Atrocious experience
It’s 10:30pm. Your car is running out of charge. You’re trying to go home. You find a Blink charger. You tap your phone, thinking “oh nice I can pay with Apple Pay.” … Wrong. You can only pay with some proprietary Blink card. So you download the Blink App, which makes you go through 10 screens worth of sign up nonsense and manually enter a credit card number before being forced to pre-load $20 onto some strange account in order to charge. The whole user experience is so stupid and so unnecessary it’s enraging. What a waste of time. The product manager in charge of this needs to get a new job. Imagine if you could roll up, tap your phone, start charging. Literally no reason not to except for meaningless vendor lock in. I’m sure many customers just drive away when faced with this whole stupidity. Blink is not living in the future.
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Response from developer
Hi, appreciate your review! Your feedback helps us enhance user experience. For any specific questions or issues, reach out to us at support@blinkcharging.com. Charge On⚡️🔋
Paiement
Need to get an account and deposit $ amount prior charging. Not practical when on business to claim. Ie: You pre-deposit $40 on your account with commercial credit card but final charged is $35. The receipt does not match the consumption.
To invasive; too many obstacles
Even though the charge station was equipped with tap to pay, Blink required me to use this app (despite there being icons on the station to the contrary). The app would not accept Apple Pay. It required me to manually enter all of my billing information and credit card information. It would not accept auto fill from iOS for either of those things. This was confusing and led to a very long time to get started charging.
Frustrating experience, but I’m fortunate it worked eventually and that I wasn’t stranded. Even saying that, though: “not stranded” is a sad point of comparison.
Frustrating experience, but I’m fortunate it worked eventually and that I wasn’t stranded. Even saying that, though: “not stranded” is a sad point of comparison.
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Can’t start charging
App is useless, entered all my information and then it won’t start a charging session. And I’m not going to call them at 1am to help them debug their garbage. Now these guys have my credit card information, yay.
Cost for charging seems ludicrous for low speed too. .25 per kWh plus a parking fee is $1.50 an hour. More expensive than a supercharging at a tenth the speed!
Cost for charging seems ludicrous for low speed too. .25 per kWh plus a parking fee is $1.50 an hour. More expensive than a supercharging at a tenth the speed!
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Unfair charges
Between yesterday and today I was able to charge my car for the first time using the charger at my condo, and after numerous calls to provide me access to the charge station. I believe it ending charging in the early morning 2-3 am for what I received a text message, awesome. As you can imagine I saw the message when I wake up, and proceed to move the car. Later I receive the invoice with a $15 parking charge. My question to Blink is why, am I suppose to move the car at 2-3 am, who was going to charge the car at that time? Congratulations, you are making more money with unfair charges than the actual charge, but not anymore with me, this was the first and last time I use your chargers.
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Response from developer
Hello! We regret the inconvenience and apologize. We’re investigating and sharing your comments with our developers. Improving user experience on all Blink platforms is our mission.⚡️ Kindly reach out to our customer support at support@blinkcharging.com for assistance with the account billing issue. Thank you!
Donna Was Great!!!
I just got an electric vehicle and am not familiar with how to charge. I ended up in Vermont with a low charge. My vehicle referred me to a Blink station. When I got there I discovered that the two fast charge machines weren’t working. I downloaded the Blink Appointment thinking that might get them to work. It didn’t. But I got a number to call and leave a message. An operator named Donna called me back. Donna was WONDERFUL!!! She was so patient. She stayed on the line with me for half an hour!! She was wonderful. She even tried to get the broken machines to work but was unsuccessful.
This was my first time using Blink. Since four of the six chargers didn’t function, I’ll give Blink the company only three stars. But DONNA GETS ALL FIVE STARS!!!
Thank you, Donna. You saved me.
This was my first time using Blink. Since four of the six chargers didn’t function, I’ll give Blink the company only three stars. But DONNA GETS ALL FIVE STARS!!!
Thank you, Donna. You saved me.
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What a rip-off!
Went on a road trip from NJ to VA and a blink charger was the only one available. It charged me $2 per kWh which came out to $90 for a full charge! I understand the price of electricity varies across the country but $2 per kWh is actual highway robbery (pun intended). Also the app only lets you pay in $20 increments so for an $81 charge, you pay $100 and they hold the $19 in your account indefinitely. Instead, what I suggest is leaving a negative balance on your account until the next rare occasion you need blink. I don’t understand how gas pumps have got it right where you just pay for whatever gas was dispensed. Why can’t EV charging be the same? And without charging 16x the national average price of electricity?
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Response from developer
Hi, apologies for any confusion. Blink provides flexible station host models – host-owned, Blink-owned, and hybrid. Pricing follows the host's rates or Blink's recommended market rates per the contract. Check the Blink app or station LCD for rates. For assistance, contact our support team at support@blinkcharging.com. Thank you!
Waitlist function needs a lot of improvement
The waitlist function for private chargers could use a lot of improvement. You have like 1 or 2 minutes to accept the waitlist once you get the notification, but no matter what you do the notification will not play a sound or vibrate my phone or Apple Watch no matter what i have my notification volume at. If it isn’t going to give me a proper alert it would be nice to get a text message for the waitlist like it does for stopping or starting charging. There also seems to be problems with the waitlist, where the charger won’t activate for some people at my location. Not sure if this is because if someone accepts the waitlist the charger still shows as “available” in the app until they actually plugged in. But it is very common where we get people plugging in and not being able to charge, leaving their car on the charger for hours in the “connected” state.
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First time did not go well
I tried to use a Blink charger with just my credit card. The phone message said there was a problem charging my credit card so it failed yet the standard fee of $20 hit my credit card. So I downloaded the app and tried to search for the charging station but it did not come up either on the map, by typing in the location name or typing in the serial number. I eventually tried customer service. Pressing 0 does not get you to customer service (shows how much they care). I pressed 0 10 times and eventually it switched me over to an outsourced operator who managed to get the charger to start. 30 minutes of my life I’m not getting back.
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I don’t believe the rating average
I just downloaded your app. There are blue and green dots indicating the charging stations, but no legend indicating what the different colors mean. An easy to find legend would be useful. There are also other icons, such as “lock” symbols. Maybe they are intended to be intuitive, but if so they are only intuitive in the minds of the developers. Again, an easy to find legend or help reference would be useful. Maybe there are other symbols or features we don’t know about as well…
I am concerned that virtually every review over the past several months are negative (1 star). This makes me fear I made a mistake investing in Blink.
All of the responses are a cut and past of the same apology, which is worse than no response at all.
A common complaint, besides chargers out of order and showing as “Available”, is that credit cards and Apple Pay are not accepted. Blink needs to FIX this NOW if you ever expect to make a profit.
I am concerned that virtually every review over the past several months are negative (1 star). This makes me fear I made a mistake investing in Blink.
All of the responses are a cut and past of the same apology, which is worse than no response at all.
A common complaint, besides chargers out of order and showing as “Available”, is that credit cards and Apple Pay are not accepted. Blink needs to FIX this NOW if you ever expect to make a profit.
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