EV charger not working?

Fixed-price fault diagnosis across North London and South Hertfordshire

Before you call anyone, it’s worth knowing something most installers won’t tell you: modern EV chargers are rarely repairable. They’re sealed units with the electronics potted or bonded in. Once the board inside has failed, there is no economic repair — no spare parts, no bench service, and on many brands no manufacturer left to ask.

So why pay for a diagnosis at all?

Because a charger that isn’t working often isn’t the thing that’s broken.

What actually fails

In our experience, the unit itself is the culprit less often than people assume. The usual suspects:

The switchgear. This is the big one. An EV charger draws around 32A continuously for six or seven hours, night after night. Nothing else in a house does that — a shower runs for ten minutes, an oven cycles on and off. Sustained load at that level runs the protective devices hot, and over three or four years a marginal RCBO or isolator degrades, starts nuisance tripping, and eventually fails. We see burnt terminals and cooked breakers regularly. The charger on the wall is fine; the thing feeding it isn’t.

Connections. Terminals loosen through thermal cycling — heating and cooling every night. A loose termination arcs, and arcing damages everything around it.

Water ingress. A gland that wasn’t sealed properly, or has perished, lets water into the enclosure. Corrosion follows.

The tethered cable. Perished, cut, or a damaged connector. Replaceable on some units, not on others.

Nothing at all. A schedule that’s silently active, a dropped Wi-Fi connection, a tariff integration that’s logged out, or an app the manufacturer has discontinued. The charger works perfectly — it’s just been told not to.

If your fault might be in that last category, try our troubleshooting guide first. It’s free, it takes ten minutes, and it fixes a fair number of the calls we’d otherwise come out to.

Our fault diagnosis visit — £125

If the guide doesn’t sort it, we’ll come and find out what’s wrong properly.

The visit includes:

  • Full inspection of the charger, its enclosure and terminations
  • Testing of the dedicated circuit, protective devices and earthing arrangement
  • Insulation resistance and continuity testing where required
  • Load and functional testing of the charge point
  • A clear verdict: what’s failed, whether it’s repairable, and what it’ll cost to put right

You get a written summary either way, including the test results.

£125 refunded in full against the cost of a replacement if the unit turns out to be dead and you go ahead with us. If the fault turns out to be in the switchgear, the wiring or the settings, we’ll often be able to put it right on the same visit, and you’ll only pay for parts on top. Where a part needs ordering or the work is more involved, we’ll quote you before doing anything. All work is carried out by  NICEIC-registered engineers and fully insured.

Why we charge for this

Because a proper diagnosis takes an hour or more with test equipment, and because we’d rather find out what’s actually wrong than turn up and sell you a charger you might not need.

Plenty of firms will quote you for a new unit over the phone without seeing it. Sometimes that’s right. Often it isn’t, and you’ve paid £700 to fix a £60 breaker.

We work on any charger

You don’t need to have been a U Charge customer. We regularly attend units fitted by Pod Point, Rolec, Chargemaster and BP Pulse, EO, Andersen, myenergi, Ohme, Hypervolt and Wallbox — including brands that have since left the UK market and no longer offer support.

If your original installer has gone quiet or gone under, we can pick it up.

Areas we cover

Barnet · Finchley · Enfield · Southgate · Potters Bar · Borehamwood — and across North London and South Hertfordshire.

FAQs

Can an EV charger be repaired?

Sometimes, but usually not the unit itself. Modern chargers are sealed and there are no serviceable parts inside. What can very often be repaired is the installation around it — the protective devices, the isolator, the terminations, the cable. That’s why a diagnosis is worth doing before you commit to a new charger.

Not necessarily. Repeated tripping is more often a failing RCBO than a failing charger, particularly on installations three years old or more. It needs testing to tell the difference.

It depends on how busy the diary is, but we’ll always give you a realistic date when you call rather than a vague promise. If it’s urgent, say so and we’ll do what we can.

Then you don’t need this — go straight to our replacement and upgrade service.

Not sure whether it's the charger or the circuit?

Send us a photo of the unit and your consumer unit and we’ll give you an honest steer before you book anything. 

Call 020 8226 6123
Email us