$450 bill from NRG / eVgo

[linkim]

In the meantime, I try to stay positive, especially when their DCQC works, and I don't need to wait too long.

Yes, that's a very positive aspect!

Well, I guess I was too positive with respect to eVgo. On Mar. 20, I received my eVgo statement for 2/14 - 3/13. Today 4/10, I received the same statement. What is going on with them? Very irritating.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Mr. Williams,

I was able to successfully process the payment after we spoke this morning. Your eVgo card is reinstated and is in the process of updating at all of our stations. The full update should be done in approximately 1 hour.

If you have any problems until the update completes, you can call me directly or the call center and your charging will be authorized.

Thank you for your help.

NRG / eVgo

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Your analysis is good, especially if you do all your charging on eVgo, and live in a warm climate. In winter conditions charging is much slower and the calculations change.

I do the majority of my charging at work and home, so will only sign up for the occasional use plan. Worse case in winter, I'd pay $16.95 for an hour. Over the course of a year that will be easily absorbed into the overall budget since I travel infrequently, but I would only use eVgo as a last resort, if there were no other competitive option available.

This pricing model will only last while stations are few and far between.

Edit: and really, who wants to deal with poor accounting practices? How much time and energy did that cost you?

 

[lorenfb]

Well, I guess I was too positive with respect to eVgo. On Mar. 20, I received my eVgo statement for 2/14 - 3/13. Today 4/10, I received the same statement. What is going on with them? Very irritating.

I too just received my first email statement from eVgo. That's encouraging. Is it coincidental that a recent
thread started by Tony could have resulted in that? I've been using eVgo for over six months now without
having received any statement before yesterday.

 

[linkim]

Well, I guess I was too positive with respect to eVgo. On Mar. 20, I received my eVgo statement for 2/14 - 3/13. Today 4/10, I received the same statement. What is going on with them? Very irritating.

I too just received my first email statement from eVgo. That's encouraging. Is it coincidental that a recent
thread started by Tony could have resulted in that? I've been using eVgo for over six months now without
having received any statement before yesterday.

I sent email this morning regarding the double billing. Let's see what response I get. Eventually the issues get resolved but I don't understand why their accounting is so bad.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

The two plans are:

$4.95 per session and $0.20 minute
$14.95 monthly, $0.10 minute ($3 per thirty minute session, when the machine times out.)

I'm not a penny-pincher and I support EV infrastructure, so the first plan was fine for occasional use, and the latter is great with the Toyota RAV4 EV with "JdeMO". I recharge a lot !!!

Comparing my car to an equivalent gasoline car (and a Prius, as is so often the case here), I find that if I only charged at NRG / eVgo quick chargers on the $14.95 plan, and drove 1000 miles per month for 100 months, my total energy cost would be:

Fees: 100 months * $14.95 = $1495 ($0.01495 per mile)

Electricty costs: 40kW average charge sped / 60 minutes = 0.666 kWh delivered per minute * 3 miles per kWh consumption rate = 2 miles delivered per minute @ $0.10 per minute is $0.05 per mile (yes, about the same to "Just-Drive-The-Prius(TM)). So, 1000 miles monthly * $0.05 = $50 monthly * 100 months = $5000

$6495 total transportation energy cost for 100,000 miles of driving ($0.0695 per mile) with the Toyota RAV4 EV equipped with JdeMO using only NRG / eVgo quick charging on the $14.95 monthly plan plus $0.10 per minute.

The 48 mpg Prius fuel cost per mile:

$0.0417 with $2 per gallon gasoline
$0.0625 with $3 per gallon gasoline
$0.0834 with $4 per gallon gasoline
$0.0960 with $5 per gallon gasoline

Of course, the RAV4 EV is a much larger, faster, more capable car, plus never go to a gas station, no oil changes, no smog checks, no camshaft belts, no spark plugs, no transmission or cooling system flushes, almost maintenance free.... rotate tires, check windshield washer fluid. Zero vehicle emissions, quiet, smooth, powerful, roomy.

------------ Rav4 EV ---- Rav4 V6

Sales Price- $35,000 ----$30,000 (EV not available new)
Fuel cost ---$ 6495 -----$18,000
Oil changes -------------- $ 300
Smog Check---------------$ 100
Maintenance $ 1300 -----$ 1900

Net costs -- $42,795 ---- $50,300

**couldn't do 10 years of oil changes for $300 myself much less paying anyone to do it**

 

[DaveEV]

Your analysis is good, especially if you do all your charging on eVgo, and live in a warm climate. In winter conditions charging is much slower and the calculations change.

Yes, the economics are much worse in a LEAF. My typical 20-30 minute QC session only gets me 10-11 kWh.

I do the majority of my charging at work and home, so will only sign up for the occasional use plan. Worse case in winter, I'd pay $16.95 for an hour. Over the course of a year that will be easily absorbed into the overall budget since I travel infrequently, but I would only use eVgo as a last resort, if there were no other competitive option available.

One potential gotcha is that I believe the eVgo QCs will turn off after 30 minutes, so if you want/need to charge for an hour, you have to start another session for $4.95.

 

[cwerdna]

Your analysis is good, especially if you do all your charging on eVgo, and live in a warm climate. In winter conditions charging is much slower and the calculations change.

Yes, the economics are much worse in a LEAF. My typical 20-30 minute QC session only gets me 10-11 kWh.
...
One potential gotcha is that I believe the eVgo QCs will turn off after 30 minutes, so if you want/need to charge for an hour, you have to start another session for $4.95.

And, yeah, I don't have a Rav4 EV w/JdeMO either.

And, other than some dealer NRG eVgo DC FCs, the closest ones I can find near my home from http://www.nrgevgo.com/find-a-station/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; are either 12.2 miles away or 17.4 miles away. Neither are convenient as I don't live nor work near there nor have any reason to visit them on even a semi-regular basis. They're not anywhere near/along my commute. One is in a different direction from my work and one is miles past where I work.

The closest dealer NRG eVgo DC FC isn't on the way between home and work either and has limited access hours. It used to be free.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of these stations are kinda busy due to Nissan's NCTC and http://www.nrgevgo.com/bmw-chargenow-dc-fast-program/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

I'm enjoying the free L1 and L2 charging at my work. I leased my Leaf full well knowing that my lease payments (not to mention insurance) wouldn't save me $ compared to only driving and owning my 06 Prius.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

One potential gotcha is that I believe the eVgo QCs will turn off after 30 minutes, so if you want/need to charge for an hour, you have to start another session for $4.95.

That would make my one hour charge $21.90. Without a plan, it's $9.95 for one time, 20 minute session, so still less expensive and no time wasted on three phone authorizations.

 

[caffeinekid]

Your analysis is good, especially if you do all your charging on eVgo, and live in a warm climate. In winter conditions charging is much slower and the calculations change.

Yes, the economics are much worse in a LEAF. My typical 20-30 minute QC session only gets me 10-11 kWh.
Snipped.......
I'm enjoying the free L1 and L2 charging at my work. I leased my Leaf full well knowing that my lease payments (not to mention insurance) wouldn't save me $ compared to only driving and owning my 06 Prius.

I pointed to some of this in my first post with regards to convenience of the charging stations and the 2011 Leaf battery degradation's effect on "value" from a QC session vs that of something like the Rav4, Tesla or even a newer Leaf. My thing personally is that even though I drive the Leaf in part due to environmental concerns, that doesn't mean I am willing to pay what is the equivalent of $5.00/gallon when gas is currently $2.15 here in Houston. I drive too much for this to make sense, especially considering it takes 20-30 minutes each time I have to do it. Even with the oil changes, I pay less to drive my old Prius the same distance. EVgo's pricing model is based on $5.00/gallon gasoline. Until it gets back up to that, a lot of older EVs are going to suffer.

Also, eVgo has had 4 years now to work out intelligent industry standard billing.

 

[linkim]

Well, I guess I was too positive with respect to eVgo. On Mar. 20, I received my eVgo statement for 2/14 - 3/13. Today 4/10, I received the same statement. What is going on with them? Very irritating.

I too just received my first email statement from eVgo. That's encouraging. Is it coincidental that a recent
thread started by Tony could have resulted in that? I've been using eVgo for over six months now without
having received any statement before yesterday.

I sent email this morning regarding the double billing. Let's see what response I get. Eventually the issues get resolved but I don't understand why their accounting is so bad.

I didn't receive a response to my email but there was a charge of $7.80 on my credit card by eVgo on 4/9. Now what's this all about? I guess I have to call them for answers.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

ok, not reading thru this thread but a few questions

do they not automatically take the months charges from your credit card every month as an "auto debit?"

I just signed up with them and glanced thru TOS and pretty sure that is what it says...


And if they do not provide me details of every charging session within a few days of the session, they will not be used very often by me because I do not accept "blind usage" or having to call customer service for anything.

Can I hope Tony's situation has caused them to change their billing process since I just signed up 2 days ago?

 

[TonyWilliams]

I think they know that they have a mess.

Let's hope they fix it.

They couldn't get automatic billing from me, since they never could keep my credit card info.

If they had that access, I would have been had my credit card bill increased by $450 and probably not caught it.

 

[Computerizer]

NRG eVgo is expanding into Washington State right now and a LOT of folks up here have or will be signing up for accounts. Hopefully they can get their act together.

Their terrible website also prevents Canadians from signing up, by the way. They say it's because they don't have chargers in Canada. They don't seem to comprehend that Canadians drive from BC into WA. If a Canadian wants to sign up today, they have to call a particular person in customer service, who can get them an account, but for some reason he asks if you have a US bank account, and if you say "no", he won't let you sign up. However a friend of mine signed up online with his Canadian credit card using my US mailing address, and he had no problem, so clearly you don't need a US bank account (and why would you, really?).

Also their contact forms such as this only accept US addresses, and, the drop-down list for "State" only has 36 states on it. WA is one which is missing. Outstanding.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

FYI; looks like EVgo is doing something because now WA is a selectable option. I simply do not use services that do not allow me to monitor my usage online. I am a possible identity theft victim due to 3 separate relationships with various businesses and vendors (ya, pretty much have free credit reports for life!!) so monitoring my accounts is required. About 25 years ago, my checkbook was stolen out of my car and the thieves cashed all 9 checks that night (new year's eve no less) all without ID, all way over the limit each business required for ID. Safeway was one that cashed a $231 check (this was 1988 and their limit for requiring ID at the time was $25)

in each case, despite the businesses not following their own check cashing policy, I was still at fault. Well, I did not pay, got all my money back from the bank and my check writing ability was history from that day on which was fine with me because that is when I stopped writing checks unless I absolutely had to do it.

So, now that Tony has shown us how to get the details I require, I am thinking eventually they will get tired of me calling every month and start providing the info I require online.

 

[caffeinekid]

So, now that Tony has shown us how to get the details I require, I am thinking eventually they will get tired of me calling every month and start providing the info I require online.

I bugged them about this back in early 2012 when we got our second Leaf and had to sign up for a pay plan. Back then they had the $39.95+tax unlimited charging, so it may not have mattered THAT much, but now that they are charging per minute I would imagine that people need to be able to reconcile their billing. Frankly, the 200 mile/charge EV cannot come fast enough IMO.

 

[walterbays]

In defense of eVgo - which screwed up my billing exactly as they did Tony's but with a lower mistaken amount - they got the most important stuff right. They keep building new QC stations, seemingly well in excess of the number they were required to by the settlement of the California lawsuit. So they seem serious about running a charging business. Their reliability, though not perfect, is worlds ahead of Blink and their repair is also much better. They have pretty good locations and signage, and seem to be less afflicted by ICEing than other stations.

True their a la carte prices are more expensive than gasoline, but if you wanted lowest cost of public refueling you'd Just-Drive-The-Prius(tm). Paying $15/month for a subscription is less than I would have willingly paid to, say, Plugin America to operate a QC co-op to maintain and extend public charging. Though I'd rather be paying that to a non-profit, if the only organization that steps up to promote public charging is a profit making company then I'm happy to pay it to them. And it's far less than I'd pay to Nissan to rent a new battery so that I *might* not need public charging.

As a subscriber the incremental cost to charge is just about perfect. It's cheaper than gasoline, so there's no incentive to Just-Drive-The-Prius(tm) but more expensive than overnight home charging, so there's no incentive for freeloaders to hog the chargers in lieu of charging at home.

As for their web site and accounting/billing system... I can't imagine why after so many months I still haven't read about their CIO being fired. Assuming they lack the talent and experience to implement reliable IT in house they could contract the job to almost any IT company. Or they could contract the job to Chargepoint and market it as a positive step they made towards inter-operability of charging networks. They could contract it to Google Wallet, or Amazon. Heck, they could contract it to my son's school cafeteria and achieve much better service.

 

[linkim]

In defense of eVgo - which screwed up my billing exactly as they did Tony's but with a lower mistaken amount - they got the most important stuff right. They keep building new QC stations, seemingly well in excess of the number they were required to by the settlement of the California lawsuit. So they seem serious about running a charging business. Their reliability, though not perfect, is worlds ahead of Blink and their repair is also much better. They have pretty good locations and signage, and seem to be less afflicted by ICEing than other stations.

I agree, the eVgo DCFC chargers are the most reliable of the ones I use in the SF Bay Area. They are located in convenient sites for me, north and east of Cupertino, but not south. I have no issue with paying the monthly subscription and the higher charging fee if that's what it takes to get convenient and reliable charging. It's their billing/accounting system that needs fixing.

 

[linkim]

On Mar. 20, I received my eVgo statement for 2/14 - 3/13. Today 4/10, I received the same statement.

I sent email this morning regarding the double billing. Let's see what response I get

I didn't receive a response to my email but there was a charge of $7.80 on my credit card by eVgo on 4/9.

Phoned eVgo Customer Services this morning, and all I got was a trouble ticket confirmation number. I suppose this means they will look into the billing issues. It seems I can't talk to anyone in the billing/accounting department with the problems. Anyone have a number/email address of someone at eVgo that we can directly contact (other than the generic customer service rep.) with our complaints?

 

[leafo]

I've been using eVgo for the last 6-7 months without any trouble with billing. For the last 3 months, they are now sending detailing charging report which lists all the times, locations and minutes billed for a month. I don't see any issue with that. The $15 pm + 0.1 per minute works out ok for me, and recently became more convenient to me as they have now installed a new station about 0.5 miles from my apartment (my landlord wouldn't allow me to even install a 120V extension from my apartment to my carport, so all of my charging needs are fulfilled by eVgo).

But, I can totally understand that their system can have bugs which affects other users and causes problem for them. On the positive side, they are always quick to respond to a call if I have any problem at the charging station.