Every morning on my drive to work, I pass a few pickup trucks with 10/20/30+ scooters in the back. Seems like folks have created a full time business out of charging these things, so I'm not surprised it's challenging for a "casual" charger to make a couple bucks with them.
That being said, I was very bearish on the idea of Birds until it clicked to me how brilliant the charging program is. They're essentially paying people to protect these things in their homes overnight, and nicely place them in optimized locations every morning. Other competitors down here (especially bikes) who just left their units out all day and night quickly lost them all to homeless people and vandals chucking them into the ocean. But Birds are cleanly lined up on every corner every morning.
Very clever.