Elon Musk puts aggressive growth ahead of customer service. It may come back to bite him.
Poor customer service could damage Musk's companies' growth over time, and the billionaire's public profile means consumer expectations are high.
www.businessinsider.com
I just purchased my beautiful $70k Model S a couple months ago after hearing from everyone how great Teslas are. I agree, they drive great and have all the bells and whistles. Never in a million years though would I have bought it knowing how abysmal their customer service is. Actually, their customer service isn't just abysmal, it's non-existent.
My car had a little run in with a metal object that fell from a shelf in our garage which resulted in some paint damage. I first contacted the Tesla Service center to get it in to fix it. Their first appointment was 6 months out so I decided to call a TACC (Tesla Approved Collision Center). I dropped my car off over a week ago now. The paint was fixed long ago but they found a problem w/ my rear camera. My service rep tried to order the needed part for it but it showed up as "restricted". He told me the ONLY way for their TESLA APPROVED service center to communicate with Tesla was through email (even THEY don't have a phone number or way to chat). He emailed Tesla and next day a guy at Tesla replied that it should not have been marked as "restricted" and he would fix it. The fix never got done. Now we are 3 more emails and 7 days past my repair date and my service guy still has not received a reply from Tesla. I thought "well, I'll just call them myself and complain. That will light a fire under their butts". The "customer service number" they provide only takes you on a joy ride through different voice prompts. There is NEVER, EVER any option to speak to a live human being. Next I thought, well, there's at least got to be a way to live chat with someone, right?. NOPE. That's not an option either. The only option I had was to go through a bunch of prompts on the "contact us" link, type in a few brief words on why my question was not answered by the 29,000 Q+A's I had to read through (and my comments were limited to like 50 words) and when I pressed "send", I got a screen saying "thanks - we'll be in touch". BTW - it never asked me for an email or phone number. I did put it in the body of my comments. It's now been 20 hrs and I have yet to receive any reply from them.
In the mean time, my insurance company is paying for a rental car while my Tesla sits idle in a repair shop because Elon Musk is a pathological liar who says customer service is a priority when, in reality, keeping profits coming in and lining his own pockets are his greatest priorities. This is inexcusable from a Forbes 100 company. SHAME ON YOU ELON MUSK AND TESLA. I'm filing a complaint with the FTC next.
