Fun Warranty Experience

[aarossig]

TL;DR/Spoiler: From the service invoice: "Removed and replaced trident cable. Verified operation. Now working to Tesla standards."

I am on a cross-country road trip from SF Bay Area to Toronto and back. I am currently on the return leg of the trip going south/west through Ohio, passing through New Orleans, Texas, the Grand Canyon, etc.

I stayed at a hotel with a HPWC last night in Pennsylvania and charged to 100%. When I woke up, the charge cable was difficult to remove. The light was dark blue and clicking the button on the handle did not release the cable. I didn't think much of it and released it manually from inside the car and continued on my trip.

Fast-forward 2 hours and I am ready to charge at a SuperCharger. I had a similar issue with the dark blue charging light only this time the car refused to start charging. I tried the obvious tricks like restarting the car but that didn't help.

I called the support hotline and spoke with a CSR named Sunshine. We tried rebooting the touch display, rebooting the car, locking/unlocking the car but nothing was convincing the car that it should start to charge. I should add that I tried several charging stalls.

There was a nearby service center and I had enough charge to make the trip so we arranged that I meet someone there. Within minutes she had filled the service center in on the details of my situation and I was ready to make the 20 minute drive over.

When I arrived one of the technicians took the car. An hour and a half later they returned and indicated that they had replaced the low-voltage cable from the charging connector. I was quite pleased when my phone buzzed with a notification that the car was charging prior to the technician returning the car to me With a 2 - 3 hour delay, I made my next stop in Nashville.

Here are the details from the invoice:

Found trident cable to have bad resistance. Internal failure on cable.
Corrections: Cable - EV Inlet - Data-Ground (Trident)
Removed and replaced trident cable. Verified operation. Now working to Tesla standards.

Apparently this is a rare failure. They suggested that this is the first they have seen in roughly a year. Has anyone else ran into this?

 

[kort677]

these cars are complex and unfortunately these kind of issues will occasionally occur fortunately for you it was easily resolved! I've been on many trips far far away from a service center where a failure like that would have been a huge problem.

 

[Baja30]

Not that rare if they had a part in stock.

 

[Trunk Gap]

Not that rare if they had a part in stock.

While this is a reasonable assumption, it isn't certain. Very often at dealers who have their *sugar* together (have not been in this situation w Tesla one way or the other fortunately) they will pull parts off of loaners/other cars to get you on your way that same day. They fix your car, order the part, it comes in, and they swap it back into the donor car.

 

[aarossig]

these cars are complex and unfortunately these kind of issues will occasionally occur fortunately for you it was easily resolved!

I was extremely impressed with the quality of service everyone was pleasant, well organized and they were aware of the fact that I had a timeline.

I took my BMW in for an oil change and they kept it overnight!

As far as having the parts in stock, they said that the parts manager is on top of things and that they had one. Though I do not know if they actually borrowed one from another car.

 

[CHG-ON]

I have had nothing but truly spectacular service from Tesla. I know that some have not. I'm so glad to hear that your experience was positive.

 

[kort677]

I have had nothing but truly spectacular service from Tesla. I know that some have not. I'm so glad to hear that your experience was positive.

from what I hear the big issue with service is the very long waits for appointments for non critical issues and the shortage of loaners. Also the level of work quality can vary from location to location, some SvCs are better than others.