-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Delivery Delay - 2014 Model S
- Thread starter radrick
- Start date
Well, I've been keeping a stiff upper lip through all this, but frankly, I'm pretty PO'ed. I was given a delivery date of September 5th at least 6 weeks ago, Tesla's call not mine. As a result, I have scheduled and confirmed a boat service delivery, time off from work, a return of my current car lease and, believe it or not, a 3 week out of country trip. And now it looks that, with a week's delay, I'll actually have 2 whole days before I leave. Plenty of time to make sure all is OK with the car, arrange fixes if it's not, etc. Yes, I know it's a car; yes, I know we're all touchy-feely about Tesla, and yes, I know the delay may not be anyone's "fault", but it still sucks. In my work, I'm never allowed to make a mistake. I guess my expectations are set too high. OK, I feel a little better now, but not much.
And deservedly so. Tesla has earned a lot of the grief they get over missed delivery dates. And it really harms Tesla's message that their ordering/delivery experience is better than a dealers.
Isnetman I sympathize with you. My delivery date was Aug 29, set at the beginning of June. Just found out from my DS, delivery is now hopefully Sept 18. Therefore it looks like a 20 day delay for me. Hope this helps others guess what their delay might be. VIN: 48590
It took 2 months to get my delivery day off from work. My schedule is not very flexible. I was selling my car on Aug 29. I scheduled plastic protection installation Aug 30. I am trying to get time off on the new delivery day. If not, DS said they would work until 9 PM to let me pick up the car. If necessary, I could rent a car before delivery on Tesla's dime, drive there after work and leave the rental with them. They seem to be bending over backwards to work with my schedule. I started this thread so I could learn about delays and let myself and others vent a little.
I was on the wait list of 5 Toyota dealerships for about 4 months for my current 2004 Prius, which is similar to my Model S wait. At that time, each dealership was getting about one Prius a month. Difference is Toyota salesperson called me on April 20 and I picked it up that night, so I didn't have a specific delivery date to obsess about for months, only to be disappointed 2 weeks before delivery.
What I was very disappointed with is that Tesla couldn't give me an estimate on a new delivery date (it took 11 days to set a new date). I'm sure with time, our little delays will be a relatively minor memory. At least we don't have to worry about poor cold weather battery performance and poor road conditions (innumerable potholes, salt).
It took 2 months to get my delivery day off from work. My schedule is not very flexible. I was selling my car on Aug 29. I scheduled plastic protection installation Aug 30. I am trying to get time off on the new delivery day. If not, DS said they would work until 9 PM to let me pick up the car. If necessary, I could rent a car before delivery on Tesla's dime, drive there after work and leave the rental with them. They seem to be bending over backwards to work with my schedule. I started this thread so I could learn about delays and let myself and others vent a little.
I was on the wait list of 5 Toyota dealerships for about 4 months for my current 2004 Prius, which is similar to my Model S wait. At that time, each dealership was getting about one Prius a month. Difference is Toyota salesperson called me on April 20 and I picked it up that night, so I didn't have a specific delivery date to obsess about for months, only to be disappointed 2 weeks before delivery.
What I was very disappointed with is that Tesla couldn't give me an estimate on a new delivery date (it took 11 days to set a new date). I'm sure with time, our little delays will be a relatively minor memory. At least we don't have to worry about poor cold weather battery performance and poor road conditions (innumerable potholes, salt).
A 20-day delay is pretty ridiculous. I thought 2 weeks was bad (and for all I know, I may well end up being delayed 20+ days when it's all said and done).
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
"Panicked"?? What would you be panicked about? What something are you thinking there may be to worry about?
I can live with a delayed delivery. Tesla is a startup bringing a disruptive car into a entrenched industry. Frankly I might be more concerned if they cranked out cars, delivered them and then checked the quality. I may get push back about being a startup but they are IMO. They way I look at it they could have pushed production to the max in the old configuration until they had a " perfect plan" in six months to a year. Or they pulled together a "workable plan" to manage growth and have implemented it knowing 80% more planning might only yielded 10% more perfection. Tesla has proved to me they more than capable of getting any issues corrected and new improvements integrated moving forward. My $0.02 worth.
I understand why you'd say that, but with a market cap like Tesla has and a couple years now of delivering Model S, Tesla doesn't get a pass anymore for "startup" status.
Insane growth just comes with its own pains. Hard to hire that fast, hard to put in processes where you didn't need them before. Plus, about every factor of 7 requires a org structure changes (7->50->350->2500->7500 employees) to keep teams manageable. I can understand why Tesla faces issues. Understanding isn't forgiveness, but it helps when trying to keep perspective.
Bonnie -- Just a bit of playful exaggeration. There is, of course, nothing to panic about.
I know the car will get here, and I've not built my whole schedule around that exact date as some have done or have to do if their schedules are super tight.
You do make some good points, and I won't go over them point by point, but I will summarize my opinion as, you seem to have a very optimistic view of things. From what I've read on this forum, many people are delayed by a number of weeks, and I'm still not certain anyone in the US has taken delivery since production resumed.
I have no problem with a delayed delivery, with two caveats. First, don't tell me I have a delivery date, and then not meet it. Just tell me my delivery date is pending, and give me an estimated range (e.g. Late September). I understand that the 30 day limit is a somewhat important threshold, as financing quotes are only good for 30 days (same for trade-ins with AutoNation). So likely Tesla didn't think at the time there would be a delay. I'm ok with a delay. I want a quality product, and I'm happy to wait. I've been waiting my life for a Tesla (without realizing it).
Second, why won't they just come out and tell me about the delay? If someone scheduled for Aug 29 was delayed to Sep 18, then people scheduled for Sep 15 must surely be delayed, right? That's the thing that is bugging me right now.
chickensevil
Active Member
Unfortunately we are just a very small subset of the Tesla population (and diminishing in percent each day). The most people ever on this site was 9 months ago at 9,000, middle of the day (almost) for the entire US and we only have 1,300 people hitting this website... not all of which are current or soon to be owners (people keep tabs on this site strictly for investor reasons and such)... Of that the people with a car on order are an even smaller number. We just don't get the kind of coverage like we used to on the overall view of the company from this website and people reporting delivery status, so you have to build in a healthy buffer zone. This became evident during Q3 2013 and has only gotten much worse. If even 100 people on this site are reporting their upcoming delivery status from today up through October that is a mere 1% of the upcoming orders at hand (approximately 10,000 cars will be made between now and the end of October).
We are still early enough in the quarter, and with the comments from Elon recently about China becoming the number 2 player as far as demand/deliveries goes (bumping Norway into number 3) it is VERY likely that cars being made right now are servicing a lot of that demand. We also have reports of people from Australia getting their cars made (which is new), as well as other foreign countries (I know specifically the UK has had a couple people chime in). This is pretty normal, having early quarter production cars be shipped overseas and late quarter production more closer to home.
I am actually trying to be very conservative in my view since I am not at all trying to set the expectation for some crazy view that builds people's hopes up. Where I get the estimates for the ramp up and the numbers is based on the assumption that Tesla is not going to miss their guidance. It has been a VERY long time since they had a serious miss, the company has executed to their claims quarter over quarter and then some. I feel confident that the 9,000 production was a conservative number (on top of the 2 week shutdown) and I don't see why they would miss that target. Again, if they do, this has much deeper implications.
I welcome further feedback and discussion on this though, since I certainly don't know everything and could easily be making some false assumptions.
- - - Updated - - -
To address the first, they until just recently have been not only hitting the dates correctly, but actually coming out ahead in most cases on the dates. Talking with different people at Tesla that I have had the chance to make contact with (not that I have spoken to anyone super important or some such) the sentiment seems to be geared toward setting realistic expectations because it would be better to be early than late. Clearly they were not fully anticipating the impact here at least not to the degree that it happened, or at the very least someone didn't get the memo to set appropriate expectations... Which I am right there in saying this is bad and something they should work on.
That said, I don't know why they are not telling you about a shift in the dates if it is indeed going to happen. Not all DS's are created equal and some are certainly better and more proactive than others. If this is something that bothers you, please, reach out to them... and if you don't get a satisfactory answer then escalate it to management and so forth. Worst case send an email to ownership and/or possibly Jerome. Although I wouldn't jump straight there unless you needed to. There are certainly areas of recourse for you if you feel like you are not getting treated well as a customer. And the company/management really does care about customer satisfaction. But they can't fix something they don't know about.
I actually challenge everyone impacted by this, when you get your car (finally) and get that customer delivery satisfaction survey FILL IT OUT! Because seriously, they take all these things to heart, and I personally have seen positive results come from something I specifically called out during my delivery process (it was something unique to my state of Virginia). Every time I have pointed out rooms for improvement they have been very grateful and take all of that seriously.
But if of that 1%, 100% of them are delayed, then we would have to surmise that TMC users are not a good sampling of buyers?
I've been giving them some time to actually contact me, as I'm three weeks out as of yesterday, if I don't hear anything by two weeks, I will get my DS on the phone. However, the overall impressions on this forum have been that as a whole, the DS do not have good up to the minute information, or are not willing to share it until the latest possible moment. My experience so far with my DS has been a very positive one, and I hate to contact him to ask him a question I know he won't be able to answer. If he says, "your delivery is on time", I won't believe him (from reading this forum), and if he says "your delivery is delayed", I'll be upset he didn't tell me that when he first knew, and not waited until I called.
My VIN is just a bit older than yours, and my Sept 4th delivery in TX was delayed until "the latter half of September," so I would imagine you can expect the same.
(My dashboard actually still says Sept 4, but my DS called to tell me that's no longer accurate.)
No doubt you're right. However, I'll be overseas until the first week of October, so not only will my delay be longer, but they won't get any Q3 benefit from my deal. It's really not the delay so much, it's all the other moving parts of my schedule that are affected that become so annoying.
Well there was one delivery, AZNick was the first to post about getting delayed and he has his car. Also some folks on the official forum are now going into production. Also, someone spotted a couple of truckloads on the highway as well.
Similar threads
