EVgo Network

Compared to my experience with two other charging networks, your product has been very difficult to access. After signing up for the service on your website, I called to use a charging station and was told that my application didn’t go through because of a website issue. So, I had to sign up again, but I’m not that confident I’m actually a member of your charging network. It’s been tough being a customer of yours or trying to be.
I received no access card like I did with the other charging networks. This is frustrating given EVgo seems to have a great network of charging stations.

Stay away from EVgo at all costs! Why? I signed up with them a number of months ago. Never really had a necessity to use any of their charges until a few months ago. 4 hour charge for $ 6. Fair enough. Fast forward to a few days ago. I received 2 (not 1, but 2) emails (with differing amounts) with rows and rows of charges, at the same location that I used for my 4 hours charge. The total charges that came in to my email address was over $ 160. Now, for the reason to stay away from this Company. I have not used any of their chargers since my 4 hour, $ 6 charge (which I paid for at that time).
When I called their customer Dis-​Service line, the agent took my information (I also told him to cancel my account, since I felt someone had fraudulently taken over my account), and told him I was disputing that ridiculous charge, since I have not used their network since December of 2015.
One of their «retail ops analysts» emailed me and said «The charges are valid. You have use (grammaitcal error hers) the same charger over and over.» Seriously??? Not only did they send me an invoice that wasn’t valid, but she called me a liar by implying that «I used the same charger over and over.»
Luckily, my credit card that was on file with them was cancelled due to a fraud alert (not sure if this is related), so they couldn’t automatically bill me this erroneous amount. I replied to this agent and told her once again that I did not use the charger. That I have no need to use the charger and in fact, I was out of town for many of the days that were listed on the bogus invoice.
So, the bottom line interpretation that I have on EVgo is they either have poor controls on their charging network, which allow fraudsters to use a charger and have it billed to unsuspecting EVgo card holders. Or, worse yet, they are using strong-​arm, bullying tactics, finding a new profit center, by fraudulently billing their customers/​card holders, knowing that a percentage of them will not contest or dispute the bogus charges.
Either way, find another way to charge your Electric Vehicle. EVgo is simply not worth the risk.

Some services you want have a monthly fee, whether you use it or not. It’s kind of like «I wanna» insurance. Rent falls into this category; «I wanna» have a place to put my stuff and relax, so I pay a monthly fee no matter how much I use that apartment.
Some services have a per-​use charge. Like getting in a cab from the aforementioned apartment in order to go to work. If you don’t use it, you don’t pay for it.
What I don’t like is when a company does both, and NRG eVgo is one of these companies. Also, I’m a little worried that NRG eVgo is making inroads into city infrastructure, because it’s actually financially punitive. Driving a low– (or «zero-​») emissions vehicle is supposed to be the right thing to do, and people would do it if it made financial sense. Right now, it doesn’t make that kind of sense to everyone, and eVgo isn’t helping.
If you want to charge your electric car, they have different plans you can select. Before you do that, you have to pick your market (what’s that about?). If you drive frequently, then you probably want Plan 1 (if you have a pluggable hybrid) or Plan 2 (if you have a straight-​up EV), where you pay a monthly fee for a reduced per-​use fee. If you don’t want to pay a monthly fee, then you can pick Plan 3, where you pay per-​use. Sounds fine, right?
Except, no, it isn’t. Not really.
Plan 1
If I pay $ 5.95/mo, I can get access to L2 charging rates as low as $ 1/​hr. Except that rate is actually the highest I find from most EV charging providers now, some are free, and none of them require a monthly fee.
Along with that $ 5.95/mo rate, I have access to DC fast charging (sometimes called L3) with a per-​session fee of $ 4.95 and usage rates of 20¢/min. Without the session fee (which exceeds the $ 0-​$ 3/​session fee I can find with other services), that’s $ 12/​hr.
If I get disgusted with the service and cancel my 1 year contract, I get to pay $ 29 penance, whereas Blink and ChargePoint provide good service to try to keep my business without holding me hostage with a nearly five-​month termination fee.
To recap:
There’s a monthly fee, which I do not pay to Blink or ChargePoint.
L2 charging is $ 1 – /​hr. Blink and ChargePoint are $ 0-​$ 1/​hr.
DC fast charging is $ 5.15-$ 16.95/hr, a potential 565% markup of other providers’ $ 3/​session (without hourly) fee.
$ 29 termination.
So Plan 1 is out. Let’s move on.
Plan 2
If I pay $ 14.95/mo, my L2 rates drop to… no, wait, they stay the same: $ 1/​hr. Ah, but DC charging is the low, low rate of 10¢/min. That’s still $ 6/​hr. And there’s still a termination fee.
Another recap:
Higher monthly fee.
No L2 benefit, still at $ 1/​hr.
DC fast charging is $ 6/​hr, a 200% markup over others.
$ 29 termination fee.
Plan 2 is out.
Plan 3
Ah, pay-​as-​you-​go! This should work!
L2 rates are $ 1.50/hr.
DC fast charging is back to the $ 4.95/session + 20¢/min rate
$ 5.95 setup fee? I guess they’re gonna get one month out of you somehow.
And, no, I cannot actually find an eVgo station in my «market» on their map. For that, you go out to
, but be sure to read the reviews, even on the highly rated ones you might find. It looks like eVgo employees are putting «coming soon» sites on the map, which of course means they’re not really there, and giving any eVgo sites positive reviews to offset negative ones, which actually mean only one thing: unable to charge.
So, no NRG eVgo, I will not be a subscriber until you decide to follow what the rest of the market is doing and give up your quest for free money.

Terrible. Sadly my work installed 10 EVgo chargers.
I have a chevy volt without a high speed charger and the cost for electricity by hour plus monthly fee is 4X my cost at home, but it gets worse. They charge by how long your car is connected not how long charging or by KwH! Ended up being billed for 12 hours when my car charged for only 3 hours at $ 1 per hour.
This company is a big fat mess. All the chargers had to be replaced after 6 months. It is crazy as they sometimes give free charges, sometimes charge. For 2 months everyone had free charging. What kind of company can’t even get the billing straight. With that kind of incompetence they should be out of business

This company is ridiculously awful.
I signed up because the garage at my gym has these charges. Never mind that we find out later they’re unusable because there’s no cellular service where they installed them.
But I never got a fob/​card like I was promised. I did then, however, get a bill for hours of charging that apparently belongs to someone in another state. Every email to their support address bounced. I then used their contact form online and days later someone responded and said they’d refund the charge. I also asked for my account to be closed and he said that wouldn’t be a problem. Then, I get hit with an early termination fee for an account I didn’t and couldn’t use. I complained and then a week later — after an email threatening to complain to the Attorney General — they refunded the early termination fee.
It’s now a month later … after I’ve been assured the account was cancelled, and I get bill AGAIN — for the same account that’s not mine that’s in another state.
It’s been five days and no response yet.

I can fully charge my car in less than 30 minutes. On occasion you have to call and have the machine rebooted, but customer service is always fast and friendly. Also sometimes there is a non electric car parked here. It’s up to Walgreens to address the problem, but they never do.

Sooo… $ 1.50 for the free plan. If I’d fully charge my car that’d be $ 12 for the equivalent of one gallon of gas. Of course, I’d never fully use the hour, so it’s easily twice as much.
At home it costs me about 1 dollar to fully recharge the battery, which is the equivalent of 1.5 gallons.
All righty then…

One of the worst EV charging companies. «discount» contract rates are still very expensive for 3.3kw charger in Chevy Spark/​Volt EV on level 2. You’re paying $ 1 per hour for 10 miles of juice! That’s $ 3 per gallon equivalent to a 30mpg gas car AND you have to sit there for THREE HOURS! (20 miles per hour on Leaf, Soul, etc with 6.6kw charger)
SAE combo quick charge is $ 1.50-$ 2 depending how low you were when you got there. But that’s only going to give you 80% of an 80 mile battery which is only 64 miles before you have to quick charge again. That’s IF there are enough QC stations at the END of the travel radius and there are NOT enough.
There won’t BE enough because they do NOT plan on adding more to the periphery, to extend travel lengths.
And they are silent about maps of future expansion. The customer service is terrible, you are on hold forever, they can’t trouble shoot anything, they don’t repair stations quick enough to make them useful, the website and account management is from 1978 and they don’t respond to email OR phone inquiries!
As soon as the utilities can be allowed compete with these cherry pickers and COMPETE with NRG, blink, etc., the better it will be for EV DRIVERS!

Several years after EVs have been out, my office building has finally partnered with NRG EVgo to be Ready for Electric Vehicles (REV). This means there are charging spots with no chargers now.
I asked when the chargers will be installed and discovered network plans they have listed on their website are not available. To get a charger installed, you must sign up for one of their «other plans» and pay a $ 99 activation fee, a $ 30/​month subscription (with a year long contract), and $ 0.50/hr for 3.3 kW charging (or $ 1.00/hr for 6.6 kW). Instead of installing a charger and spreading the cost of the charger and maintenance among several people who use it, they have the customer pay for it.
Now this may work for some percentage of people who want EV charging, but I suspect this is a small fraction of EV owners, which is already a small market. Instead offering a service available to all EV owners like ChargePoint and Blink, they are offering a burdensome and expensive service that appeals to few EV owners.

I’ve had your charging station for a week already at our apartment complex. We have had nothing but headaches from this charging station, even on free mode.
Customer service is terrible. They can’t find our charging station because it is a «private» station. They make you feel like you are dumb because you can’t find the station ID number. There is nothing on this charging station that we can ID to get a ticket submitted to get it fixed.
The rep that signed us up is very slow in getting back to you.
Per rep said key fob should arrive around the same time our charging station would get installed. She said when we get our key fob she will let tech know to activate, and should be working instantly.
Here is the timeline:
Friday — Charging Station Installed
Saturday — No key fob, and rep said she had tech set charging station to free mode. Charging station did not work. Ended up driving to a Charge Point Station, and had to pay there to charge my car. Later that even when we got back from the Charge Point Station, NRG eVgo station started working.
Sunday after coming back from San Francisco, charging station was not working. Called customer service, they found our charging station by looking up account, but kept getting error. Could not reset. Later that evening charging station started working. This customer service was good.
.
Monday — Key fob arrived. Called rep and she said she would let tech know to activate card. She said she would let us know when it is activated. We tired later that evening, and key fob not working yet.
Tuesday — Called customer service around 6pm Pacific time. Customer service had to do a search through our account to find charging station again. Same as Monday, got error trying to reset charging station. He said our key fob was activated, but didn’t know why it was working. Left message for rep.
Wednesday — Rep called saying since I called her late on Monday, and the tech team was already closed. So, there was no way for them to activate my card. So, card was not «activated» until Wednesday. We tired using charging station with our card, and it did not work. We tired every different way, and even left key fob on for over minute. Called customer service. Lady I talked to needed station ID. I told her there was no way in identify this station. She said all the stations have some kind of ID. There is no ID for this station. Other customer service people had to look up our account. She talked to her supervisor, and she said they couldn’t help us since we are a «private» station, we had to talk to our manager at our complex. I said they have nothing to do with this station, and that we pay for the bill. She insisted I go talk to them. Left message for rep, and finally called her cell. Told her what happened with customer service. She said no that wasn’t right, and that customer service should be able to help us. She said she will get customer service to be better trained. She said the tech people said we weren’t holding it long enough. We told her we tired many different ways, and even just tapped it because instructions says tap here. Rep ended setting charging station on free mode again. Worked Wednesday night.
Thursday — Still on free mode, and not working. Left a message for rep. No reply.
Friday — Still on free mode, and not working still. Left a message for rep. No reply.
Called customer service. Asked for Station ID. I told her there isn’t any, and kept insisting all the charging stations have an ID. I insisted this one doesn’t have any. So, she can’t submit a ticket to get it fixed.
So, a week later our charging station is a big headache, and no ETA of when this will get fixed.

This conveniently located electric car charging station is by far the least convenient experience I have ever had in my entire life. I have been on the phone for over an hour trying to get a one time charge and absolutely no progress has been made.
The outside world is not ready for electric cars. Evgo should not advertise itself as being an easy on the go charging station because it is anything but easy or convenient.