Charging Station Not Getting Rentals? The 30-Day Relocation Test
JB Charging Team
A charging station not getting rentals often has a problem you can fix without buying anything. Rule out five quick fixes first (online, stocked, visible, priced right, staff on board). If they all pass, suspect the spot, then the venue, and give any move a fair 30-day test before you pull the station.
It's worth the afternoon. Say a move across the room takes a quiet J8 Pro from 4 rentals a month to 30: with the made-up numbers below, that's about $90 a month more for you, enough to cover a $950 station in about 11 months. Here's how to set the number a station has to hit, run the test, and leave a venue cleanly when the room is the problem.
Charging station not getting rentals? Five checks first
A station that sat offline or empty for part of the month hasn't had a fair test. Run these in the portal or in JB Hub (the portal saved to your phone's home screen). Venue Insights, on the portal's Overview page, shows each venue's 7-day and 30-day revenue and flags problems.
| Check | How | If it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Online | Venue Insights flags offline stations and card-reader problems. Then rent and return a bank with your own card. | Look for an outlet on a wall switch or timer, then weak signal; add the venue's Wi-Fi as a backup (keeping stations online). Shows online but your rental fails? Contact support. |
| Stocked | The portal shows each station's charged banks and flags low or empty ones. | Restock, leaving a slot or two open for returns. |
| Visible | Walk in as a guest. Can you see the lit header or screen from the door and the busiest seats? | Turn it toward the room, clear whatever is stacked in front, and ask to put a pitch card or small sign where people wait. |
| Priced as you meant | Read the station's pricing in the portal the way a guest would. | Fix the typo, the leftover free period, or a price that doesn't suit the room. |
| Staff aware | Ask whoever is working, "Can I charge my phone here?" | If they offer to plug it in behind the bar, the venue is competing with your station. Ask the manager to have staff point to it, and register shift leads with the staff code, which gives each a free rental each day, within a weekly limit. |
If one of these was the problem, fix it and give the same spot a clean 30 days. A bigger or newer station won't fix a spot where nobody stops.
Set your keep line, then price the wait
Call it your keep line: the rentals a month that earn this station its place on your route. The formula: (station cost ÷ the months you're willing to wait to cover it, plus monthly costs) ÷ your share ÷ your average rental.
Say a J8 Pro from the 5-pack cost about $950 with its share of shipping ($4,499.95 for five, list price at the time of writing, plus $245 shipping as shown at checkout). You want it covered in 12 months and budget $15 a month for fuel and the odd replacement bank. Say you agreed to give the venue 10% of rentals, out of your 80%, so you keep 70% (many venues host for free as a guest amenity; others take a share you negotiate). And say a rental averages $5 once short and long ones mix (the default price is $3 per 30 minutes).
So $950 ÷ 12 = $79, plus $15 = $94, ÷ 0.70 ≈ $135 a month from renters, ÷ $5 = 27 rentals, under 1 a day. Happy to wait 2 years? The line drops to about 16. Write yours down before you move anything.
Now price the wait. Say the station does 4 rentals a month by the kitchen door, and the restroom hallway 50 feet away would do 30.
| If you... | Rentals a month | You keep after the venue's 10% and $15 costs | Over the next 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leave it by the kitchen door | 4 | −$1 | −$6 |
| Move it to the restroom hallway | 30 | $90 | $540 |
In this made-up example, every month you wait to "see if it picks up" costs about $90, and six months of waiting gives up more than half the station's price. The move costs an afternoon. The 30-day test below tells you which line your station is on.
The rental counts are invented. Costs left out stretch every line: your time, taxes, a stand if you need one ($150 list price at the time of writing), the liability insurance some venues ask you to carry, and slow weeks. Card processing is covered by JB's 20%.
Move it inside the venue first
The venue already said yes, the agreement is signed and the staff know you. A move across the room keeps all of that, and 50 feet can be the whole difference.
You also have evidence the install-day walk-through didn't. Ask the bartender or front desk: where do guests ask about charging, and where do you charge their phones now? That's where the demand is; put the station in sight of it. Then stand where the station is now at the venue's busiest hour. If the crowd blocks it, it faces a wall or nobody waits within arm's reach, you know what the new spot needs. Our placement rules cover the rest: back to a wall, no extension cords, never in an exit path.
Then ask the manager, with a reason and a time limit:
"The charging station's been quiet by the kitchen door. Can I try it in the restroom hallway for 30 days? It plugs into a regular wall outlet there, stays out of the walkway, and your staff don't have to do anything. If it's still quiet in a month, I'll take it out at no cost to you."
If the manager won't allow any spot where people pause, that tells you about the venue. Plan the exit instead of waiting.
The 30-day relocation test
Start it when Venue Insights flags the venue as idle or a full month comes in under your keep line. The flag is the reason to test, not the verdict. Day 0 is the day before the move; Day 1 is move day.
| When | Do |
|---|---|
| Day 0 | From Venue Insights, write down the venue's last 30 days of revenue and its trend, with your keep line beside them. Note any offline or low-bank alerts showing now. |
| Day 1 | Move it. Confirm it's online at the new spot (signal can be weaker a few feet away), rent and return a bank, brief the shift lead and move any sign. |
| Days 2–7 | Check daily for offline, low-bank or card-reader alerts, and note the date of any you see. Keep that log through Day 30. Glance at the 7-day revenue on Day 7, but don't judge a move on one week. |
| Day 14 | Ask a staffer where you can charge your phone. You want them to point. |
| Days 15–29 | Change nothing else. Move it and change the price in the same month, and you won't know which one worked. |
| Day 30 | Compare with Day 0, your keep line and your other stations over the same 30 days. |
Venue Insights reports revenue by venue, so if the venue has two stations, move one at a time.
| What Day 30 shows | Do this |
|---|---|
| At or above your keep line | Keep it. Write down what the spot has (sightline from the seats, a line nearby, staff who point) and look for it at your next venue. |
| Above Day 0, below your keep line | The spot helped; the room is thin. One more month only if its busy season starts within weeks. Otherwise plan the move to a new venue. |
| No better than Day 0, and your other stations dipped too | A slow month, not a verdict. Run it again next month. |
| No better than Day 0, online and stocked all month | The venue. Move it to a new one. |
| Big weeks and dead weeks | Events or a season. Check the calendar first (below). |
| Your log shows it offline or empty 3 or more days | Not a fair test. Fix the cause and restart the clock. |
Seasonal venues: check the calendar before you pull it
A 30-day test only counts in a normal month for that venue. A campus building in July or a beach bar in February tells you little about the rest of the year. Ask the manager when the busy months are. If your test landed in the off-season, retest when the season starts, or give the station a second home for the slow months at a busy bar or working events, and bring it back when the season turns. Put the return date in writing with both venues.
When it's the venue, move it and keep the door open
Paid rentals need people who stay a while, phones in hand, far from their own chargers. In our experience, late-hours bars, hotels and malls do far better than gyms, offices and clinics. Signs the room is the problem, not the spot: it's empty or closed by 10pm most nights; most guests are in and out in under half an hour; the crowd is regulars who live nearby; staff still charge phones behind the bar after you've asked them to point to the station.
A station in the wrong venue is the cheapest station you'll ever add to a good one: it's already paid for. Which bars are worth a station helps you pick the next room.
Read what you signed first. If you sent JB's standard venue agreement from the portal without changes, it runs 6 months, then month to month with 30 days' notice, and the station is removed at no cost to the venue. Inside the first 6 months, ask the manager to agree to an early end in writing. Then give notice by email:
Subject: The charging station at [venue]
Hi [name], thanks for hosting the charging station since [month]. It hasn't had enough use here to keep it on my route, so I'm going to move it. Please take this as my [30 days'] notice under our agreement; I'll remove it on [date] at no cost to you. If an event or a busy season is coming up, I'd be glad to bring one back for it. And if you know another owner with a late crowd who'd want one, I'd be grateful for an intro.
Thanks, [your name]
On removal day, check Active Rentals for banks still out from this station and take down your signs. Before it goes live at the new venue:
- Assign it to that venue in the portal so the app's map is right.
- Set the new venue's share on the station, or zero if they host it free.
- Reset the price for the room; a late-night bar price may not suit a hotel lobby.
- Swap any screen content that belonged to the old venue.
- Confirm it's online, then rent and return a bank.
Next step
Already running stations? Bring a Venue Insights screenshot and a few photos of the room to a call with our team, and we'll talk through where to test next. Still deciding? Use the same call to ask how to pick and test a first venue before you buy. The revenue calculator lets you try other prices and rental counts; it shows gross rentals, before JB's 20%, any venue share and your costs.
Examples are illustrative only, not a forecast or a typical result. What a station earns depends on the venue, placement, pricing, local demand, and how actively you run it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why isn't my charging station getting any rentals?
Rule out the quick fixes first. Is it online? Is it stocked with charged banks? Can guests see it from the door and the busiest seats? Is it priced the way you meant? Do staff point guests to it instead of charging phones behind the counter? If all five checks pass, suspect the spot next, then the venue. Once it's online and stocked, a bigger or newer station won't fix a spot where nobody stops.
How long should a charging station stay in one spot before I move it?
Give it 30 days online and stocked, in a normal month for that venue. A single week can be skewed by one rainy weekend, and a month in the venue's off-season, like a campus in summer or a beach bar in winter, tells you little about the rest of the year. Venue Insights in the portal shows each venue's 7-day and 30-day revenue and its trend, so you can compare before and after a move.
Should I lower the price if my charging station isn't getting rentals?
Not as the first fix. A lower price doesn't help a station guests can't see or don't walk past. First check that the price reads the way you meant, with no typo or leftover free period, then test the spot. If you do test a price, do it in a different month from a move so you know which change worked. The default is $3 per 30 minutes with a $20 daily max, set per station, and you can add a free first period of up to 60 minutes. A free period gives away revenue, so give it an end date.
How do I know if the charging station itself is faulty?
Rent and return a bank with your own card. If the portal shows the station online but your rental fails, or a slot won't release a bank, email team@jbcharging.com with your order number and photos or a short video. Manufacturing defects and hardware malfunctions under normal use are covered by the 3-year limited warranty from delivery.
How many rentals should a charging station get?
There's no standard number, because the venue and the spot drive almost everything. Set your own keep line instead: divide what the station cost by the months you're willing to wait to cover it, add your monthly costs, then divide by your share after any venue cut and by what an average rental brings in. In this post's made-up example, a $950 J8 Pro covered in 12 months needs about 27 rentals a month at $5 each, or about 16 if you'll wait 2 years.
How much notice do I give a venue before removing a charging station?
Give whatever notice your agreement requires. If you used JB's standard venue agreement unchanged, it runs 6 months, then month to month with 30 days' notice, and the station is removed at no cost to the venue. If you're still inside the first 6 months, ask the manager to agree to an early end in writing. Give notice by email and include a removal date.
