Shell Recharge ٤+

When chargers on the map reflect their actual statuses the app is great and makes charging easy and convenient. It is my go-to for public charging. If there is a charger by another company but it’s available through Shell, I opt to use it through Shell. Sometimes though, the app will decline remote starts or show a charger is offline or busy when it is actually functional and/or available. Sometimes it fixes in seconds by closing and reopening the app, but sometimes I’ve had to log out and log back in to be able to start a charge at all. Most of the time it works, but the former has happened frequently enough that it has somewhat impacted my life experience using it. Also, the $60 credit card hold is excessive. You’ll never use that much at a charger without blowing up your battery. Mine charges 0-100 for about twelve bucks typically.

We have a few fast chargers in town. Three. They’re broken, at a minimum, 60% of the time. That’s charitable. More realistically they’re broken 70%, or maybe even 80% of the time. Sometimes they’re all broken at once, like they are, today. Sometimes calling in leads to a Representative who is capable. That’s a very good day when that happens! The few capable representatives that slipped through a hiring process one imagines meant to screen them out are able to restart the stations. Sometimes restarting works, most of the time, >50% of the time, restarting doesn’t work, yet sometimes it does! It’s a very great day when it works. Today was a typical day, though. The Representative didn’t understand anything, couldn’t comprehend numbers, didn’t know how many digits were in the station IDs, kept asking to try and transfer to someone else who could help, and placing the call on hold. After forty minutes the Representative asked if it wouldn’t be a bother to hang up, wait 20 more minutes, to call back in, as then maybe someone else could try and assist. This is run by Shell. Shell has an interest to make this experience as awful as possible. One wonders if they have tried hard to do so, or not at all. Either way, with effort, or without, the leadership of Shell, or whichever underpaid peons they assigned this task to have succeeded in releasing a service as awful as the petrochemicals they so callously pollute this planet with

I’ve had to lower my rating to 2 Stars. Otherwise the app without great in regards to its basic functions such as remote starting the chargers and monitoring them. One main problem is the app’s convenience when it comes to signing in. It also signs out way too often… More often than would be considered necessary for a security precaution. In fact, it signs out in the middle of doing basic functions. They have no way to automatically sign in security features on the phone you have to type out every time to sign in. It also has trouble with the Internet connection and you cannot locate stations to start a charge or to check in on your current charge. Since this is also usually the discount service through power, companies, and other. Charging options options as far as amounts, and the ability to vary the amount of the dollar amount you want to upload. I understand having a which of the $5 not $10. But only allowing increments of 10 causes more problems. Most of the other features were great. And if they would resolve some of the most annoying errors. The app should have a five star rating. But my guess is she always more interested in making an acquisition and providing a functional app.