I have spent enough time on this forum now to know that it's better to have low expectations for the delivery experience. With a Monday delivery, I think I might head over to Rockville this weekend to sneak a look at the car
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Delivery Nightmare Cautionary Tale
- Thread starter chihuahua31
- Start date
The Monday delivery schedule was last Monday. I'm also Owings Mills, not Rockville. I think I know everything at this point, just waiting for some definitive info from the delivery team there.
Don't get too excited. My friend chose Rockville over Owings Mills because it was closer (it's not). He had a very different, but equally bad experience. One snippet was the Delivery Advisor sent him the contract and paperwork via email after he picked up and it was for someone else including their home address, license numbers, birthdates and basically everything needed to steal their identity.
I work with someone who swears by the Rockville service center. Honestly, I don't think the problem is the Owings Mills center people. They have been super nice and try to be helpful, but their hands are tied by the corporate office. The Rockville location's main issue is that they were not originally a delivery center. They were forced into it to support Model 3. They are a service center that does deliveries and it shows. My friend was there Saturday and every person there had an issue with their delivery (he was there for 3 hours total). Also, Owings Mills is open on Saturdays although I am not sure about the service center.
Day 5. I decided to take a different approach and not contact the center yesterday either by phone or by email. I can't say I am shocked, but they did not reach out to me with a courtesy update. Yesterday was the day the car was supposed to go to the shop to get a repair estimate. Did it? How would I know?
I'm taking the same hands-off approach today. They said I would have an estimate by the end of today. If no update is received today, I will consider the hands-off approach no better than hands-on and resume pestering them tomorrow.
I'm taking the same hands-off approach today. They said I would have an estimate by the end of today. If no update is received today, I will consider the hands-off approach no better than hands-on and resume pestering them tomorrow.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I'm waiting for my registration paperwork, now at about 6 weeks from purchase date.
I emailed my SA after four weeks, and continue to send a polite update request once a week. I figure that is enough to get it done as fast as they are able and any more frequent pestering would be a waste of everybody's time, not to mention annoying.
I emailed my SA after four weeks, and continue to send a polite update request once a week. I figure that is enough to get it done as fast as they are able and any more frequent pestering would be a waste of everybody's time, not to mention annoying.
Do you have a delivery date set? They set my delivery date long before working on the paperwork.
The one thing that would prevent your suggestion is the state DMV rules. These apply to all 50 states. Amazon could drop a package to you but a car is another whole thing entirely. When you are dealing with lenders, collecting taxes and registration fees and processing new car titles I do not see any state allowing that to happen outside of the dealership rules. Staff can certainly deliver cars to customer homes but they must be working from a central location within the state (think an airline hub and spoke system). Then you have the economy of scale issues. It will always be cheaper to have multiple customers come to you rather than making individual deliveries of vehicles. Do they do it in certain cases? Of course, but it is not the preferred method for a lot of reasons, liability being one of them.
Dealership locations are very effective for other OEMs because they can perform the three main functions all in one location. The biggest obviously is immediate new car sales followed by service and used car sales. The vast majority of our public is geared towards "immediate gratification". While some are willing to wait for a specific ordered car or truck most are not. This has always been an advantage of having acres of cars and trucks for them to choose from. Tesla, like Ferrari and a few others, is an anomaly. Will it stay this way? Doubtful.
Where most dealerships are independently owned, they still do the same functions as Tesla locations. They provide showrooms to view products, perform service functions, and have offices to process the required documents to effect ownership transfers. Tesla took an unconventional approach in many locations by placing showrooms in pricey shopping centers such as the one here in Jacksonville, FL. and converting a former paint store into a service and delivery center about 5 miles away where they are severely limited on parking and car storage. When these locations were chosen they clearly were not thinking ahead about how to deliver 53 cars per day or contain costs. I honestly believe not enough attention was given to the process flow for the distribution pipeline from day one. So now lets talk solutions.
jeffro01
Active Member
IMHO, Tesla needs someone in charge of this with a vision that isn't pushed out or run into the ground... Someone who can see it through because I agree with you completely here... Many decisions were made ad-hoc by changing management without any cohesiveness for the long term so now we have this patchwork of things put together by different people at different times all trying to deliver more cars than they physically can deliver...
Jeff
"So now let's talk solutions".
If this project was dropped on my desk, I can see some short and long term improvements.
Short term:
1) Limit the ISA's activity to helping get the proper documentation and coordinating financing, etc. They should immediately stop any disclosures of VINs or delivery dates.
2) Just as with a regular dealership any and all communication about deliveries should be done only by the DS departments at the centers. NO communication with the customer about a delivery date beyond the published 2-4 month window should be done until the car is there and inspected and ready for delivery.
3) It appears cars are being dropped off and not immediately checked for damage. That cannot happen. It causes two big issues. First it will make claims against the carriers nearly impossible. Second, cars are not getting fixed in a timely manner. This seems to be a huge issue. The forums are full of complaints of damage. Either Tesla is being forced to use bottom of the barrel carriers or cars are getting damaged after drop-off. I do not have enough information to know exactly what is going on.
Long term:
1) The process flow is not working from what I can tell. Without better information from the factory I cannot tell where the bottleneck is that is forcing the current batch builds. It might be paint. To minimize change-over maintenace they appear to be building large batches of the same colors. That means cars are having to be staged and sorted before going onto carriers or trains. Due to the volume, that is forcing the staging to be done at secondary locations such as Lathrop. That means loading and unloading twice at least.
If you visit any other factory they use a different method. They build in batches based on destinations. This means trucks are loaded once with the next destination being the dealership(s) along a route. Once on, once off. The biggest advantage is time savings and reduced chance of damage.
If this project was dropped on my desk, I can see some short and long term improvements.
Short term:
1) Limit the ISA's activity to helping get the proper documentation and coordinating financing, etc. They should immediately stop any disclosures of VINs or delivery dates.
2) Just as with a regular dealership any and all communication about deliveries should be done only by the DS departments at the centers. NO communication with the customer about a delivery date beyond the published 2-4 month window should be done until the car is there and inspected and ready for delivery.
3) It appears cars are being dropped off and not immediately checked for damage. That cannot happen. It causes two big issues. First it will make claims against the carriers nearly impossible. Second, cars are not getting fixed in a timely manner. This seems to be a huge issue. The forums are full of complaints of damage. Either Tesla is being forced to use bottom of the barrel carriers or cars are getting damaged after drop-off. I do not have enough information to know exactly what is going on.
Long term:
1) The process flow is not working from what I can tell. Without better information from the factory I cannot tell where the bottleneck is that is forcing the current batch builds. It might be paint. To minimize change-over maintenace they appear to be building large batches of the same colors. That means cars are having to be staged and sorted before going onto carriers or trains. Due to the volume, that is forcing the staging to be done at secondary locations such as Lathrop. That means loading and unloading twice at least.
If you visit any other factory they use a different method. They build in batches based on destinations. This means trucks are loaded once with the next destination being the dealership(s) along a route. Once on, once off. The biggest advantage is time savings and reduced chance of damage.
Sadly, they did and that was Jon McNeill. But I think he was ready to leave last summer when he could not get Musk to allow him to discount the growing S & X inventory sooner and Musk was also unwilling to throttle back production to match demand because it would have not supported the growth and demand narrative.
Once McNeill was talked into staying until 12/31 and given permission to discount he worked wonders and lowered inventory by over 6,000 units in 5 months. I have no doubt he also had a good reading on the problems ahead for Model 3 delivery but I doubt he could get anyone to listen. By then the ramp was consuming every resource. With no support to make the needed adjustments he threw in the towel and took the Lyft position.
You took delivery six weeks ago and do not have your registration paperwork? How long does Colorado give dealers for processing? When does your temp registration expire?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
The temp plate is good for two months, until 8/12.
My local recorder's office told me that if the paperwork does not arrive by the expiration date, I can request that Tesla send me a Bill of Sale and that will be enough for some temporizing measure. A little voice in my head says that if Tesla can send the Bill of Sale, they can send the paperwork ... but I'm sure it will work out, hiccoughs and all. The recorder clerk did mention that one Tesla has been registered before mine and the paperwork arrived 4 months after purchase. I found that story comforting since it meant that I was not treading new ground and the recording office knew to be patient.
Update! I got a very helpful woman to call me back today from the service department at the Owings Mills location. She answered all my questions and said the delay would be worst case 2 weeks. They started fixing the issue as of yesterday and would call me when it is done. She also was so kind to say I could call or text at any time and she'd get the updates for me. I knew there was someone who cared about the customer experience there and I think I found her!
If you financed your purchase your lender will be a good resource. They have to follow banking laws and they will need that title in their files shortly or they also will be on Tesla's case. This is the one grey area with Tesla not holding a dealer's license; how do you hold their feet to the fire? In CA, taking this long with paperwork processing could have cost me my license or certainly some really huge fines. One lender in Louisiana was being threatened with $500/day fines for not yet processing the paperwork for a transaction on a Model 3. The problem was they could not get Tesla to send them the MSO. (You cannot process a state title application without it.) Be glad you are in much more lenient Colorado.
I am sure there are more caring staff members than you think. Many just don't have the answers people are looking for.
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