Help - I don’t accept this car - Tesla won’t take it back

[spokey]

My tesla store (tesla doesn’t have dealers) op

I call them dealer because from a customer standpoint I see no difference. I understand they are Tesla owned and not independent like say the local Ford dealer but I don't see any practical difference.

I went to a place where I could see the cars.
I test drove one at that place.
I ordered my car at that place.
I went there to inspect it, pick it up, and pay for it
at that place.

I did exactly the same thing with that Camry in my signature line except the Tesla came in from order to pick up in about a month and the Camry took 2 months. I think I also put down $500 for the Camry instead of $100 for the Tesla.

 

[Hyperfire21]

Honestly I think the person delivering your car was in a rush and wanted to leave. You don't hand anyone your phone to accept delivery or make any decisions on your behalf.

Tesla doesn't seem to be willing to work with customers due to the high demand. Best bet might be to sell the car if possible.

 

[IMAOB]

Getting them to give you the response you’re looking for, sure, that isn’t easy, even often for simple things. But I’ve not once had a problem “getting ahold” of someone, whether it be via SMS, in app messaging, or phone call to my local SC.

My sales associate is always available and has been very nice and supportive but says I am stuck. I can’t get in touch with anyone else. Thanks for the thoughts and advice everyone.

 

[Need]

You are in San Diego and it is a new Model Y. You could probably just add a post to Tesla for Sales forum here and sell it in a day or 2 for the amount you paid. I think it is easier to try to get Tesla to take the car back.

 

[jsjohnst]

My sales associate is always available and has been very nice and supportive but says I am stuck. I can’t get in touch with anyone else. Thanks for the thoughts and advice everyone.

Is there anything wrong with the car or is the reason you don’t want it is because of how they treated you? If it’s the later, I totally get it, but honestly “life is short” as a wise person said in this thread and you probably should get over it. Really sorry you had a bad delivery day experience, mine was too, just in a different way. Couple weeks of driving it later and I had almost forgotten about it.

 

[IMAOB]

You are in San Diego and it is a new Model Y. You could probably just add a post to Tesla for Sales forum here and sell it in a day or 2 for the amount you paid. I think it is easier to try to get Tesla to take the car back.

Thanks - I found marketplace last night and posted it for sale!

 

[IMAOB]

Is there anything wrong with the car or is the reason you don’t want it is because of how they treated you? If it’s the later, I totally get it, but honestly “life is short” as a wise person said in this thread and you probably should get over it. Really sorry you had a bad delivery day experience, mine was too, just in a different way. Couple weeks of driving it later and I had almost forgotten about it.

Upon visual inspection the car is perfect. I have not driven it. It’s about how I was treated - can’t get over it. Will sell it or give it away to charity if I can’t get what I paid for it. That way I convert a bad experience to something good. The Last time I bought a car was 17 years ago - A 2005 Honda Element. It has only 79,000 miles on it. It should continue to serve me well and will outlast me for sure. It might even be better for the planet - not sure what the environmental cost is of manufacturing a new tesla. (I am not trying to start a new thread here people!)

 

[YNoVA]

You really think he paid cash for the car without understanding that he was buying the car, or that the Tesla rep "took his phone from him" and accepted delivery for him?

Good times bro.

I guess you don't realize that even if you pay cash you are still able to reject delivery.

 

[jjrandorin]

I guess you don't realize that even if you pay cash you are still able to reject delivery.

Not on a home delivery you cant. if you get delivery at a service center you can, but home delivery you cant. One of the reasons why, if I am asked, I always suggest against home delivery.

 

[YNoVA]

Not on a home delivery you cant. if you get delivery at a service center you can, but home delivery you cant. One of the reasons why, if I am asked, I always suggest against home delivery.

Ah didn't know that, I assumed you can reject home deliveries as well.

 

[arbitrage000]

The Tesla policy is to not let you into the car until you accept delivery. All you can do is inspect the outside and look through the windows. Now I realize there are a number of delivery centers and/or sales associates that do allow you to go in the car before clicking accept. At my delivery 2 weeks ago they unlocked it and let me inspect the interior before accepting. But still the majority don't allow this.

So the only unsettling thing here is that the delivery person allegedly clicked accept for the buyer. If true, that is a bit shady. Also their claim that one can return after 100 miles is BS. Sure you can have things fixed within a 100 miles that don't have to be actual warranty issues but you can't return the car (at least that I'm aware of).

That all said, this whole story seems hard to believe. Mostly that without any problems seen with the car (now that it is just sitting in the driveway) that one would be so upset that they would list the car for sale after waiting who knows how many months for the car. (unless an MYP I'd assume 6-8 months).

 

[roblab]

My first thoughts were, "take the car, and then turn around and sell it". There are lots of buyers out there who would be happy to take it off your hands. There are lots of people who buy a car and try to sell it at a profit, while you, at least, would be trying to just get your money's worth back and so would be selling it at a good price. At least you're in a highly populated area of the country, so there are likely buyers in your area. My daughter is thinking of buying either an X or a Y. What color are you getting?

 

[YNoVA]

So the consensus here is to always take delivery at the service center. When I took delivery, the delivery associate gave me the key cards and allowed me to drive the vehicle around the parking lot before accepting delivery in the app. Home delivery just sounds like a way to get the car out of Tesla's hands with no problems to them.

 

[IMAOB]

Not on a home delivery you cant. if you get delivery at a service center you can, but home delivery you cant. One of the reasons why, if I am asked, I always suggest against home delivery.

My first thoughts were, "take the car, and then turn around and sell it". There are lots of buyers out there who would be happy to take it off your hands. There are lots of people who buy a car and try to sell it at a profit, while you, at least, would be trying to just get your money's worth back and so would be selling it at a good price. At least you're in a highly populated area of the country, so there are likely buyers in your area. My daughter is thinking of buying either an X or a Y. What color are you getting?

Thanks. I would just like to get my money back. Its a Model Y white exterior and interior. I just listed it in marketplace.

 

[Unclepaul]

I can understand OPs viewpoint. When I picked up my X recently, the delivery specialist asked to see my phone. He synced my app with the new vehicle and paired my phone with the car. He clicked a few buttons and the phone was used to unlock the car. I thought of it more as a service. He told me that this was the time to accept the car and I nodded my head. He did some more clicking around and handed my phone back to me. All worked perfectly and I was happy to get someone familiar with syncing my phone and making sure everything was done properly.

He then showed me how to use the key card to unlock the doors and where to place it if I did not have my phone. This was something new to me and I appreciated his instructions. Keycard is easy to hide on the car and would be handy if the phone was out of data range, forgotten or battery dead.

He was very professional. Even mentioned that there was already a memory stick in the glove box formatted for the car and used for recording events.
I never thought of this as an invasion of my space, but was greateful to have someone familiar with the system to get everything going.

He sat me in the car and had me adjust the seating and mirror positions and showed me how to accept that into the cars memory. Also put some favorite sound system into system and adjust the hidden air vents to my preference.

I would have felt insecure to make all these initial settings and sync my phone to the car at first introduction. Having him run through all these initial and necessary steps was a great service for me. Never felt pressured or intrusive

The car was in great shape, charged to 80%, tire pressures accurate etc.

Hope the OP can get through this initial feeling and enjoy her new car. They are quite wonderful cars and can be life altering.

 

[Kokukenji]

This experience is pretty common with home deliveries from the sounds of it. Labor is getting expensive and pretty sure there's not a line of people wanting to be tagged with the task of home delivers (I could be wrong). When I received our car last week, the person delivering the car was very young but very polite. He was also training someone to do their 1st delivery and asked her when they were waiting for their uber to pick them up if she was comfortable to do her own (She said no). I can assume that was her first day and unsure what type of training their received prior to. The more "veteran" delivery person had 15 deliveries under his belt...they were to target about 10 deliveries per day for the both of them. Going to assume it's 5 per day average so the guy has done around 3 days worth. Their team was to hit 200 deliveries just on that day alone...

To me that's still pretty fresh, not like they have been doing it for months or years. They were both pretty shy and barely said anything unless I asked them questions. They didn't pin point any issues unless I asked about it. I asked them about the big chip on the spoiler area and they said that they've never seen that before and they themselves have reported it to their manager when they found it BUT they didn't tell me until I had asked. It also sounded like the folks delivering the cars are also the folks prepping the cars, as in cleaning it inside and out.

Fortunate that I did a bunch of research on the car prior to delivery and had a couple of checklists handy but I can see how folks that are used to the new car delivery experience from your standard ICE manu can be turned off.

I would opt for pickup at one of their delivery center since Tesla Fremont is only 12 miles away BUT I didn't even get that option. Home delivery was auto selected and there was no re-schedule option. I asked the SA and they were pretty insisting in the home delivery option as the only option. End of the year goals, potential EV credit next year, folks might be pushing back, etc. Seems like its more of a work backwards situation versus handling it the correct way, up front.

 

[Midnightsun]

I guess it depends on where you live and what service centre you are dealing with. I have never elected for home delivery so I cannot comment however I have so far taken delivery of 2 Teslas over the last 2 years. I was allowed to inspect the car throughly with help from my representative and it was even pointed out to me some minor scratches on an interior panel which was replaced immediately while I was there. Point is I was allowed to inspect the car inside and out, sit in it, open everything up and kick the tires so to say before accepting ownership. I had no real issues except some very minor stuff which was corrected. After reading this thread, I would never ask for home delivery as it sounds like the delivery people just want to get on with there lives and don't give a crap.

I should mention I was also given a complete "training course" from the rep on how the car functioned while seated in the car with him which was very helpful for the first Tesla.

 

[Kokukenji]

I guess it depends on where you live and what service centre you are dealing with. I have never elected for home delivery so I cannot comment however I have so far taken delivery of 2 Teslas over the last 2 years. I was allowed to inspect the car throughly with help from my representative and it was even pointed out to me some minor scratches on an interior panel which was replaced immediately while I was there. Point is I was allowed to inspect the car inside and out, sit in it, open everything up and kick the tires so to say before accepting ownership. I had no real issues except some very minor stuff which was corrected. After reading this thread, I would never ask for home delivery as it sounds like the delivery people just want to get on with there lives and don't give a crap..

I don't know if they don't give a crap. I think it's more of lack of training from the higher ups. They might have delivery goals, versus customer service oriented goals. Hoping that with all the complaints and the issues that the post delivery teams are handling, Tesla corp will put the brakes and figure out how to better service their customer at time of delivery, versus after the fact.

Funny, I was dropping off our car for post delivery issues at the Fremont center and what looks to be one of the managers doing training for new recruits (They look like either customer service or office workers, not service center folks) I heard him say to them that it's true that Tesla works backwards and it's not their intentions. The current experience for new car delivery, even at the store is very hands off. Seemingly he agreed that it was not the right thing to do because people spent a lot of money for their cars and the experience should be better. The good news is that someone that's high enough to be training is aware that there are issues, so it's not all in our heads.

 

[jeremymc7]

My latest Tesla purchase was June 2020, basically right as Covid was hitting the fan.

I picked up at delivery center, you had to wear a mask, they only let you in the car after you signed all the paperwork, but you could check everything outside before signing. They did everything outside in guest parking though, due to Covid, as this center was historically you got to inspect the car inside. They also set strict times and only let a set number of people on property during each "session".

It went fine and I used the various checklists on the forum and spent 45 min checking everything, except driving which they wouldnt allow. Every button, window, door, panel, radio, and on and on.

 

[jjrandorin]

When I took delivery, the delivery associate gave me the key cards and allowed me to drive the vehicle around the parking lot before accepting delivery in the app

You are the first (and only) person I have ever seen report that someone from tesla actually let them drive the vehicle, before accepting it. I dont read reddit or anything though, so I dont know if that has been reported anywhere else, but I havent seen that reported by anyone here before.

Plenty have been allowed into the car to inspect it before delivery though, even though that seems to be "not the standard policy".


None of us were there with this OP so we dont know what happened, but I suspect that the viewpoint of the person delivering the car, and this OPs viewpoint are different, for the same interaction.

What I mean is that the OP (who self identified as "flustered" during this interaction), may feel like the delivery person rushed them, or even accepted on their behalf when they didnt want to, while the delivery person probably saw this the way @Unclepaul said in post #41, as "helping someone confused get access to the car".