Bluedot - EV Charging Stations

Writing this during my last Bluedot charge before deleting the app. This is from the perspective of a personal user, which no longer seems to be Bluedots focus as all of their marketing has pivoted to fleet management. At one point Bluedot gave you EV charging for a flat rate of .30/kwh, a great deal in exchange for having to put in set amounts of money, potentially more than you’d use in a charging session. Whatever was leftover, Bluedot would use to invest or do whatever with. Now, Bluedot’s flat fee is .50/kwh which matches or exceeds what you would pay with the First Party for at least 90% of DCFC chargers. And they still expect you to put in more money than you’ll use for one charge session. Clearly Bluedots original system was not making money, so now they’ve resorted to fleecing the end users. Just download the app for whatever charger you’re using, pay for the exact amount of energy you put in your car, and leave greedy middlemen like Bluedot out of the equation.

Recently I see more credit cards start to offer bonus rewards for EV charging, usually offered together with Gas Station charges. But when I signed up Bluedot there were very few options as good as what Bluedot offers. I don't use all of Bluedot's features. I tried the free driving and it was difficult for me to remeber to start and stop for every drive and soon I got over it. What has been working for me is paying all my EV expenses (charging, insurance) through Bluedot card and get 5% rewards. It's just a no brainer. Sign up, get the card number, associate it with my Tesla account and I'm done. I just check back in the app from time to time to redeem my rewards.

I’ve been loving this app the last few months since I got my EV — between the low flat rate, points for using the card for purchases, and free charging days, what’s not to like; but something happened over the last 3 weeks where it has been terribly inconsistent and buggy. Today is one of their free charging days and conveniently, the app “Could not start charging. Something went wrong.” The advice from the automated in-app support is essentially “keep trying”, which I did over a dozen times over almost 30 minutes. The charging network’s (EVgo) own app connected just fine without any issues though the cost was considerably higher. The inconvenience is approaching the point where the cost of time spent trying to get it to work outstrips the actual & potential monetary savings. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially if you find yourself at a busy charging hub and you’re the moron holding up the cadence trying to get an app to start charging.