The important thing already stated is this: never give anyone, auto manufacturer or kitchen remodeling company or anywhere in between payment up front for amounts you aren’t comfortable completely losing if things should go sideways in ways you can’t imagine being able to imagine. Few hours on hold with an automated bot repeating itself seems like a fair penalty for not learning that life lesson sooner. Luckily everyone gets their money back on this. Had a neighbor in 2007 ill informed enough to pay a builder to build a house in advance. I got to learn vicariously on that one and took a cashiers check to hand Tesla upon passing inspection. Irony of it all is how many of these double charged cars includes the self driving “feature” and has anyone asked for a refund on that? What’s the difference?
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Double-charged by Tesla?
- Thread starter everydaychris
- Start date
No one is claiming Tesla is frauding the customers. When did we say that?
What we are saying is, if Tesla is not returning the funds, either because of lazy or incompetent employees, then the customers will only have one choice to resolve this problem. That is filing a fraudulent charge, with the bank, to recover their money.
What we are saying is, if Tesla is not returning the funds, either because of lazy or incompetent employees, then the customers will only have one choice to resolve this problem. That is filing a fraudulent charge, with the bank, to recover their money.
The word “scam” has been thrown about here, and freely in other forums discussing this issue. I believe current Internet culture is to call “anything that doesn’t go my way” a “scam”. I’d be the first to call out any actual scam, but incompetence and negligence, as disappointing as they are, does not meet the definition of that word.
Criticize Tesla for being lazy, uncaring, and lacking follow-through all you want - but they aren’t scammers. As is said, don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. An axiom that I think describes Tesla pretty well.
whitex
Well-Known Member
If only Bernie Madoff thought of firing all but one person capable of withdrawals from his investment funds, then give that person a personal leave for few years, then it would not be a scam and he would not be in jail, right? He could claim the money is all there, any anyone who wants to withdraw can call a number a leave a voicemail to talk to the guy on vacation.
As for other examples of Tesla scamming people, see how they advertised the P85D to have 691hp, only to admit 2 years later after a lawsuit that the car is limited by the battery and power delivery they put in P85D to 463hp - meaning the car would need a 50% power boost to reach the advertised number. No compensation to customers (except for the few in the EU which got a settlement), just excuses (including CTO blog post how EV hp is somehow special and worth more). Maybe you call it incompetence, but selling something you don't know if you can deliver and then not refunding the full purchase once you find out for sure you cannot deliver it, is a scam in my book. At least for FSD they sold since 2016 they did have a fine print which warned people that nobody knows when it will be delivered, which technically could mean in a million years. There was no such fine print for the P85D horsepower.
Just wanted to reply. Tesla customer relations contacted me yesterday and said they are working on it and said my double funds had just got to their tesla bank. She then said she is issuing the return right now and I just checked this morning and my funds are back!!
She also said the team is looking for a gesture of goodwill for all those affected (whatever that means). I asked for a 2k performance boost upgrade and she said probably not likely haha. Will do a youtube video!
She also said the team is looking for a gesture of goodwill for all those affected (whatever that means). I asked for a 2k performance boost upgrade and she said probably not likely haha. Will do a youtube video!
I agree but the bank, or my bank at least, sees it as a fraud case as it was an unauthorized charge. They didn't care it was tesla, they said it's a charge you didn't initiate and you didn't receive anything for it, so we can start a fraud case that can take forever.
And scam was more of a question. Was it?? Did they scam me to possibly puff up their numbers and remove 57k from my bank account? Probably not but at the time, with their lack of communication and urgency, it sure felt like it!
...not so sure about this being, "...closest to the truth..."
What is the source of this opinion? "...has like 13 people..." etc. You make this sound like you're an ex-insider. Is that in fact true?
Then maybe you can explain. Do Tesla "staff" actually process the initiate the transfer of funds, or is this handled by a 3rd party?
Feel free to answer "I don't know," If you DO know, and your knowledge is current, it might help out the situation by telling us something about the actual funding process.
We seem to have 2 differing perspectives. 1) The double-charge was caused by a software glitch by a 3rd party vs. 2) Tesla is stonewalling, and is therefore seen as willfully defrauding their own customers, by NOT quickly resolving the issue with appropriate refunds.
After reading through this entire thread, again, with posts by those in the financial industry who have attempted to calm the conversation, I contend this is a 3rd party failure, which is NOT internal to Tesla, and therefore Tesla is powerless to speed up the process of appropriate refunds.
Tesla is completely blowing this opportunity, from a PR standpoint, by doing nothing. I agree with that. It would cost them very little to immediately compensate the parties involved with free Supercharger miles for "x" period, until the 3rd party processes the refunds (IF this is a 3rd party failure.)
everydaychris: Excellent news. I'm glad you've been refunded appropriately.
Now, seriously (this is a serious discussion, right?) do you really think you deserve a $2k compensation for this? I hope not. I'd say it's worth some floor mats or 1k of free Supercharging, but really, I don't think you should be joking by making an unrealistic request. It weakens your case, IMO.
Whew. 8 pages of civil discourse, learning about scamming, fraud, and how financial institutions work. And, of course, human nature at work.
Now, seriously (this is a serious discussion, right?) do you really think you deserve a $2k compensation for this? I hope not. I'd say it's worth some floor mats or 1k of free Supercharging, but really, I don't think you should be joking by making an unrealistic request. It weakens your case, IMO.
Whew. 8 pages of civil discourse, learning about scamming, fraud, and how financial institutions work. And, of course, human nature at work.
I am far from an expert, but isn’t the acceleration boost basically a software engineer pushing an update to your car? Assuming an engineer at $100/hr, that doesn’t actually cost Tesla much, actually probably much less than a year of supercharging for example, if it’s fully taken advantage of. Just because they give it a value of $2k, doesn’t mean it actually costs them that (minus the margin, of course). Like I said, there are a lot of things that companies can do at very low cost to them, that make customers feel special. Actually, a Tesla example: I had a complementary detail from Tesla that I could use in the first 2 months of ownership (my car was dirty on delivery, none of the other cars on the delivery lot were). I took it in last week for the detail, the guy asked me how everything was, I chatted with him and I told him that like so many, I curbed one of my 20”. He looked at it and told me that they don’t fix the rims, they would have to change the wheel... I told him no biggie, it was my fault anyway. He ended up doing me a huge solid and change the wheel. That is something I wouldn’t have paid for (pretty sure it’s over $1k), but that to them was very easy to do and actually didn’t cost them much, since I’m sure they’ll find a way to refurbish my original wheel and put it on another vehicle.
Customer service is a balance between knowing when to say no, and making the customer happy. Every company struggles with that balance.
Customer service is a balance between knowing when to say no, and making the customer happy. Every company struggles with that balance.
Needsdecaf
Active Member
Probably not likey? That's the least they can do. It doesn't even cost them money!
Sheesh.
It's called Opportunity Cost. If they give it away for free, then there's zero chance they will ever make $2000 off selling it. If they don't give it away, there's always >0% chance they could sell it for $2000.
Needsdecaf
Active Member
It's called "damage control". "PR Disaster". It's called "Tesla double charged me, am I likely to ever give them more money in the future?"
I work in the entertainment business, we give away concert tickets to dozens of people a year because they had a bad experience, but last I checked, people still paid hundreds of dollars for good seats at a Justin Bieber concert (in the before COVID years of course), even though a handful received them for free because of customer service. It’s called building a base and a standard for experience.
Needsdecaf
Active Member
Yes, Tesla has proven time and again that customer service, in any capacity, is very low on their list of priorities.
Going to a free concert doesn't prevent someone from going to another concert. If you give them a software feature that can only be bought once, there's no way they will ever pay for it because they already have it.
Something like free Supercharging would be a closer analogy to what you mention. Giving someone free Supercharging miles wouldn't prevent them from ever paying for Supercharging in the future.
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