Contacting Tesla about my car's constant need for repairs

[David29]

I have a 2016 MX (VIN ~1500) so right in the heat of cars with all sorts of issues. My car so far has had very few issues other than things all Tesla's have issues with like tire wear. I have so far escaped almost all of the regular MX issues that even new cars have and my fit and finish is not the best, but pretty good for a Tesla. My battery degradation is not unusual and I have only replaced the 12v once over the years.

None the less when the original 4 year warranty was up I did not hesitate to buy the 4 year extended. I fully expect(ed) something big was going to break. I chalked that up to the cost of the car I bought, knowing it was not the most reliable car ever designed.

TBD what I do with the car at the end of the warranty in 2 years. Depending on how the battery appears I might keep it and just drive it tell it dies. So far I have not gotten my $5300 dollars worth on the warranty but I have a friend who did not get it on the same car/age and they have spent more than the warranty on repairs etc.

Sounds as if you are in a somewhat similar situation as I am. Well, not exactly, but I also have the Extended Service Plan (aka "warranty"), and am on the fence about what to do when it runs out in 15 months or so. Frankly, I hope that by then I will find some alternative that seems as desirable as the Model S did when I bought it. I am looking forward to the E-class Mercedes EV, and hope it will be available by then or soon after. I had MBs for 40+ years and would seriously consider going back if they produce a good EV....

 

[aesculus]

Sounds as if you are in a somewhat similar situation as I am. Well, not exactly, but I also have the Extended Service Plan (aka "warranty"), and am on the fence about what to do when it runs out in 15 months or so. Frankly, I hope that by then I will find some alternative that seems as desirable as the Model S did when I bought it. I am looking forward to the E-class Mercedes EV, and hope it will be available by then or soon after. I had MBs for 40+ years and would seriously consider going back if they produce a good EV....

I know a few early MX owners who are about to move to the next vehicle and the MB EQS is on the list. Not a fan of the exterior, especially the front end grill, but the car looks good overall and the specs look nice. I kinda like the futuristic dash. I still like my old Tesla display vs the new ones.

 

[riles246]

Meh, I'm willing to break with the pack on that one. My Dec 2016 MS has been rock solid over 140,000 miles, with total out of warranty repairs under $1,000. My plan is to keep driving it into the ground, at least until the batt/DU warranty is over.

The earlier cars are different beasts.

Same here. So far on my 2015 that I've owned since 2019, my warranty has only covered 3 door handles via ranger visit, though I'm sure the fourth is coming any day. I only have 60k miles due to a short commute, but it's driven every single day.

Everything else has been covered under a recall- the steering bolts, the EMMC, and strangely they covered the 12v battery replacement recently too even though I was prepared to pay for that one.

All that said, I hate dealing with Tesla service. Every time something breaks I start shopping for a new car because of how much I hate the process of getting service. So costs aside, the service experience will be the thing that pushes me to another brand for my next car.

 

[David29]

Same here. So far on my 2015 that I've owned since 2019, my warranty has only covered 3 door handles via ranger visit, though I'm sure the fourth is coming any day. I only have 60k miles due to a short commute, but it's driven every single day.

Everything else has been covered under a recall- the steering bolts, the EMMC, and strangely they covered the 12v battery replacement recently too even though I was prepared to pay for that one.

All that said, I hate dealing with Tesla service. Every time something breaks I start shopping for a new car because of how much I hate the process of getting service. So costs aside, the service experience will be the thing that pushes me to another brand for my next car.

Interesting that it is the service that will drive you away, because it seems as if you have needed relatively little of it, at least compared to many others with cars of a similar vintage. My 2015, owned since new, has needed more service than yours seems to have, and I have almost always been quite satisfied with my local SC. I say "almost always" only because of some slow response times and recent lack of loaner cars. Experience varies widely, it seems.

 

[riles246]

Interesting that it is the service that will drive you away, because it seems as if you have needed relatively little of it, at least compared to many others with cars of a similar vintage. My 2015, owned since new, has needed more service than yours seems to have, and I have almost always been quite satisfied with my local SC. I say "almost always" only because of some slow response times and recent lack of loaner cars. Experience varies widely, it seems.

Yeah agreed. My issue is just with how long it takes to get an appointment, which is just not something I've ever had to deal with on our Lexus, or past Mercedes and even VW cars. And the lack of being able to call someone.

My driver door handle wouldn't present and I had to wait two weeks for a ranger. So that's two weeks of embarrassingly having to open the passenger door, reach over and open the driver door, then close the passenger door and walk around to the driver door. Looks silly at the corporate garage. I also had a rather funny encounter at a car dealership where I was trying to get a relatively cheap used car for my father in law and the salespeople were fawning over my car, and since it was slow they basically all watched me as I went in through the passenger seat like an idiot.

Same with the steering issue- my power steering started experiencing intermittent failures so I made an SC appointment but the first available was 9 days out. I followed up with a text asking to let me know if there are any cancellations as this is quite urgent. 2 days later the power steering outright died. If it were my wife's Lexus I just would have driven it on first sign of weirdness straight to the dealer and appointments wouldn't even matter. I ended up getting it towed so that I could jump the line, but I could have muscled it to the SC if there were a human I could have called on the phone to make sure they wouldn't turn me away.

Another gem is the EMMC repair- booked it for a saturday morning, knowing that it's a ~4 hour repair, and used the night drop box on Friday night. Open the app on Saturday and sure enough, it says I'll get my car back in 5 days. Sent like 6 texts back to back to try to get a loaner but they said they were all out. Had to uber to work on Monday, then they called and said they got a loaner so I had to uber to the SC and drive back to the office.

Seriously, my wife's Lexus- any sign of trouble (or just routine maintenance) I either drive it there and drive home in a loaner, or I call them and they pick up the car and leave me a loaner.

 

[David29]

Yeah agreed. My issue is just with how long it takes to get an appointment, which is just not something I've ever had to deal with on our Lexus, or past Mercedes and even VW cars. And the lack of being able to call someone.

My driver door handle wouldn't present and I had to wait two weeks for a ranger. So that's two weeks of embarrassingly having to open the passenger door, reach over and open the driver door, then close the passenger door and walk around to the driver door. Looks silly at the corporate garage. I also had a rather funny encounter at a car dealership where I was trying to get a relatively cheap used car for my father in law and the salespeople were fawning over my car, and since it was slow they basically all watched me as I went in through the passenger seat like an idiot.

Same with the steering issue- my power steering started experiencing intermittent failures so I made an SC appointment but the first available was 9 days out. I followed up with a text asking to let me know if there are any cancellations as this is quite urgent. 2 days later the power steering outright died. If it were my wife's Lexus I just would have driven it on first sign of weirdness straight to the dealer and appointments wouldn't even matter. I ended up getting it towed so that I could jump the line, but I could have muscled it to the SC if there were a human I could have called on the phone to make sure they wouldn't turn me away.

Another gem is the EMMC repair- booked it for a saturday morning, knowing that it's a ~4 hour repair, and used the night drop box on Friday night. Open the app on Saturday and sure enough, it says I'll get my car back in 5 days. Sent like 6 texts back to back to try to get a loaner but they said they were all out. Had to uber to work on Monday, then they called and said they got a loaner so I had to uber to the SC and drive back to the office.

Seriously, my wife's Lexus- any sign of trouble (or just routine maintenance) I either drive it there and drive home in a loaner, or I call them and they pick up the car and leave me a loaner.

Right, I can relate to some of that and I feel your pain. It is a little easier for me because I am retired, and because my Tesla SC is literally 2 miles away. So I am a bit lucky that way.
I can relate to the embarrassment of the door handle issues. I have learned to manage the driver's door failures by tying a cord from the front door handle to the rear on the same side. That way I can open the rear door, tug on the string which pops open the front door, close the rear door and climb into the front. It is a bit less obvious that way (as well as more convenient).
I vividly recall the last time my driver's door acted up. It was a bitterly cold day last winter, and I had an appointment at a medical office for a Covid-19 vaccine shot. When I came out of the office, I found the driver's door would not open. I had no string in place, so I had to do the routine you describe, of opening the passenger door and reaching across. To add insult to injury, someone was sitting in his Mercedes in the space directly across my mine, facing me, so he was able to see the silly routine. As it happened, this was a transient problem, though, not an actual hardware failure. A few days later, after the weather warmed up a bit, the door acted normally, and it has done so since then.

 

[slainla]

I had a leaking panoramic roof on a P85 they couldn't fix over a span of a 1.5 years. There were maybe 6-7 service center visits and over $3-4k worth of uber credits used plus thousands of miles on their loaners. I literally became an uber diamond member within a month. I kept thinking it was fixed but when it rained hard, it would come back. It doesn't rain often in So Cal so it took a several weeks or months before the issue could be replicated. Their method of running a hose over the car didn't replicate a leak so they thought it was fixed each time.

I gave up and just sold it to Carvana a few months after my CPO and full 8 year warranty expired.