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Buyer beware. Buying a CPO Tesla feels like a SCAM.
- Thread starter ToothSlayer
- Start date
ElctrcBoogaloo
Member
Thanks, @EVChris excellent advice. I had not even thought to ask about the 3G versus LTE so will be sure to do so.
ElctrcBoogaloo
Member
So, for those of you who may be interested, here's what's happened since my last update. Right off the bat though, I will say that at this point, I am extremely disappointed and frustrated at how the purchase process has played out. I'll take some of the blame for just being plain ignorant about how this is all supposed to work, but it seems very clear to me that Tesla has some major gaps in its service delivery.
After the above post, I wrote to my OA expressing my concerns about the lack of ownership regarding the water stains and asked for clarification about recent changes to the CPO program. I also provided a link to this thread (so he could better understand why I was so worried) and left a VM requesting a callback.
Not too long afterward, the OA called me and did his best to address my biggest worries. The OA patiently listened me out and calmly addressed each of my concerns. Among the key points I noted from our conversation...
- Changes to CPO: The CPO program has changed in recent months and the multi-point inspection now covers only mechanical items. Interior/exterior cosmetic items are no longer inspected nor typically addressed. I expressed disappointment that this is not called out specifically and he said that the website now states only 70 or so points are checked as opposed to the 200+ that used to be included when interior/exterior were part of the deal. I pointed out that the only way to figure out that something's changed is to use the WayBackMachine to compare the old description with the current description, something that no normal person is likely to do.
- Waterstain of Headliner: The OA noted that a team did basic detailing work on the car prior to delivery but typically headliners were not included in the cleaning. He did however agree to put in a note requesting that the detailing team make an effort to clean the headliner. (more on this part later)
- CPO Cars NOT Loaners: The OA confirmed for me that contrary to speculation on the forums, CPO vehicles are not used as loaner vehicles while they await pickup by their future owner
Among other things, the OA had committed to providing me with a Purchase/Order Agreement for me to pass on to my lender so that the lender could cut the check for the amount I planned to finance. (I decided to go with a third party lender because they gave us a full point better rate than the lender through Tesla.) A couple of days passed and nothing. I sent a follow up email. Nothing. Another follow up email and a voicemail. Still nothing. Timing wise, it was Eid (the end of Ramadan) so I figured perhaps my OA was on holiday and I therefore copied in a colleague of the OA who had been on the original "Welcome to the Tesla Family" email I received when first placing my order. She called me first thing the start of the new work week and told me that they were in fact ready to schedule my delivery and everything was in order. This was a pleasant surprise, but given the radio silence from my original OA, I was sure to ask the new OA whether the water stains on the headliner had been addressed. She said she did not know, but would be sure to add a note to the service team requesting they take care of it. (Again, more on this later)
I asked when I would be receiving the Order Agreement to provide to my lender and she said that it would be provided soon, likely through my Tesla account. So all that was left to do was schedule delivery.
Initially, she tried to schedule me for Thursday. I explained that I had to work and taking time off on such short notice would be difficult, so I requested pickup on the weekend. She said it would be difficult because so many pickups happened over the weekend and also said that I needed to pick up the car ASAP as they did not have the space to store cars for extended periods of time. Eventually, she was able to set me up with a slot on Saturday afternoon.
A couple of days passed and it seemed I still had not received an Order Agreement to provide to my lender. This made me nervous so I called the lending institution to confirm that everything was okay. They explained that they could not issue a check until a signed and countersigned Order Agreement was in their hands, but speculated that if Tesla was not providing it ahead of time, they would provide it at the time of pickup. At that point, I would be able to send that to the lender and they'd cut the check.
If the above paragraph seemed incoherent, that's because I've never bought used before, let alone used with a third party lender, so I was flying pretty blind. Another couple of days passed and still no word. It had been a crazy week at work, so it wasn't until Friday afternoon that I tried calling the backup OA again to confirm whether we were set.
Now, I'd just like to say here that I've never bought any vehicle even remotely as expensive as this S 85D, and yet, I've been amazed at how much time I've spent chasing people to ask them how I could give their company an obscene (at least to me) gob of my hard-earned money.
So pickup day comes along, and I head south with my most trusted advisor on major purchases (my father) to inspect and pickup the car at the delivery center. It's blazing hot, but the staff are all friendly and welcoming. We check in, have some complimentary water, and soon our pickup representative appears to help us. We head out to do the inspection of the car.
Much to my delight, the exterior of the car is much better than it had appeared in the pictures. The paint job looks great, no dents, no damage and it's sparkling clean. Exterior inspection, check. At last, it's time to check the interior to see whether the water stain had come out.
We open the door, peer in...and yup, the water stain is still there, clear as day, and it seems like nothing's been done. In fact, when I look at the rest of the headliner I discover brown fingerprint-like smudges that look like makeup foundation smeared all over the sun-visors on the driver and passenger sides. Nowhere had this been mentioned in the descriptions and certainly theses had not bee in the photos provided to me previously. Given the lackluster communication up to this point, I am not surprised, but I am certainly disappointed. I'm also feeling pretty bummed because it's looking like I'm gonna have to reject the vehicle.
I am happy to say that the pickup representative and his colleagues were very professional, and immediately offered to get the detailing team to work on getting the stains out while we worked on paperwork. I had also bone-headedly gone down to pick up the car without my wife, even though she was supposed to be the co-owner and thus needed to be there to provide signatures. That meant we had time to kill while we waited for her to arrive.
I asked if we could take the car for a test drive while we waited and was told it could not be driven until we had finished the paperwork finalizing the handover. Ooookay. Kind of bonkerballs to buy a used car without getting a test drive, but okay Tesla...
The detailer took an initial swing at the makeup and water stain and seemed to get most of the makeup off. The water stain was more stubborn. After pulling the car back out into the sun, the detailer gave it another go and was able to remove most of what little remained of the makeup smudges and the water stains were scrubbed down enough that I could only see them when I was searching for them. At this point, I was fairly satisfied and ready to take the car. I pulled out my laptop, transferred over the funds for my downpayment, and activated insurance on my new Tesla.
A bit later my wife arrived, provided her signatures and our pickup rep went into the back office to finalize the paperwork. A few minutes later, he emerged again asking if we had the check from our lender to cover the remainder of the purchase. I explained that the lender had already provided a pre-approval letter and told us that they would cut a check immediately after receiving the signed and counter-signed purchase agreement. At this point, the rep goes back and ends up bringing out the finance manager who explains that they cannot release the car to us without a check from the lender. It's Saturday, so of course the bank is closed and we have no way of getting a check from them at this point. I'm also frustrated because as far as I'm aware, we do not yet have a purchase agreement to provide to the bank.
So after all that, we just end up leaving empty handed and poorer by the amount I paid for the downpayment. Shortly after, Tesla finally provides me with what appears to be the Order Agreement our bank needs, but our names are misspelled. Hopefully, they'll get it fixed soon so we can provide to our bank so they can cut the check and we can then figure out how to coordinate schedules to get all the way back down to the delivery center to sign forms again and pick up the car for real this time.
Look, when the smoke clears on all of this, it's entirely possible that most of this has been my fault because I'm a dunderhead, but if I'm gonna drop this much dough, even on a used vehicle, it seems to me that it shouldn't be this confusing or entail so much having to pester people and be ignored. So, still no Tesla Model S, and while I'm still moving forward with the purchase, this experience so far has sapped me of much of the goodwill and naive fanboy enthusiasm I once had for the company. Maybe it'll be restored once I finally am able to get behind of the wheel and drive the da** thing.
(Correction: In my original post I had mistakenly referred to the car as an P85. It is not a P; it is an S 85D.)
ElctrcBoogaloo
Member
I've started a new thread to summarize lessons learned about purchasing CPO using a third-party lender not partnered directly with Tesla:
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/thr...g-through-3rd-lender-party-experience.119030/
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/thr...g-through-3rd-lender-party-experience.119030/
In all of this, the part above is the only element that you could really blame yourself for.
I'm not sure any used car dealer is going to let you drive off the lot without a certified check in his hands and once it got to Friday without the necessary documents from Tesla to get the check there was no hope that you were going to be driving the car on Saturday...
... on the other-hand you have managed to properly inspect the car and get additional detailing done so it wasn't an entirely wasted trip...
It really is inexcusable that Tesla couldn't get the documentation to you in time to be able to get the check, and it is still inexcusable that they can't manage to get the names right even now...
ElctrcBoogaloo
Member
@Mark_T Agreed. Wishful thinking on my part that we were going to get out of there with the car without that check from the lender, and yeah, at least we did get the additional detailing work. Unhappy as I am about all of this, I wonder if the lack of responsiveness from Tesla side is because folks are just stretched too thin, especially after the recent layoffs. Come to think of it, our original OA went completely dark after a certain point. I wonder if he's even still with the company?
A lot of this confusion with Tesla is where the OA drops off and where the DS steps in ..having bought 3 Tesla’s ..the OA provides only the MVPA (initial) from that point forward its the DS that gets this thru contracts and gets a signed copy for whatever lender you choose ..this is all done via email/Tesla account with e-signatures ...it doesn’t help that the DS is probably the most overworked person in the delivery chain ...sorry to hear of all the OP struggles with Tesla but am glad to hear the cosmetic items were resolved to a level of satisfaction ...enjoy the beautiful car !
They should let you take a test drive with a Tesla employee present. On a side note, I spent $55K on a car 11 years ago and they gave me the keys and I signed stuff but they forgot to ask for a check. I had to remind them. i.e. "should I give you a check for the car".
This is something I just can't understand... They let any college kid with a valid drivers license test drive a X P100D, but if you actually want to give them money, they won't let you test drive the CPO? I get that time is money, but this is beyond ridiculous.
If a used car salesman wouldn't let you drive a used car before buying it, you would stay far away from that car, no matter how good the deal seems, but this is a corporate policy!
It is a true testament to how popular their cars are, that they still manage to sell CPOs. The idea behind direct sales was to improve on the dealership experience, not to become the biggest bully on the playground.
That would be interesting to know. I tried to find out how they handle it in Germany, but couldn't find anything on the forums. (Also not that many CPOs around lately).
But as far as I know Tesla could just use manufacturer plates, right? Those are also transferable between cars.
Their current policy of not allowing CPO customers to test drive the car before purchase has nothing to do with insurance or legal issues but everything to do with them just not wanting to do that. Whether this policy represents them taking care of customers fairly is a different topic altogether.
Tesla does have insurance but when you test drive a car, you sign to be responsible for the car so the legal issues would be the same as someone walking to a Tesla store and test driving a car. I just can't understand them allowing anyone to test drive a P100D but refuse to allow someone buying a used car to test drive the car. I hope at least this means they will fix any rattles or squeaks that you discover after buying the car.
I guess this is some kind of a perverse social experiment to see how badly you can treat customers and have them still buy a used car
That could indeed be the case for some states, but do you know how they can do that in states where they cannot have showrooms/service centers? Tesla is not a dealer in Michigan, so cannot get dealer plates and I cannot find a legal means to allow driving of CPO (or non-titled/registered) vehicles at all.
I guess this is some kind of a perverse social experiment to see how badly you can treat customers and have them still buy a used car
I sometimes wonder if Tesla hired someone to make their sales more profitable and then the guy looked at the customer satisfactory and decided over 90% is way too high...
The thing is we love the cars, but not the service. Though I guess that doesn't really matter. As long as they can sell all their CPOs, they can do whatever they want. A hundred bucks saved on detailing, a hundred bucks saved on inspection and a hundred bucks saved on CPO test drives and suddenly the CPO becomes more profitable.
They can simply offer customers the option to go to wherever the closest state where they have a service center/gallery to inspect the car and purchase it. It's really not that complicated as they do this for new cars and they can certainly do it for CPO cars.
What many are complaining about with the current CPO program is the lack of standards. They are delivering some cars in immaculate condition and other cars that are filthy and look like they had the crap beaten out of them. If there is going to be such a big variance in the condition of the CPO cars they sell, is it too much to ask to post high resolution photos with the listing along with a description of the condition of the car? Not disclosing this information and instead just showing stock photos is borderline dishonest IMHO.
Also even the most shady car dealer would post high resolution photos with the car listing, allow someone to inspect and test drive the used car before you buy it, and describe the general condition of the car. The current CPO policy is beneath the level of a shady car dealer.
I love everything about Tesla but the awfully unfair way they treat CPO customers. I really wish they would fix the CPO program and start selling used cars with standards because their CPO inventory will likely double in the next year so the sooner they figure this out the better.
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Good point I totally missed. One cannot buy a CPO in Michigan, so the test drive aspect is moot...
(I'm still curious if the demo cars are registered to Tesla)
I think the demo cars are unregistered manufacturer vehicles, just as a new car would be. In fact I believe if someone buys a Tesla, registers it, uses it for a day, and give sit back to Tesla for whatever reason, it is then technically a used car as it has been registered to someone before. This would also make the car ineligible for the $7,500 rebate.
Unregistered demo (inventory) cars are of course eligible for the rebate.
I guess it is a matter of treating customers in a horrible way or making a few extra bucks. In this situation every car dealer who cells CPO cars has opted to treat customers well and sell a quality used car. With car dealers prioritizing treating customers well when buying a CPO car over selling a poor quality product, perhaps Tesla will one day treat customers as well as a car dealer
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