Blink - Many (or all?) stations down?

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bwilliams

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 31, 2011
Messages
69
Location
San Diego
My husband is living the Blink nightmare tonight and I have been trying to get what information I can from Blink on his behalf:

Many, (maybe all??) Blink chargers are DOWN. My husband tried to plug in this morning at his usual charging station at UCSD only to find out the charger was not working. He spent 30+ minutes on the phone with someone at Blink who said they were going to reset that station. It didn't happen. He went to the next closest station - same thing, not working, same story from Blink, "we will reset it"; no go. In the end he spent 2+ hours on the phone with Blink until his cell phone went dead. No charge and stranded. He managed to get in contact with me and I'm not as polite as he is and here's the story *I* got after a few unkind exchanges: Another company has bought the charging stations and MANY (if not all???) are now down. Not working. You're screwed. No, we will not pay for his taxi home. Take a bus.

My husband was towed to a dealer and every charger there is full with screwed LEAF drivers who also could not charge on "out of order" Blink stations. I'm furious.

Our Tesla is on order and we cannot wait to never, ever have to rely on unreliable charging stations again.

Just an FYI.
 
Is it all over for Blink?

I posted tonight in the Blink thread but that is a buried thread and I think people should be warned. Many Blink charging stations are now DOWN. I know you forum geeks knew this was coming but we average LEAF owners had no idea and now my husband is (was) stranded after spending the day on the phone with dopey Blink "help" who told him to "just wait while they reset the charger". Well, 2+ hours, 2 different stations, and a dead cell phone later there is no station available to him. He was towed to a Nissan dealer with a line of people charging/ waiting to charge after dealing with failed Blink charging stations. We did not see this coming.

TESLA, you can't deliver our car soon enough !!!!
 
yes, for you, I'm sure. But for those who aren't forum-savvy the Blink thread is too buried. This is too important. Being stranded really, really sucks. Can't say it too much or in too many ways ...

davewill said:
Please don't create multiple threads. The first thread was quite visible.
 
bwilliams said:
yes, for you, I'm sure. But for those who aren't forum-savvy the Blink thread is too buried. This is too important. Being stranded really, really sucks. Can't say it too much or in too many ways ...
Sorry, of course the rules don't apply to you...Your message was obviously more important than everyone else's. What was I thinking...
 
davewill said:
bwilliams said:
yes, for you, I'm sure. But for those who aren't forum-savvy the Blink thread is too buried. This is too important. Being stranded really, really sucks. Can't say it too much or in too many ways ...
I don't even know why I bother sometimes...of course the rules don't apply to you...Your message was obviously more important than everyone else's. What was I thinking...

I think you are a troll but I'll respond in case you're not: BEING STRANDED IS DANGEROUS! If I can help someone avoid that then I will do so in any way I can. My husband is well into his 70's and I feel very protective of him and his situation - I do not want to see anyone else getting stranded after dark. People need to know that BLINK IS DONE!! Say something helpful or shut up.
 
davewill is definitely not a troll. If you check his profile listed on the left of his posts you will see that he has posted more than 4000 times, and to my recollection most of them have been very helpful.

Blink is/was owned by Ecotality, which has been in to close to bankrupt for six months or more. I haven't kept up with the details, but have seen a number of posts from people who say Blink charging stations are notoriously unreliable, and they refuse to depend on them. I realize that doesn't help your husband's plight this evening. Being 70+ myself I feel for him, and wish both you the best.

Ray
 
planet4ever said:
davewill is definitely not a troll.
+1

Blink is/was owned by Ecotality, which has been in to close to bankrupt for six months or more.
Yes they were notoriously unreliable prior to bankruptcy. On Oct. 17, 2013 they were acquired by Car Charging Group and I've been watching for signs whether CCG intends to operate Blink as a business including spending necessary money on maintenance, or whether they intend to flip the charging business to another buyer for a profit. As I've watched Blink stations disappear from Blink's own map, and watched stations change to red "could not charge" icons on Plugshare my hopes have sunk. All that keeps public infrastructure afloat are the Nissan dealers and eVgo, and barely that as Ms. Williams noted. To completely replace Blink, eVgo would need many more stations than are planned, and even that wouldn't help drivers without QC ports since they have only a single L2 plug per site.

I wonder if Nissan can continue selling Leafs without Blink; without dependable public charging infrastructure a Volt looks much more sensible. And I wonder if that question was the motivation for CCG's acquisition in the first place. That is, might Blink be sold to Nissan? Or did they "just" need to complete the December round of capitalization in order to fund the necessary maintenance work to operate Blink as a business?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...illion-ev-system-from-bankrupt-ecotality.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ca...completes-10-million-capital-raise-2013-12-06
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1859281-Car-Charging-Group-Ripe-For-Acquisition
 
I feel you but you really need to prepare and know your distance and limits, you can not rely on charging stations around town, esp Blink. If you really need to charge, look into the EvGo stations that are popping all around San Diego, these have both the L2 and DCQC. There is one down at the Outlets in San Ysidro, a new one in Chula Vista on Broadway next to the Petco (soon to be turned on) Fashion Valley over by Bloomingdales etc.

I have been in contact with blink over the DCQC station at SDSU on college ave Lot G, they stated that the parts are on order. Station has been down 2 months now.

Plenty of DCQC stations at the dealerships, check your PlugShare app or go online to located them. I get around town and work & back with charging at home only. Never needed to look for a charge due to low battery. I plan it that way, not hard to do.


Fred
 
I was going to sit out here and keep my "mouth" shut, I really was.

OK, I get it.
You're 70, and you got "stranded", and you are amazed that a group made up entirely of people who ALSO have to keep an eye on their range to empty are not as shocked and outraged as you are.

We're sympathetic, but...... When you title a post such, you are going to get some push-Back

I'm sorry you got stranded. (Really)
No, I really am. (No, I am!!)
It's a concern we all live with, and I feel your pain.
But I'm really sorry you appear to have lost faith in... what exactly?

You sort of have to take some responsibility for your own plight? Dont'cha think??
You guys are not noobies; you have had your Leaf for a while.
And you didn't exactly get stranded in rural Wyoming with 60 miles to the nearest electric and no cell phone coverage?

I took a look at plug share map for the San Diego area.
REALLY Not out in the boonies there!

You have a "couple" alternative charging solutions :D .
Maybe keep 20 Miles up your sleeve for a divert next time??

Again, I'm truly sorry you got stranded. (really)
And, I hope you enjoy your Tesla.
And, when It says you have 20 miles till empty, I suggest you charge it.


Oh, and davewill is not a troll.
chill
 
walterbays said:
...
I wonder if Nissan can continue selling Leafs without Blink; without dependable public charging infrastructure a Volt looks much more sensible. And I wonder if that question was the motivation for CCG's acquisition in the first place. That is, might Blink be sold to Nissan? Or did they "just" need to complete the December round of capitalization in order to fund the necessary maintenance work to operate Blink as a business?
...

I think they can although it may slow sales slightly.
Here in the Midwest Blink chargers are incredibly rare. I am not sure about the south to east coast.
Speeding up the rollout of QC network where Blink chargers are most abundant may help.
 
OK, I admit some confusion. There are not only two Blink locations at UCSD, there are 4 or 5, plus a few more locations within 5 miles or so of the campus. It is literally the last place in the county I'd expect to get stranded. I don't believe they could possibly all have been down. We've had no indications of a system-wide shutdown, in fact, Car Charging has indicated that they are actively taking on maintenance of the system.

What it really sounds like is that he was too close to empty and got really crappy customer service, and that DOES need to change.
 
davewill said:
OK, I admit some confusion. There are not only two Blink locations at UCSD, there are 4 or 5, plus a few more locations within 5 miles or so of the campus. It is literally the last place in the county I'd expect to get stranded. I don't believe they could possibly all have been down. We've had no indications of a system-wide shutdown, in fact, Car Charging has indicated that they are actively taking on maintenance of the system.

What it really sounds like is that he was too close to empty and got really crappy customer service, and that DOES need to change.
On plugshare it looks like around 12 locations within 5 miles, most with 2-5 charging stations each. But that's not the last place to get stranded. In a comparable area a bit to the west plugshare shows 65 locations. I don't remember whether blinknetwork.com has showed SDSU QC as being down the last two months, and that web site is down now so I can't check.

I thought from the title of this thread that the feared system-wide shutdown of all Blink locations had occurred, and the web site outage does nothing to allay that fear. I'm going to go look at one or two Blink locations to see whether or not they're turned on. *

Blink's bankruptcy aside, finding stations can be a problem. At this early stage of infrastructure deployment I do think all drivers ought to carry a device capable of viewing plugshare.com to find stations. Crowd sourced plugshare is most likely to give accurate information on whether the station is working. But also when someone calls Blink the customer "service" agent ought to be able to view not only blinknetwork.com but also plugshare.com and direct them to a nearby charging station, Blink or the competition.

Then there's the car's navigation system, which on those few occasions that my destination has been out of range diligently nagged me to divert to various charging locations. I'll bet, though, that the navigation system still has no idea that the SDSU QC is broken despite daily online updates for the past two months. Nissan could cut their towing bill quite a bit if they would improve the data feed to their navigation systems.

*PS, I "looked" at a lot of Blink locations on plugshare and saw many stations marked "offline" and only one, Oceanside Transit, that had a successful charging check-in posted within the last month. But I really looked at one location, Mitchell International near 805 and Governor, and their Blink stations appear to be working so I don't think that Blink shut down the entire network. They just had the "usual" problem of so many stations. Of 5 stations, 4 were occupied by what appeared to be fleet vehicles and this may well have been the reason that Mitchell installed the stations. One Leaf had recently completed a 5 hour charge. Three Volts were sitting in the spaces not even plugged in. I checked the touch screen of one of the VoltICEd stations and it was responsive.

PPS, blinknetwork.com is back up now and it does show the SDSU QC station as being unavailable, but shows 15 other (L2) stations on campus as being available.

PPPS, it would sure ease my infrastructure anxiety if anyone anywhere could cite a single instance of Blink having repaired a broken charging station since the CCG acquisition. Anyone see it happen?
 
walterbays said:
... PPS, blinknetwork.com is back up now and it does show the SDSU QC station as being unavailable, but shows 15 other (L2) stations on campus as being available. ...
I'm assuming you're aware that the above incident happened at UCSD rather than SDSU.
 
About 1/3rd of the Blink quick chargers were down a few months ago in Tennessee, but they seem to be slowly coming back online. So maybe they are just taking care of them one market at a time. Of course, one of the last one to stay offline is the one that I would use about once a month.

I am getting better at planning my travels to take advantage of Level 2 charging.
 
davewill said:
I'm assuming you're aware that the above incident happened at UCSD rather than SDSU.
Nope, my mixup. No wonder you said it would be so hard to get stranded around there (UCSD)! Blink network alone shows 65 stations in the immediate vicinity.

And thanks Phillip for the reassurance that Blink is doing maintenance somewhere! It doesn't seem like they'd spend the money and effort anywhere if they were planning on closing everything down. So maybe that December round of funding was to operate the network, and they'll start getting more stations fixed.
 
I tried to reply twice yesterday, and the thread was either moved or locked. So +1 on using just ONE thread for a particular topic.

I just wanted to add 2 points:
1) I saw people charging on Blink stations yesterday (around 2pm), so I doubt ALL were down. However, I didn't try myself.
2) Many might not be aware, but Blink has a support website where they and other customers respond - if this is bugging you, and you didn't get proper support over the phone, you should post it there: https://getsatisfaction.com/blink
 
One thought just occurred to me. Perhaps the gentleman didn't have a Blink card, and was trying to get the station enabled over the phone. I do know that Blink has some sort of guest mode for that case, but I'm not sure how (or how well) it works. It's always good to make sure that the first time you try to use a type of station isn't when it's urgent.
 
We've been charging our leaf at UCSD charging stations (3 different ones) for many months, reliably. There was no reason to think that it wouldn't work yesterday.

I'm amazed at all the blame on this forum - like it was his fault for taking the car to work and expecting the charging to actually work as has for months. While all of you probably have the most amazing skills at using gps and finding charging stations I, personally, have found finding a station is a needle-in-the-haystack scenario at times. The blink map sucks and has been utterly wrong sometimes. My husband manages never to find these stations - yes, he's directionally challenged - so what? (we actually drive around looking for these things in our gas-burner before ever attempting to drive the leaf to one). How many miles and how much time should a person who is low on charge drive around looking for working stations??? Are you kidding?? At night in empty parking lots and garages? Now, that's good advertising for the leaf!

Thanks to those of you who understood the situation and the very worried spouse. And yes, the Blink customer support was atrocious. The last guy I spoke to made it sound like many stations were down and the fact that there were several leafs at the dealership, looking for a charge, indicated that as well.

Bottom line: drive your LEAF as though no charging station exists. That means we're back to the ice until the bigger battery (MS) arrives.

Oh, and we do use a blink card.
 
bwilliams said:
I'm amazed at all the blame on this forum - like it was his fault for taking the car to work and expecting the charging to actually work as has for months. While all of you probably have the most amazing skills at using gps and finding charging stations I, personally, have found finding a station is a needle-in-the-haystack scenario at times. The blink map sucks and has been utterly wrong sometimes. My husband manages never to find these stations - yes, he's directionally challenged - so what? (we actually drive around looking for these things in our gas-burner before ever attempting to drive the leaf to one). How many miles and how much time should a person who is low on charge drive around looking for working stations??? Are you kidding?? At night in empty parking lots and garages? Now, that's good advertising for the leaf!

.

Wow...Nobody is Blaming you.

However, you need to assume some responsibility for your situation.
You got stranded because you ran out of charge.

You ran out of charge in an area with, as near as I can tell from plugshare, at least 50 L2 EVSE, and 8 DCQC chargers within 10 miles.

If you are directionally challenged, or GPS impaired, or whatever, spend an hour at home and make a list.
Do your "driving around" from your kitchen Table.

Go to http://www.plugshare.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look at all the charging opportunities in your area.
Write the addresses down of the ones you like.
Stick it in the Glove box.

If you get in trouble, you have a list of alternates.
You are one of us; and we would like you to be successful.
Where you are located there is no reason to get stranded.
 
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