Parts service? Just fine. Very helpful when I dropped into buy a wall charger and 32Amp commando adapter.
New car delivery? Awful. Just awful...
My timeline went like this.
Booked into an early afternoon 3pm slot to pick up my car from Dartford on a Monday. Perfect, I needed to home by 6:30, and Dartford is 25 minutes drive away. Booked the day off work.
Confirmed the delivery with Tesla and with the lease company, even went physically went to the service centre the Friday before to confirm the collection date and time. All good.
Come Monday, I take elongated and tortuous train and bus route to the service centre at Dartford. Anyone who thinks public transport is the answer to traffic and overcrowding is deluded. It’s a pain in the arse.
On final leg of the journey (bus stop - miserable weather), I had a phone call from the service centre; “Your car isn’t here, it’s at Heathrow, we’ll have to arrange for another day” - My immediate response was pretty much “over my dead body, you can explain this to me in person when I get there.”
A brief but enlightening conversation when I got there elicited a key bit of info.
- Tesla don’t apologise for anything. A simple sorry would have served to reduce my ever increasing levels of rage, but apparently this was my fault...
Tesla phoned for an Uber for me to Heathrow.
On leaving Dartford I give the guy there 3 key requests. (That’s “requests” in the context of a wife's stern request to a husband - to be read as, “do this, do it now, do it exactly as I ask, or I’ll come back here and remove parts of your anatomy”)
1/ I absolutely must be on my way back from Heathrow by 5 if I was to have any chance of getting back to home by 6:30. Or else it’s not worth going, do whatever must be done to ensure that car is ready upon my arrival.
2/ put the car on a supercharger, NOW, while Im on my way there to pick it up so I don’t have to hang about.
3/ Under no circumstances will I sit through your PowerPoint presentations and demo’s on how to drive the car. I’m In and out, no messing around, do not engage me in any conversation other than handing me the keys.
The Uber was a typical clapped out Prius with all fuel savings measures enabled such as the air con and heating turned off, an enforced maximum speed of 56mph, windows fully fogged to save you the terrorising sight of being tailgated by artics, and acceleration that could best be described as glacial, much like the temperature of the interior. On the plus side, Tesla paid for it.
I arrived at 4:30. They knew who I was the moment I got in the door, so they’d definitely been briefed to expect an angry man who doesn’t take no for an answer. The car was “Ready in just a moment, it’s just with the detailers”. (Begging the question ‘why is isn’t it already cleaned? you were expecting me one and a half hours ago’)
At 5pm the car was still nowhere to be seen. By 5:30 I was just about ready to get a train home and cancel the bloody thing. Finally after what must have been the most intense wash ever, it appeared. I gave it the once over, signed the form and drove it out of the delivery centre...
... and straight onto the supercharger for 40 minutes as the thing had a range showing of less than 90 miles. It was barely above freezing outside, so with a stone cold brand new battery it took forever to work up a decent charge rate. So much for charging it up for me...
All in all, atrocious. The worst handover I’ve ever had.