I reserved my Model X in 2016 and it arrived in April 2017.
I had some relatively forgivable issues when they delivered it (curbed alloy, issues with the leather on the passenger seat, dent in the frame near FWD, misaligned main front camera, crunching door mechanism and maybe a few other little ones)
I didn't really moan, despite it requiring a number of trips to the SC in the first few months of ownership and other than the inconvenience and the frustration of having to rock around in a smokey diesel jag X type loaner for a while and that the car came back twice without a fix for the door mechanism issues, which persisted until it finally crunched itself to death completely and required a full replacement. I just got on with it and forgot about the troubles, I was so in love with how great the Model X was.
Then about a year and a bit later the airbag light came on and stayed on. After numerous attempts with the call centres it was looking like it would have to go back in to the dreaded service centre as soon as I had the time to get it there, then after a software update in early Dec the main heater unit burned itself out (as did hundreds of others around the world apparently). So, I shivered my way in to the service centre.
So, a quick update… it’s almost April and it’s still in the service centre
In my 23 months of Tesla ownership, my model X has spent about 4 months in the service centre.
A week or two ago, missing my car and in a fit of madness, I enquired about buying a newer performance model and asked them for a price for trading in my existing one in. To my surprise Tesla came back to me and said that my less than 2 year old car that cost nearly £95k has a trade in value of £44k. (That’s an official figure from the sales centre.)
So.. my car is depreciating at about £500 per week.
(I say again.. 4 months in the service centre)
A pretty brutal figure once you calculate the tax (income not road obviously), insurance, other costs etc
So, the hit of having my car in service for about 4 months is starting to look pretty unreasonable.
I just want to say that I love my model X and I've only ever given a glowing recommendation of the car itself.
As a car, it's excellent. fast, fun, clean, awesome.
But as a company, a luxury car company, Tesla has so much catching up to do.
We shouldn’t have to drive around wondering when something small is going to snap, crunch or go pop and it cost thousands and take months. That’s just not cool.
The reason for this rant, is that I would like to hear (privately) from any other owners that have had a similarly ridiculous experience and what resolution you came to with Tesla.
The (very nice guy) that leads the service centre team suggested that he had a £100 max authorisation last week when it came to restoring goodwill to customers. I'm not sure if he realised that my car lost 5 times more than that in a days it took him to get back to my email asking if Tesla thought it was reasonable) I should have suggested he puts on some new wipers as it eats them pretty quickly.
I'm also annoyed that they most likely will have let my battery run down to zero over the freezing months in Jan/Feb (it’s been totally dead on the app since Dec other than one single alert saying that charging was interrupted in Jan).
I'm sure I will attract enough fire just asking a question like this (I used to convince myself when reading so many similar stories that it probably wouldn’t happen to me) and I'm not asking for anyone to publish their experience and resolutions publicly, please email me privately on
[email protected].
Before you criticise my exasperated rant on here.. ask yourself how you would feel in the same position.
It’s really not reasonable at all. I personally feel fortunate to be able to buy and own a car like the model X, but that doesn’t mean we should suffer with such utterly appalling customer service / experience and the lamentable handling of such matters by Tesla.
