Finding it hard to remain passionate about Tesla

[Muhammad]

Hi, fellow S85 driver since 2015 either.

Ah, FSD was actually not an option, you are right. Instead the cooperation with mobileye was intended to constantly improve AP1, which was true until Tesla and mobileye parted. IMHO Tesla went full into developing their own AP thus leaving no resorces for significant changes in AP1 or other improvements e.g. for multi point navigation, alternative routes, etc.

Regarding the charging experience today: Also in 2015 the new battery tech and the risk coming with it for the customer was tackled by Elon Musk twofold:

Firstly by extending battery warranty to all cars, even sold ones to unlimited miles and 8 years while sending on the Tesla company blog the reassuring statemement: Any issue due to usage/(super) charging will be covered by us, even if you never read the manual, because our BMS should prevent any damage.

Secondly by stating on the same blog to strive for the best service experience of the world.

Then there were some Taxi and renting services providing great datapoints for the small capacity losses after lots of miles.

Over time, the initial supercharging speed declined a bit, but acceptable.

Then in 2019 a series of firmware updates changed firstly at a significant number of 85s the capacity by limiting the max voltage. My car went from 84% soc to 92% after the first firmware. Then in additional Firmware Updates the charging behaviour was throttled. Both resulted in adding 50%-75% longer charging times on road trips.

When I politely inquired the SeC, I was simply told over and over again, this is "normal degradation".

Combine this with the declined service.


So, I hear you, Muhammad!

I also have a 3 which I payed for FSD on. Anyways that’s irrelevant bc it shows someone purchasing a new car today has no idea what surprises could be in store for them.

As a matter of fact there seems to be a lot of people like me who were passionate enough to be “2 Tesla households” who are now saying never to Tesla. That should be alarming for Tesla for brand loyalty and customer retention. Furthermore, one of Tesla’s biggest advantages used to be word of mouth advertising. I have been asked by a lot of people recently who were interested in buying a car and I, without malice or hatred to the company, gave them an honest rundown of my experience and my concerns with the company. Not funny enough, there’s another guy in my friends circle who owned an S, had a catastrophic service experience, and got rid of it and feels the same. He’s even more passionate of his negative feelings about the company and I can’t imagine anyone I know hearing of these two stories and still wanting to purchase a car.

Yet one thing comes to mind which is that Teslas back in the day were considered expensive, as there was comparably less car for your money that gas counterparts. Since then Tesla has changed to the cheapest option in every category, which makes leads me to believe Tesla might begin to be seen less as the aspirational luxury brand it was to a cheap brand. That may not be a bad thing if cars are continually coming off the lot but it’s different from the company i and others bought into.

Finally, I want to make it clear that I have no animosity to the company. I actually don’t regret purchasing either car but I’m just not excited or passionate about it anymore, and will give competitors precedence when buying a new car. Inside, I sort of wish the company turned out differently which is why I made this post, but for me it’s about moving on and accepting reality.

 

[Ullrich]

Hey guys

I guess this post will be a half rant, half counseling session.

A little backstory: I purchased my first Tesla back when Tesla only made one car. The "sales" staff made a huge point at the time not to sell cars, but to act more like museum curators, explaining the technology and showing people around which made for the best car purchase experience I had ever been a part of. And while the car had flaws Tesla service would always go out of their way to pick up and drop off your car to you, give you a loaner, and ensure the process was as customer friendly as possible. Elon Musk was a humble visionary at the time, and it was easy to root for the company amidst the immense misinformation and naivety surrounding electric cars.

Fast forward to today and Tesla to me stands for everything antithetical to what I mentioned above. Good luck getting in contact with service. Tesla will screw over customers as much and as often as they can get away with it and I feel people are passionate about the company because they haven't had to experience this themselves. My 2015 car, despite only being supercharged on longer trips has been horribly throttled. FSD has been over promised time and time again. Tesla's recent successes and outrageously loyal fanbase seems to only reinforce the idea that Tesla can keep screwing customers over and keep getting away with it. Their CEO is childish and yet seems to be 100% supported in every dumb thing he says or does.

The only strong positive are the cars. I guess I am secretly waiting for another company to come with an electric car with the range, UI, and charging infrastructure Tesla has at a comparable price. Maybe I'll be waiting a long time but until then I don't see myself upgrading to the latest and greatest Tesla as I had envisioned. I would never believe I would be saying this 3 years ago when I was a strong advocate for the company and willing to wait in line for the model 3 (only to pay a higher price and have horrible quality control issues and UI bugs for a year). At this point, I wish the company would change its culture but I am not holding my breath. Until then, I am no longer passionate about the brand and have more disdain than admiration.

I miss the Tesla of past...

I got my model 3 almost exactly a year ago and my experience was more like your "backstory". The car itself is great. 10 years ahead of any other car at any price. I didn't take out a microscope to check for sub-millimeter differences in the panel gaps, but no obvious flaws appear unless you look at one small spot on the roof in just the right light, or run your finger around the seal in the joint between the roof and the frame in which case you'll find one spot where the seal bulges up a bit. Nothing worth bothering about. Seems people who bought the Model S or X early on are the most likely to complain. I guess if you pay more for your car than someone in a fly-over state paid for their 2 bedroom house, it tends to make you a tad more persnickety. As for service, I had two issue. One was my own fault as I scraped the rear passenger door against a wall in my condo's parkade. The insurance company paid the $5k or so to replace the door. It took about 3 weeks to get the parts in and get the repair done. The other issue, I would not have been aware of but a message kept popping up on the screen saying there was a fault in the front left passenger restraint system. The seat belt seemed to be working fine and the car was running well, but I made an appointment and brought it to the service center. They arranged for a loaner, but because the rental company took about an hour to get the loaner to the service center, they waived the gas charge, so I got a free ride home. By the time I got the loaner home, I got a notice on the app that my tesla was good to go, so I drove back and picked it up. Turns out there was a faulty sensor in the airbag system that had to be replaced. So far, I have no complaints about the car or the service center.

 

[Peteski]

I’ve had my Model X since Feb 18 and other than a handful of trivial niggles on delivery, which were resolved by service without fuss, it has been faultless over 35k miles.

My local service centre has actually been very good to me, although I haven’t needed to contact them for a long time now. They even fitted a brand new tyre FOC after I got a puncture from a nail in the first 500 miles. I expect they would be less responsive and generous today due to the growing volume of customers, but that’s just my gut feeling.

The car itself is great and the software is now far more reliable than it was back in 2018 when persistent software bugs were the worst feature of this car. Overall It is the best car I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned a lot of cars! Let’s not pretend other prestige car manufacturers and their dealerships provide great service because in my experience they often don’t. The process of buying a Tesla was actually a breath of fresh air compared to the usual sales tactics and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another Tesla at this point.

 

[LasVegas2019]

I have only had excellent customer service from Tesla since getting my Y in March. Two occasions to use roadside and one occasion in shop and each time it was a pleasant and efficient encounter.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Cars are complicated, with many thousands of parts. Believe is is not uncommon to see issues pop up from time to time.

Most all legacy auto dealerships have very busy service centers that constantly deal with these issues as well.

 

[jelloslug]

Hey guys

I guess this post will be a half rant, half counseling session.

A little backstory: I purchased my first Tesla back when Tesla only made one car. The "sales" staff made a huge point at the time not to sell cars, but to act more like museum curators, explaining the technology and showing people around which made for the best car purchase experience I had ever been a part of. And while the car had flaws Tesla service would always go out of their way to pick up and drop off your car to you, give you a loaner, and ensure the process was as customer friendly as possible. Elon Musk was a humble visionary at the time, and it was easy to root for the company amidst the immense misinformation and naivety surrounding electric cars.

Fast forward to today and Tesla to me stands for everything antithetical to what I mentioned above. Good luck getting in contact with service. Tesla will screw over customers as much and as often as they can get away with it and I feel people are passionate about the company because they haven't had to experience this themselves. My 2015 car, despite only being supercharged on longer trips has been horribly throttled. FSD has been over promised time and time again. Tesla's recent successes and outrageously loyal fanbase seems to only reinforce the idea that Tesla can keep screwing customers over and keep getting away with it. Their CEO is childish and yet seems to be 100% supported in every dumb thing he says or does.

The only strong positive are the cars. I guess I am secretly waiting for another company to come with an electric car with the range, UI, and charging infrastructure Tesla has at a comparable price. Maybe I'll be waiting a long time but until then I don't see myself upgrading to the latest and greatest Tesla as I had envisioned. I would never believe I would be saying this 3 years ago when I was a strong advocate for the company and willing to wait in line for the model 3 (only to pay a higher price and have horrible quality control issues and UI bugs for a year). At this point, I wish the company would change its culture but I am not holding my breath. Until then, I am no longer passionate about the brand and have more disdain than admiration.

I miss the Tesla of past...

Like it or not, the Tesla of old would have gone bankrupt years ago if they would have stayed exactly the way they were 5 years ago.

 

[totoro722]

Just another data point: I just had my first service call for my Model X whose windshield cracked on the first 100 degree day. The Tesla service in Lake Forest California handled the problem with no room for complaint by me: good communication throughout by the service tech assigned to me. After reading much negativity here I was expecting much worse, especially as they seemed VERY busy! There are service centers that are doing things right.

While reading this thread I wonder if some of the problem is that people are comparing their experiences with Tesla to other car companies. I am not sure that is the best way to look at it, as Tesla is more of a tech company (and the stock is priced accordingly!). Perhaps it would be better to compare one’s experience with that of your Samsung phone. The phones perform well for the most part, but getting service is more difficult, and early obsolescence is expected. Granted a Tesla is a car, and should last longer than a phone, but though the car may operate for a long time, the tech may become obsolete long before the car is no longer usable. Likewise those who want the type of experience they get from their favorite German or Japanese car companies probably would do better going to a car company which will provide what is expected and not much more.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Independent legacy dealerships are paid tremendous amounts in fees and comissions to coddle their customers. This brings them loyal customers who will do all their highly profitable warranty and customer pay services.

Saw the same thing with personal computers. There were lots of places you could take your computer to be serviced. Those providers made nice profitable businesses. After a while the computer manufacturers needed to cut costs to stay in increasingly competitive businesses. They quit paying independents to service their machines and offered only mail in warranty and customer pay programs.
They also quit doing free tech support. If you wanted to chat with a technician you needed to pay by the minute or with a prepaid tech support agreement.

Tesla is doing like most others are doing. They are cutting out the very expensive middlemen and offering remote OTA tech support plus their own, in house, service centers.

This is a much more efficient way to transact business and will give them a significant competitive edge. They will not do chit chat of feel good coddling. Doing business over telephones, with thousands of different employees will result in some customers getting better service than others. It will also tie up thousands of hours of valuable/expensive time. Far better to communicate electronically where there is a paper (electronic) trail that can help to optimize service requests and results.

Of course, lots of people want constant feel good updates on repairs and progress, but these really do not effect when the car will be done and ready for pickup. Most efficient for the company is to remain radio silent until the car is fully ready for pickup. Then they can notify the customer to quickly pick up their vehicles.

Of course most customers want to feel they are one of the important ones. They want constant updates and also of course do not want to pay for this service. They want everything to break in their favor, have the warranty or good will cover all the costs, and not be responsible for anything.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Independent legacy dealerships are paid tremendous amounts in fees and comissions to coddle their customers. This brings them loyal customers who will do all their highly profitable warranty and customer pay services.

Saw the same thing with personal computers. There were lots of places you could take your computer to be serviced. Those providers made nice profitable businesses. After a while the computer manufacturers needed to cut costs to stay in increasingly competitive businesses. They quit paying independents to service their machines and offered only mail in warranty and customer pay programs.
They also quit doing free tech support. If you wanted to chat with a technician you needed to pay by the minute or with a prepaid tech support agreement.

Tesla is doing like most others are doing. They are cutting out the very expensive middlemen and offering remote OTA tech support plus their own, in house, service centers.

This is a much more efficient way to transact business and will give them a significant competitive edge. They will not do chit chat of feel good coddling. Doing business over telephones, with thousands of different employees will result in some customers getting better service than others. It will also tie up thousands of hours of valuable/expensive time. Far better to communicate electronically where there is a paper (electronic) trail that can help to optimize service requests and results.

Of course, lots of people want constant feel good updates on repairs and progress, but these really do not effect when the car will be done and ready for pickup. Most efficient for the company is to remain radio silent until the car is fully ready for pickup. Then they can notify the customer to quickly pick up their vehicles.

Of course most customers want to feel they are one of the important ones. They want constant updates and also of course do not want to pay for this service. They want everything to break in their favor, have the warranty or good will cover all the costs, and not be responsible for anything.

I don't "want to feel important" and I don't need or expect white glove service. I only want a competent customer service solution that can fix my car. Nothing more. Nothing less. I don't need hand holding or coddling so stop acting like anyone here who's had a bad experience is to blame for their expectations not being reasonable.

 

[Saguarojoe]

Hey guys

I guess this post will be a half rant, half counseling session.

A little backstory: I purchased my first Tesla back when Tesla only made one car. The "sales" staff made a huge point at the time not to sell cars, but to act more like museum curators, explaining the technology and showing people around which made for the best car purchase experience I had ever been a part of. And while the car had flaws Tesla service would always go out of their way to pick up and drop off your car to you, give you a loaner, and ensure the process was as customer friendly as possible. Elon Musk was a humble visionary at the time, and it was easy to root for the company amidst the immense misinformation and naivety surrounding electric cars.

Fast forward to today and Tesla to me stands for everything antithetical to what I mentioned above. Good luck getting in contact with service. Tesla will screw over customers as much and as often as they can get away with it and I feel people are passionate about the company because they haven't had to experience this themselves. My 2015 car, despite only being supercharged on longer trips has been horribly throttled. FSD has been over promised time and time again. Tesla's recent successes and outrageously loyal fanbase seems to only reinforce the idea that Tesla can keep screwing customers over and keep getting away with it. Their CEO is childish and yet seems to be 100% supported in every dumb thing he says or does.

The only strong positive are the cars. I guess I am secretly waiting for another company to come with an electric car with the range, UI, and charging infrastructure Tesla has at a comparable price. Maybe I'll be waiting a long time but until then I don't see myself upgrading to the latest and greatest Tesla as I had envisioned. I would never believe I would be saying this 3 years ago when I was a strong advocate for the company and willing to wait in line for the model 3 (only to pay a higher price and have horrible quality control issues and UI bugs for a year). At this point, I wish the company would change its culture but I am not holding my breath. Until then, I am no longer passionate about the brand and have more disdain than admiration.

I miss the Tesla of past...

I'm genuinely sorry to read of your dissatisfaction. I've had my 3 for 25 months with very few issues. Software is never perfect but I've never used any software that is perfect. We don't yet have a service center but it's coming. We do have a really super ranger program. They came out immediately on a self inflicted problem and fixed it. We also have a very active local club and everyone shares ideas and issues.
I think Tesla is going through growth issues. They seem to be short on staff. They are plowing money by the truck load into all kinds of things. I think it will be a long time, if ever, before any competitor catches up with their supercharger network for example.
Keep the faith my friend.

 

[Saguarojoe]

Independent legacy dealerships are paid tremendous amounts in fees and comissions to coddle their customers. This brings them loyal customers who will do all their highly profitable warranty and customer pay services.

Saw the same thing with personal computers. There were lots of places you could take your computer to be serviced. Those providers made nice profitable businesses. After a while the computer manufacturers needed to cut costs to stay in increasingly competitive businesses. They quit paying independents to service their machines and offered only mail in warranty and customer pay programs.
They also quit doing free tech support. If you wanted to chat with a technician you needed to pay by the minute or with a prepaid tech support agreement.

Tesla is doing like most others are doing. They are cutting out the very expensive middlemen and offering remote OTA tech support plus their own, in house, service centers.

This is a much more efficient way to transact business and will give them a significant competitive edge. They will not do chit chat of feel good coddling. Doing business over telephones, with thousands of different employees will result in some customers getting better service than others. It will also tie up thousands of hours of valuable/expensive time. Far better to communicate electronically where there is a paper (electronic) trail that can help to optimize service requests and results.

Of course, lots of people want constant feel good updates on repairs and progress, but these really do not effect when the car will be done and ready for pickup. Most efficient for the company is to remain radio silent until the car is fully ready for pickup. Then they can notify the customer to quickly pick up their vehicles.

Of course most customers want to feel they are one of the important ones. They want constant updates and also of course do not want to pay for this service. They want everything to break in their favor, have the warranty or good will cover all the costs, and not be responsible for anything.

I agree with you. I think the dealership model will make it impossible to be competitive in the EV business. The dealers won't make any money on service and their overhead on sales with make the vehicles uncompetitive. If the vehicles do require service, by design, that will be a death knell.

 

[Saguarojoe]

I agree with you. I think the dealership model will make it impossible to be competitive in the EV business. The dealers won't make any money on service and their overhead on sales with make the vehicles uncompetitive. If the vehicles do require service, by design, that will be a death knell. The supercharger network will become a major major issue. I can't see it being anything but a collaborative effort. This will take years to define, years to design and build.

 

[ByeOil]

Hey guys

I guess this post will be a half rant, half counseling session.

A little backstory: I purchased my first Tesla back when Tesla only made one car. The "sales" staff made a huge point at the time not to sell cars, but to act more like museum curators, explaining the technology and showing people around which made for the best car purchase experience I had ever been a part of. And while the car had flaws Tesla service would always go out of their way to pick up and drop off your car to you, give you a loaner, and ensure the process was as customer friendly as possible. Elon Musk was a humble visionary at the time, and it was easy to root for the company amidst the immense misinformation and naivety surrounding electric cars.

Fast forward to today and Tesla to me stands for everything antithetical to what I mentioned above. Good luck getting in contact with service. Tesla will screw over customers as much and as often as they can get away with it and I feel people are passionate about the company because they haven't had to experience this themselves. My 2015 car, despite only being supercharged on longer trips has been horribly throttled. FSD has been over promised time and time again. Tesla's recent successes and outrageously loyal fanbase seems to only reinforce the idea that Tesla can keep screwing customers over and keep getting away with it. Their CEO is childish and yet seems to be 100% supported in every dumb thing he says or does.

The only strong positive are the cars. I guess I am secretly waiting for another company to come with an electric car with the range, UI, and charging infrastructure Tesla has at a comparable price. Maybe I'll be waiting a long time but until then I don't see myself upgrading to the latest and greatest Tesla as I had envisioned. I would never believe I would be saying this 3 years ago when I was a strong advocate for the company and willing to wait in line for the model 3 (only to pay a higher price and have horrible quality control issues and UI bugs for a year). At this point, I wish the company would change its culture but I am not holding my breath. Until then, I am no longer passionate about the brand and have more disdain than admiration.

I miss the Tesla of past...

 

[ByeOil]

Here is why I disagree. This past Friday I got in my Model S and looked at SC1 and there was a message regarding the replacement of the 12v battery. I got out my phone and proceeded to make a service appointment. The appointment was made for August 6th with Tesla’s Mobile Service. The following morning, I received a phone call from Tesla asking if they could move up my appointment from August 6th to July 27th? They still be coming to my home to perform the service and it is covered under warranty. If Tesla didn’t care, this would have not happened. Whenever I have had to go to my local service center, I have been treated like a King, (not often) the folks are very friendly and wanting to make me a happy camper.

Something happened along the way with your enthusiasm. I am sorry that happened. But I would be willing to be if you contact Customer Service and express your feelings, you could get back your MoJo.

The last thing is you are going to be waiting a long time for other manufacturers. Tesla has a least a decade head start. By the time Ford, Audi, VW, Volvo, GM, and others get anywhere caught up, Tesla would have left them in the dirt. I hope you get it worked out. It is still the best computer and software company in the world ... and BTW, they build a nice car wrapped around the computer. That’s my thoughts.

 

[dhrivnak]

I have been a Tesla customer since 2011 and back then customer service and the Rangers were amazing and easily best in class. Today the service I get is merely excellent.

the other day I noticed my charge port was missing a plastic insert. I took a picture and sent to my service advisor asking if it was an issue as I was still charging fine. He promptly said he scheduled a mobile tech to swing by for what turned out to be a 5 min fix. While there the Ranger noticed my charge port was not opening on a press. Not really an issue, as I can use the charger wand button. But he said he would be back in a week to fix that as well. And he did. So did my car have two extra issues? Yes. Did I lose any functionality? No. Did I even notice the one problem? No. Was it fixed easily and promptly? YES.

So are there some quality issues? Yes. But am I a throughly satisfied customer who still says Tesla service is second to none YES.

 

[drtimhill]

If I recall correctly, that was Consumer Reports who listed them last for initial quality. The interesting part of that was that Tesla came in first in their customer satisfaction survey. One would think those could not go together. Something is keeping people enthusiastic about their Tesla cars despite the well-known problems.

While not defending Tesla or disagreeing with the OP (who has some good points), the "Initial Quality" survey in question was J.D. Powers (not CR), and has been pretty much debunked, since "Initial Quality" to J.D.Poers includes things like "Did you need to read the manual to use the car". I should also note that the winner of the survey was Dodge, and Lexus and Toyota were WAY down the list. I will leave you to draw you down conclusions.

 

[designrs]

Have you spent any time really checking out the Porsche Taycan? The electrify America network isn't as substantial as the Tesla network, but it's not tiny either. It might just work fine especially for someone used to how things were back in 2015.

... for those who have over $200k to spend to try the Taycan system.

 

[designrs]

My Tesla app “butt dialed” roadside assistance the other day. Tesla never stopped calling and texting me to try to assist!

 

[cucubits]

Today the service I get is merely excellent

Count yourself among the lucky few. More and more service centers and mobile tech teams are full of incompetent staff. Zero centralizing of procedures and information. One service center can tell you a thing and another can tell you the exact opposite.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

I don't "want to feel important" and I don't need or expect white glove service. I only want a competent customer service solution that can fix my car. Nothing more. Nothing less. I don't need hand holding or coddling so stop acting like anyone here who's had a bad experience is to blame for their expectations not being reasonable.

You may not, but that doesn't mean it can't be applied to others.

Tesla is far from perfect, but I've never come across any company that can simultaneously receive some of the highest customer satisfaction rates and also numerous rant/whine/complaints the cause of which are often attributed to the CEO.

Bizarre.