Well the St Helens rapid chargers were still offline after a month, so a moan on twitter to Osprey Charging quickly got a response that they were

“waiting on the OK from their insurers before repairing the chargers”.

That understandably didn’t go down well with several users;

Having chargers sit faulty for months because of paperwork only exasperates the issues which are unfortunately holding back EV adoption. We don’t see high demand petrol stations closed for extended periods because someone backed into a pump so why is it different for a charger?

— Daniel Bull (@DecibelsDaniel) May 11, 2022

Osprey then DELETED their initial tweet reply, and followed up with the more reasonable:

Hi Mike, the chargers at St Helens / The Range are offline due to vandalism. We have since been waiting for the arrival of replacement units, and have received news that these will be replaced early next week. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Thanks, team Osprey⚡️

— Osprey Charging (@OspreyCharging) May 13, 2022

Well ok, vandalism obviously isn’t their fault – but an essential service offline for a whole month – when did you last see a petrol pump offline for a day or a week?

Update: two weeks later, the chargers were finally repaired – and instantly busy !

All’s well in the end !