I appear to have reached a dead end on the eMMC upgrade I had booked in for 1st Oct. Tesla won't do it.
I wanted to change the eMMC as my screen has started its decline and has become unreliable but not yet failed completely so I was expecting the '£314 all in' option Tesla Owners Group mention as having been agreed. I also enquired as to the cost to upgrade from 3G to LTE. The estimate subsequently provided didn't seem to reflect any of this properly and didn't even mention the eMMC.
I had a call from Tesla prior to the booking to discuss the options and they seemed to be pushing hard either the MCU2 upgrade at £2400 or new (reconditioned) MCU1 at about £1000. The eMMC swap was mentioned but the point was made that they wanted to do certain tests first to check it was needed and expected me to pay for the costs of those tests. They didn't seem to accept that I simply wanted the eMMC upgrade and was ready to pay for it. They agreed to provide a revised estimate confirming the numbers discussed but never did.
I had a second call a few days later and again the 'new screen' options were heavily promoted as the best thing to do and they seemed to be implying that they were not keen to simply swap the eMMC without the screen having failed, or that they could justify swapping it as a result of tests (at my cost). I pushed the fact that I simply wanted the new eMMC at the agreed cost and was happy to accept the fact it may actually not be needed at this particular point and wanted confirmation we could proceed on that basis.
The agent said there was a probability that if my current eMMC was still serviceable (as in, its not failed yet,) they won't change it. Apparently, this is because the part is in such short supply (
'because we are changing so many...') they had to prioritise cars with failed MCUs. Apparently I can try again in a few months, or sit on my hands till it fails, whichever happens first. "..
.but if you want to go for the new screen option we can do that right away".
Helpfully, he went on to suggest that if I was keen to get the eMMC upgrade done quickly, I could use a 3rd party to get it done, but 'obviously it will be dearer than Tesla doing it and won't be guaranteed'.
In other news, I have submitted my vehicle safety defect report to The Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency. See here for anyone interested;
Vehicle recalls and faults