Smoov 4+

Worse than useless

As the other guy who left a one star review in May...the app is overly complicated for what is in essence should be a simple payment gateway. Went through all the motions of creating an account, telling it what car I have (!), failing twice to enter a card for payment before realising you actually *need* to enter a *credit* card for payment. Thankfully I had one in my wallet! Having jumped through all the hoops and connected up, would it charge my car? Like hell it would... Stopped the ‘charge’ to try again, only to have to enter my credit card details all over again. Still wouldn’t charge my car... Thankfully had enough juice in the battery to get me to Sarn service 10 miles up the M4 from the Shell charge point in Swansea. Oh, and at 37p/kWh is borderline daylight robbery, I baulk at Ecotricity and their 30p/kWh but at least they work and I can now get home!

No need for emails....just have a review of why you think your app needs to have so many whistles and bells when all it need is know what pump you’re at and which *saved* card you want to pay with...

Developer Response ,

Hi there,
Thank you for your extended feedback. We are very sorry to hear that you have had issues with the app and our charging infrastructure. To start with the onboarding settings of the app, we have created an extended version of the onboarding as the first step, so that the EV drivers do not have to enter the data over and over again. This is meant to make things easier for your upcoming charging sessions. By adding the car you have the following benefits; by communicating the car type with the charger, we enable the charger to charge at the maximum capacity of the car. Secondly, you will see the Kms added to the car (approx). About adding your credit card; We are working on getting the credit card to the same location as the Charge card. This will be fixed asap.
You have the option to skip the extended login process and start as a guest user without the extended registration process.
We encourage you to email us if you have more complaints. This way we can directly get in touch with you and help you asap. Again sorry for all your trouble.

Needs a lot of development work

On the off chance that either Shell or the developers look at reviews, both need to know that this app needs some serious development work and its failings have put me off using the Shell station in Holloway Road, London. What’s more, I would avoid other Shell recharging points that use Smoov until it is improved and updated.

In particular, echoing other reviewers, it has failed on several occasions to start a charging session, which is a waste of my time (and battery charge getting there in the first place).

Overall it is a very slow and clunky app that tarnishes Shell’s reputation as it just doesn’t work the way that it should.

Useless

Every time you use a charge point they take £20 from your account. I was not sure how to use it and after three attempts they took £60 and still I hadn’t charged the vehicle. It take 3/5 days to refund your money, you cannot ring them. It seems that you have to pay £20 to get a £6 charge and you won’t see that £14 balance until it’s refunded several days later. It’s not held as credit against a future charge of your vehicle. So each time you charge having credited a minimum of £20 they hold the unused balance for several days. Why?