More or less sorted with the EV!

I had been locked out of my co-wheels account because my bank account had been blocked. I was resigned to not being able to use the electric vehicle until I would have a new and working bankcard. But getting one clearly wasn't enough! My co-wheels accounts just did not accept it. And a lot of phoning both co-wheels and my bank didn't initially yield anything. 

Co-wheels had said that there is only one way of paying for renting one of the cars, and it didn't work for me, so that there was no hope. They just expected my bank to sort this out. That wasn't going to happen. One day I was on the phone with the car share people and the lady I had on the phone said I could buy a gift voucher for myself and bring my account back into the black numbers that way. I was not convinced; if my account was blocked, and it didn't accept my bank card, it was useless. I might just as well not bother with that outstanding payment. I had clearly indicated I was quite willing to pay it, and they were not accepting my legal tender. I wanted to know I could use my account again before I wanted the pump money into it! And I didn't know how big these vouchers were in the first place.

Later I decided I had little to lose. I went to the website, found the gift vouchers, and saw you can make them exactly as big or small as you want. So I bought one of exactly the outstanding amount on my account. And this time, the website happily accept with my bankcard! Which provides further evidence to that the bank card is not a problem. Co-wheels is.

I had to phone the company again to redeem that voucher; you can't do that online for some reason. But then indeed my account was unblocked! I checked if I could book the car for an arbitrary half hour period. And I still couldn't! Still that same nondescript message "Oops, something went wrong". Frustrating!

I decided to just give in. I bought me an additional voucher of 100 quid, and had that put on my account as well. If I just go via that detour, I can clearly still use the electric vehicle. But it is a stupid layer of faff, and it has lowered my esteem of the company! They could really improve their customer-friendliness. So I am back in business after many weeks, but the initial enthusiasm has faded a bit!