I bought a phone mount one, it charges quite fast and it is so much easier to place my phone in the dock and have it charge. It does get quite warm but that’s easily remedied by pointing an AC vent to the back of the phone.
Honestly it sounds like you got a low wattage one and yes those do charge much slower.
I had one where yes everything was plugged in but… The power strips never plugged into the wall… They were just plugged into each other.
That one turned out to be an annoying bit of cable management that I wouldn’t have had to do if they would have just left things alone and let me handle the original ticket