair use” or is that above and beyond? Or is it a gray area that just “depends”… Much better for everyone if all this is made as clear as possible in the agreement right at the beginning.
I’m sure the courts would agree it’s not theft, but it really is taking the piss: a typical UK home uses on the order of 10kWh per day - and an electric car can easily take 60kWh to charge. This isn’t like charging a mobile phone which is basically noise - it can mean someone staying for 5 days can easily end up using twice what the reasonable expectation for electricity use was.
Having said that, if I were the owner of a holiday home, I’d probably install a proper electric car charger as a selling point and I’m sure it would be possible to set the daily rate for the property to cover the cost of charging a car.
I’ve not read the article because I refuse to give the Express any attention. They’re only very slightly better than the Daily Mail, and that’s only because their reach isn’t as great. This article will almost certainly be coming from the perspective of “new things bad, old things good, so we’ll sow a feeling of distrust in our aging readers”, and I have no time for that shit.
But to answer the question; no, of course it isn’t, unless, as /u/Hogger85 has said, the AirBnB owner has specifically banned EV charging. If they haven’t, then it should be considered part of the cost of doing business and accounted for the same way they would any other energy usage.
and if they have banned EV charging they should realise nobody is going to honour that rule anyway and stop being such a dick, suck it up, and get on with running their airbnb like a normal person that doesn’t care about a few of £ of electricity per mo
At least in that situation they might win a court case on it.
These delusional Airbnb owners just make crap rules on the spot.
It’s not theft. If they don’t want you doing it, they need to specify it
Better to use hotels instead, at least you know what you’re getting
In the first place, an AirBNB host should either: a) have house rules about how any electricity is used, regardless of source; or b) should factor uncontrolled use into their budget and thus expected pricing of the unit.
An irresponsible guest leaving the lights, TV, and some of their personal appliances on all day could do more damage than charging a car.
So could an irresponsible guest that sets the AC at 65 all day long. I can say from experience that A/C use costs more than charging my model 3 nightly, especially when I’m home all day and the thermostat can’t go into away mode.
I generally agree about hotels, but most hotels with EV chargers that I’ve stayed at were blocked by people in ICE cars, and hotels usually won’t make the offending car move. (Not that I’d ever plan a trip that way… too risky.)
I feel like that will change though when EV’s become more predominant though, and the range gets longer (also when the motorheads slowly switch, suddenly they’ll likely become “gatekeepers” of the EV chargers because it affects them, instead of blocking them)
I get the safety concerns but does she say “no charging cars” in the terms and conditions. I am not sure this is theft any more than charging mobile phones and tablets would be. If she is worried about how much electricity then take meter readings and make it accepted terms that all electricity is to be paid for. What if one guest choses to use the oven for a five course meal. Is that theft of electricry
It seems like the obvious thing to do would be to get a metred EV charging point and bill the tenant separately. There are even grant schemes to help pay for the cost.
It’s not like EVs are going away. Every house with a driveway is likely to have one eventually. She might as well get ahead of the curve.
Alternatively I remember when I was a kid my grandparents would spend several weeks in a holiday let that had a coin operated meter for the electric, we had to keep feeding it coins to keep getting power, surely they could do the same thing these days.
We once stayed at an Airbnb in Florida. The property owners were not local. They had an employee come give us an orientation to the house upon check in. During the check-in he had us read the electric meter. When we left we had to read the meter again. The electric rate was in the rental contract so it became part of our final bill. It was a little strange but it made sense that we would pay for what we used.
Would it make sense if a hotel did that?
Some hotels charge a hidden “resort fee” and $20 a night for parking. So yes I really could see a hotel charging a fee to charge your car.
Chargers at hotels are usually regular public ones, so you pay the regular public charging cost.
For a holiday home, if it has a charger it’s probably just added onto the cost.
Not really, but I can imagine a very cheap hotel doing it.
I think it’s about the scale of things. I have actually seen properties that ask electric car owners notify them, and charge if they use an excessive amount.
Charging your phone, you’d probably struggle to use more than 10p of electricity over a week’s stay.
If I have a 30KWh battery in my car, and charge half of it a night for 6 nights, that’s £30 in electric.
It’s possibly not theft, more akin to leaving the oven on constantly, but it’s cheeky as fuck to do it without checking first.Additionally, a property that hasn’t ever considered electric car charging may not have electrics that stand up to hours of 3KW+ draw on top of the base load.
Technically though they’re paying for the use of the property which presumably also includes electricity use. Legally I’m not sure where the line is drawn, presumably there is some kind of fair use usage clause but I’m not sure where that would be.
Then she should get a proper charging point put in she can monitor and bill, it’s not like the shift to electric cars had snuck up on people.
I’m not sure it is theft. But I’d certainly ask the owner before doing it as an act of politeness
Charging an electric car via the mains rather than an official charging station takes much longer and can cost homeowners hundreds of pounds.
It doesn’t typically cost any more to charge slowly than it does to charge fast. Unless you’re on like an economy 7 plan with cheaper rates overnight, but even then charging at the same time would incur the same cost per kWhr. If anything it’s far cheaper than any paid charging station.
Technically, no, as in the UK, you can’t steal electricity… you can only abstract electricity, which is an offence in its own right. (IANAL)
I’ll get my coat.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English2•11 months ago
Why in the world are people still staying at an Airbnb?