And don't forget the little prayer you have to say beforehand to increase the chances that the thing actually starts charging, rather than getting some dreaded "communication error" or something.

The user experience for CCS sucks. You should be able to enter payment information into the car, which it would exchange with the charger so you could just pull up, plug in and walk away, without having to fuck around with NFC taps or custom apps for five minutes before you can actually start charging.

Is that due to the CCS connector, or the charging provider? Others have said on this thread that the communication protocol is similar/identical, so it seems much more likely that that's an issue on the backend that is caused by poor operations rather than the connector itself.

It's absolute the charging provider. Chargepoint, Electrify America, etc terminals are totally hit or miss.

I have a Mach-e friend owner and his home charger needs prayers to work too

NCS and CCS use the same communication protocols. The differences are in the actual charging station.