Has anyone had success with Blink chargers?

I used a Blink charger successfully on two occasions in Beaverton, OR. No problems, text notifications re charging status, etc.

I've used blink in Chicago (southwest suburbs) and LA (San Fernando valley). on both occasions everything worked fine.

I used the blink at my office today. That said, I like the Chargepoint at the office better. Did you check the blink app on your smartphone before driving to the site?

elecblue said:

I've used blink in Chicago (southwest suburbs) and LA (San Fernando valley). on both occasions everything worked fine.

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Blnk? SW suburbs? Which suburb? I've only ever seen Chargepoint and Charjit (350Green) here.

sp4rk said:

Blnk? SW suburbs? Which suburb? I've only ever seen Chargepoint and Charjit (350Green) here.

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Check out there map. Never figured Kohl's to be so progressive. They have a mobile app as well, as Bonnie showed.

I've used Blink before. If I find one of their stations to be on the fritz, I call them and they get a tech on it.

I have several blink commercial stations at my current workplace. I tried one out recently just for the experience (obviously it makes more financial sense to charge at home) and for the prime parking spot, and it worked fine. I have the Blink Basic membership that charges $1.50 per hour of charging. It took just over an hour for me to recover my commuting miles and finish my charge, but I was unable to get back to the car to unplug it until my lunch hour, almost 7 hours after I initially plugged in.

Now my monthly statement has arrived, and much to my chagrin it seems they've charged me for the entire time my car was plugged in, despite the car sitting with a completed charge for almost 6 hours! Is this the standard for their charging system? If so, then it no longer makes anything resembling economic sense to plug these in as I was charged $10.50 for about 20 miles worth of charging! Has anyone experienced this? Is this the standard charge pricing? I've already emailed them my thoughts but I was curious what everyone else's experiences have been.

Sig698 said:

...Has anyone experienced this? Is this the standard charge pricing? I've already emailed them my thoughts but I was curious what everyone else's experiences have been.

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Check out this thread!:
My Nissan Leaf Forum View topic - Calling 6RBB365 in Encinitas. Your Blink bill is $53!

(Look at the duration and cost at the top of the above image.)

TEG said:

Check out this thread!:
My Nissan Leaf Forum View topic - Calling 6RBB365 in Encinitas. Your Blink bill is $53!

(Look at the duration and cost at the top of the above image.)

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I can't see the pictures, but yowza! I guess I'll refrain from charging at work now!

I've used Blink chargers with both my Roadster and Model S; they worked fine.

For those that didn't read the linked MNL thread: Most (not all) chargers will indeed charge you for just being plugged in, rather than just while charging. The reason is that they want to encourage you to move your car once you have enough charge, so that somebody else can use it (and they can charge that other person).

TEG said:

Check out this thread!:
My Nissan Leaf Forum View topic - Calling 6RBB365 in Encinitas. Your Blink bill is $53!
View attachment 11438
(Look at the duration and cost at the top of the above image.)

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I guess that is an incentive to avoid hogging the charge station... :wink:

Sig698 said:

I have several blink commercial stations at my current workplace. I tried one out recently just for the experience (obviously it makes more financial sense to charge at home) and for the prime parking spot, and it worked fine. I have the Blink Basic membership that charges $1.50 per hour of charging. It took just over an hour for me to recover my commuting miles and finish my charge, but I was unable to get back to the car to unplug it until my lunch hour, almost 7 hours after I initially plugged in.

Now my monthly statement has arrived, and much to my chagrin it seems they've charged me for the entire time my car was plugged in, despite the car sitting with a completed charge for almost 6 hours! Is this the standard for their charging system? If so, then it no longer makes anything resembling economic sense to plug these in as I was charged $10.50 for about 20 miles worth of charging! Has anyone experienced this? Is this the standard charge pricing? I've already emailed them my thoughts but I was curious what everyone else's experiences have been.

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i believe they are charging you for the spot, not the electricity consumed. Remember if your car is blocking the spot and charger then you are preventing other users from charger. Also, you're preventing Blink from making money off the charger. It would be a poor business decision to allow you to charge for only a few minutes while still occupying the charger for 7 hours.

Also, remember, they are not a utility company, to cannot charge per kwh consumed. Only utilities can do that.

The cost is based on how long it is plugged in, not how long it's been charging. They have about a 5 min grace period if you run over an hour mark, but after that it charges you for the full next hour...

The money is split between Ecotality and the host site.

Sigma4Life said:

i believe they are charging you for the spot, not the electricity consumed. Remember if your car is blocking the spot and charger then you are preventing other users from charger. Also, you're preventing Blink from making money off the charger. It would be a poor business decision to allow you to charge for only a few minutes while still occupying the charger for 7 hours.

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We did an eval of Chargepoint and Blink at work and they brought in EV owners (and owners-to-be) for the final pitches. The Blink chargers work just fine. But the Blink software isn't as mature so it's lacking features that they're adding, their charger h/w architecture didn't look as easy to service which means its likely that faulty chargers won't get fixed as quickly and they haven't deployed nearly as many stations into the field so it's likely their network and service operations aren't as mature (meaning it's possible that faulty stations won't get serviced as quickly).

The way the stations are supposed to work is that the business that installs the charger is supposed to be able to choose the fee structure: by charging time, connect time, power consumed, free, etc. A Walmart might want to charge by connect time, not charge time. But other places may not. Our company for example will be charging by the average cost per KwH consumed for employee chargers. However if I recall correctly, Blink had fewer options available. I also saw a report of a company suing Ecototality because the tracking & billing functions weren't working as pitched and they needed to swap the chargers out.

Moral of the story: check the fee structure before you plug into the charger. And don't assume that the charger you want will work. Chargers do fail and it takes some time for them to be put back into service. All the networks have mobile apps and websites that indicate what chargers are working and in use and how you'll be charged. Use them.

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jomo25 said:

Also, remember, they are not a utility company, to cannot charge per kwh consumed. Only utilities can do that.

The cost is based on how long it is plugged in, not how long it's been charging. They have about a 5 min grace period if you run over an hour mark, but after that it charges you for the full next hour...

The money is split between Ecotality and the host site.

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There are a number of states that have revised their laws so that companies can charge for power used by EV charging w/o being designated a power utility. California is one of them. Not sure which others have done the same but I'm sure google will tell you.