How long did Model 3 Deposit Refund take?

[msnow]

I just noticed this post and poll is on a Model 3 forum. What's interesting is that those of us who own Tesla's and have experience with the company are the ones suggesting a more affirmative approach. They have a history of delays and not being the greatest with communication which is why many of us have lost patience. My hope in putting a deposit on a M3 (which will make me a two Tesla family) is that they get their act together quickly so as to not lose the trust of the new M3 owners who have no experience and possibly no patience for their shenanigans.

 

[Jayc]

For years and years, I spent time and money in pursuit of audiophile audio nirvana until I stumbled upon a slightly unconventional product made by two engineers in a shed that simply blew me away. A friend decided to get one for himself too but soon found himself asking for a refund when it's external finish didn't meet his expectations. He dug out every possible law and standard there is related to online purchases and threatened to sue the small company which was simply not equipped to provide the same level of customer service standard we expect from well established big companies. My friend eventually did get his refund but to this date regrets harassing the company knowing very well he was complaining of minor issues when otherwise it was a product of outstanding value and quality made by two dedicated engineers in a shed.

Morale of the story...sometimes some people get so entrenched with standards and laws that they forget there is a human element to all this. In the world of car companies Tesla is a small player trying to rise against a rebellion of big oil companies to offer their customers products of outstanding value. They have just been handed a workload of orders that even the big players would struggle to deliver. Yes they ought to return the deposit when requested back but try be patient and do give Tesla some time to deal with it. Maybe that way things will work out better for both parties and one day perhaps when the time is right, you will be happy to go back to Tesla to get an even better model

 

[Ulmo]

Most companies do not "cut" checks on a daily basis but on a weekly basis. They also have to go through an approval process (Publicly Traded has additional approvals normally) that can take time. Say for example you turned in the request on a Tuesday, it takes 10 working days for approval, then they release the funds on the following Friday. That could be 25 days before you see the money.

If you turn it into the credit card company, you can rot in... I will try and be nice but it causes all kinds of accounting issues and is a pain.

More often than not, companies treat credit cards as water, drinking as much as they can, whenever they want, and don't really care about the customers. This puts the customers in the position of having to not infrequently dispute erroneous charges on their credit cards. I've had to do that about 5 times this year. In every case, I was found in the right. If this causes consternation for some company that wanted to steal my money or hold on to it when they shouldn't, then that's not my problem; I'm already due more for the time I had to wait and then to dispute it. I always contact the offending party first, but I only give them one chance; this is far too common of a practice for me to spend extra time on it.

In the case of Tesla, I would treat them the same as anybody. I would contact them and ask status after two weeks (since two weeks is more than two paycheck cycles in my industry, so one week would have been enough, and a second week to handle any mistakes or delays). If they don't satisfactorily resolve it within a few working days, I'd then follow up in other channels. In this case, other channels is credit card companies.

Accounting issues? The accounting issue is that money owed someone isn't just paid. If it's owed, pay it. I can understand it taking regular time to process -- a few minutes, hours, or even days. As you explain, there could be allocation issues with moving cash flows around. If it is a business that deals with consumers, then it's essentially the same as a payroll account -- it has to be made available for regular business, just as receiving money has to be made available from customers when they buy something. So, I compare it to the payroll accounts of my employers -- they pay me weekly, and therefore I'd expect refunds to be paid at least weekly as well.

If it is a capital expenditure with contractors, then those are whole projects with huge timelines, and that's a totally different timescale. In my personal life, I'm thinking of the solar panels being installed on the house and the timelines for those payments. Also, any business that negotiates particular terms with particular vendors has its own set of rules. But, that's not the consumer side of the business.

Model 3 buyers aren't going to be as forgiving with their money as Model S & Model X buyers, simply because they have less of it. There can be expected a different approach from those different types of buyers.

Morale of the story...sometimes some people get so entrenched with standards and laws that they forget there is a human element to all this. In the world of car companies Tesla is a small player trying to rise against a rebellion of big oil companies to offer their customers products of outstanding value. They have just been handed a workload of orders that even the big players would struggle to deliver. Yes they ought to return the deposit when requested back but try be patient and do give Tesla some time to deal with it. Maybe that way things will work out better for both parties and one day perhaps when the time is right, you will be happy to go back to Tesla to get an even better model

Agreed. But, I think that's the "extra week" I gave them in my description above. Week 1 was a long time. Week 2 I give for "human element". That's it. Even so, sometimes a second week is considered way too much.

 

[nagdingbrob]

TL;DR: Up to 30 business days now...

I had emailed them a while ago, and today, I got the following response from them:

"Thank you for reaching out to Tesla! My name is Jason and I am following up on your inbound question.


I have checked and your Model 3 reservation is currently being approved for the refund to be sent back. We typically recommend 15-30 business days from initial cancellation request for the refund to materialize on your credit card.


You should be seeing the refund soon."

So.... 30 * 7 / 5 = up to 42 days

I don't get this from the business perspective...

If they even lose 50 sales at a 40k average selling price at 25% margin, they're out $500,000. This should be enough to pay for a few customer service rep's for this and other issues... I'm surprised they haven't ramped up their CSR's enough for even now. I wonder how they'll ramp up over the next two years.

 

[msnow]

More often than not, companies treat credit cards as water, drinking as much as they can, whenever they want, and don't really care about the customers. This puts the customers in the position of having to not infrequently dispute erroneous charges on their credit cards. I've had to do that about 5 times this year. In every case, I was found in the right. If this causes consternation for some company that wanted to steal my money or hold on to it when they shouldn't, then that's not my problem; I'm already due more for the time I had to wait and then to dispute it. I always contact the offending party first, but I only give them one chance; this is far too common of a practice for me to spend extra time on it.

In the case of Tesla, I would treat them the same as anybody. I would contact them and ask status after two weeks (since two weeks is more than two paycheck cycles in my industry, so one week would have been enough, and a second week to handle any mistakes or delays). If they don't satisfactorily resolve it within a few working days, I'd then follow up in other channels. In this case, other channels is credit card companies.

Accounting issues? The accounting issue is that money owed someone isn't just paid. If it's owed, pay it. I can understand it taking regular time to process -- a few minutes, hours, or even days. As you explain, there could be allocation issues with moving cash flows around. If it is a business that deals with consumers, then it's essentially the same as a payroll account -- it has to be made available for regular business, just as receiving money has to be made available from customers when they buy something. So, I compare it to the payroll accounts of my employers -- they pay me weekly, and therefore I'd expect refunds to be paid at least weekly as well.

If it is a capital expenditure with contractors, then those are whole projects with huge timelines, and that's a totally different timescale. In my personal life, I'm thinking of the solar panels being installed on the house and the timelines for those payments. Also, any business that negotiates particular terms with particular vendors has its own set of rules. But, that's not the consumer side of the business.

Model 3 buyers aren't going to be as forgiving with their money as Model S & Model X buyers, simply because they have less of it. There can be expected a different approach from those different types of buyers.

Agreed. But, I think that's the "extra week" I gave them in my description above. Week 1 was a long time. Week 2 I give for "human element". That's it. Even so, sometimes a second week is considered way too much.

Exactly! 100% agree.

 

[JeffK]

TL;DR: Up to 30 business days now...

I had emailed them a while ago, and today, I got the following response from them:

"Thank you for reaching out to Tesla! My name is Jason and I am following up on your inbound question.


I have checked and your Model 3 reservation is currently being approved for the refund to be sent back. We typically recommend 15-30 business days from initial cancellation request for the refund to materialize on your credit card.


You should be seeing the refund soon."

So.... 30 * 7 / 5 = up to 42 days

I don't get this from the business perspective...

If they even lose 50 sales at a 40k average selling price at 25% margin, they're out $500,000. This should be enough to pay for a few customer service rep's for this and other issues... I'm surprised they haven't ramped up their CSR's enough for even now. I wonder how they'll ramp up over the next two years.

Just curious, when was the cancellation date (exactly)?

 

[Darryl]

With most credit cards you can only dispute items on the current statemonths and back two months. You can't go back 6 months and despute a charge. You should check your credit car agreement and see what the policy is on refunds. I just checked one of mine and it says within 30 days of the refund request. Also check your agreement with Tesla and see if it has to rebate the money in a specific number of days.

 

[msnow]

With most credit cards you can only dispute items on the current statemonths and back two months. You can't go back 6 months and despute a charge. You should check your credit car agreement and see what the policy is on refunds. I just checked one of mine and it says within 30 days of the refund request. Also check your agreement with Tesla and see if it has to rebate the money in a specific number of days.

Yep your right. Mine says 60 days. The Tesla Model 3 FAQ says refunds of deposits can take up to 3 weeks so it looks like the only recourse is to sue Tesla (not a good option) or just wait.

 

[Ulmo]

This timeline may be educational for this thread, so I post it, even though it is not a Model 3 deposit refund (mine is $5K).

Ok, so I found on November 21 that Tesla refunded my Model X deposit. This was part of a feature, so I'm not complaining about the path that brought us to this point. Here's where it gets turned into a refund, and things start to go sideways.

Since it had not arrived, I emailed, and found out today the following:

• They refunded me via check.
• The check was cut "2 weeks ago" (by my math, the approximate date of that is November 28)
• It was sent to the home address I put for my car registration, rather than my mailing address. This makes sense since Tesla has a primary address and a secondary address for me, not a physical address and a mailing address like many contact profiles have. I made my car insurance and registration my primary address during delivery of my new car. I did not forsee the refund check mailing problem (I didn't even know I was going to get that refund until after it was processed).
  
• They have the check number.
• It was sent via USPS, about a week ago (so the math for a week ago is December 5).

So:

1. It was a feature that the refund was requested, otherwise I might have lost the money.
2. It is a misfeature that it is done via USPS, because USPS is unreliable.
   
3. It is a misfeature that it is not done with tracking (actually, I don't know this for sure: it might arrive with tracking yet), like Registered Mail, Certified Mall, Insured Mail, or just a tracking number.
4. It is a misfeature that I was not able to designated the mailing address as the best place to send it.
5. It is a misfeature that I'm not emailed when the first class letter is mailed by USPS, since then I would be able to anticipate it and make the mailbox secure (follow the mail person around when they get close?)

With all those misfeatures, I'm just sitting here wondering where it is at, with no way to do anything about it. I was told to wait one more week, which would put it at the 3 week mark everyone has stated is in the FAQ as the max time, so at least that is tracking.

 

[Ulmo]

I seem to be talking to myself. Did I kill the thread?

Anyway, an update on my situation: I expected it to be resolved by now. Unfortunately, it is not.

Inexplicably, the refund was "returned to them" (i.e., they claimed they USPS mailed my residence address, and that the USPS mail was "return to sender" back to Tesla). I cannot in any reasonable way figure out how that happened. Certainly, it is a mistake to use USPS to mail anything, especially a large amount of money like this. But, they only had two addresses on file for me: a reliable mailing address at a Private Mail Box facility, and a residence address, which while less secure, has been in constant use for at least the last 40 years with the same last name for our family. I don't understand how a letter to either address could be brought to its final address, then anybody other than those in my family decide to take that letter OUT of one of the addresses for me, and then write "RETURN TO SENDER" on it despite it being obviously addressed to one of us, and then it going back to Tesla. I'm glad they got it back, to be certain, since that means no one stole it. However, it doesn't make any sense in the first place. Unless their files are so mixed up that they literally put a different address and/or name on the envelope, then there is no reasonable way that the letter could have been returned.

I asked that they send it again via FedEx, UPS, or USPS Express Mail at the very least, so that it can be properly tracked. It would be much less expensive to do it one of those ways, rather than spending such high amounts of time labor cost and expense chasing down the malfeasance of the United States Postal Service, and any thieves that have worked their way into systems of Tesla and/or USPS in order to take advantage of the corrupt antiquated nature of USPS to cause these types of "errors" so they can skim theft off of it somehow.

One of the founders of PayPal, an electronic transfer system, ought to at least know a way to send money securely from one entity to another, that does not rely on the USPS. I do currently have a PayPal account, as a matter of fact, so if that system is secure enough, it could be used. Alternatively, I could receive a wire, or ACH transfer, or actually, I have things I still can get directly at my Tesla account having to do with my new car, such as paying for prepaid service and extended warranty. However, not everyone is in that situation.

Anyway, this whole thing has been confounding to me. I didn't want the refund in the first place: I wanted it applied to the car, or discuss what happens to it. Instead, they issued a refund right away and asked questions later, without informing me, and it's been lost ever since, in a weird black hole state of limbo. I know for a fact that they've spent a lot of time trying to track it down. Anybody thinking they're saving money by spending $2 printing a check and putting it into a USPS envelope with postage is just plain wrong. It is a far more costly way to send money.

But what really caused me to post is the possibility that behind the scenes there's something terribly wrong that is beyond bad decisions and poor cost accounting, tracking and control: the glaring error is that it makes no sense that anything sent to me at either of my addresses (regardless of optimality of either one) would get returned, so therefore, there is likely something much worse going on, and possibly could be with far more people than just myself. If they are able to give access to their refund system to some nefarious person attempting to mail the checks to some intercept location, then that would partially explain how some checks are being returned to sender in the mail system, rather than getting to their destinations, or at the very least, being stolen while within the United States Postal Service system (as happens to many checks).

The antiquated nature of the banking system in USA is a drag on our entire economy, and needs to be fixed. However, there are modern ways to handle things that are far better than using the old fashioned systems that simply don't work any more. Having something so insecure as a procedure that takes months via USPS is a recipe for bad people to intercede and attempt to steal from the money stream, hurting everyone in the process. It's definitely past time to jettison the old ways by taking the responsibility to use the reliable sane methods to send money.

 

[Jayc]

I really hope and wish that Tesla will resolve this issue for you soon. From your end, the first priority should be to focus on finding out what happened on this specific case rather than a broader analysis of how Tesla's refund process should be optimized. Easy said than done but you should really try to be calm when dealing with this and it's in your interest to be so. Tesla may be at fault here but unless you persevere and work with Tesla rather than against them, you may find your journey becomes longer and more stressful. Of course you may think more drastic legal action is the right way forward and that's your choice but I am just telling you what I would do.

More often than not, companies treat credit cards as water, drinking as much as they can, whenever they want, and don't really care about the customers. This puts the customers in the position of having to not infrequently dispute erroneous charges on their credit cards. I've had to do that about 5 times this year.

Things have changed a lot since online card payments started becoming popular and nowadays, I find that I have zero need to reclaim money as long as I take enough time to consider whether the purchase is right for the time it is intended to be used and that the fine print is not missed. As an example, it is wiser to get standard tickets rather than discounted advance bookings if you are unsure whether you will be able to travel on a specific day. It would be wrong to get advance tickets and then complain and initiate a claim when terms and conditions for advance tickets clearly state they are non refundable - even if distance selling regulation X clause Y says one is allowed to claim I would take a step back and think whether it is morally right. However, I'm not suggesting that all companies are perfectly honest or that freud no longer takes place.

 

[Garlan Garner]

I can't imagine why it takes so long to produce a refund check and get it to the customer.

 

[SoloRX7]

I wonder what would happen if you delayed your deposit payment by 30 days? Or your lease or purchase payment? Someone try it - see if Tesla is as forgiving as many here are suggesting we be of Tesla... Try using the excuse that you're "new to the EV world, and you're experiencing growing pains" like suggested above regarding Teslas's delay. They'll certainly cut you some slack. (tongue now removed from cheek)

This is not a difficult process, and we're not talking about a lot of money. I suspect they're delaying on purpose.

 

[pslawing]

Like to bump this thread. It's been 4 weeks for me, no word of refund. If you call does it help?

 

[tander]

Like to bump this thread. It's been 4 weeks for me, no word of refund. If you call does it help?

Did you get yours back yet? I've been trying to get my X deposit back for over a month now. Several emails and phone calls. Latest callback today Jan 24 was a rep saying the check was sent on Jan 11 and I should wait a couple weeks to make sure it comes Normally it takes a few days to get mail from CA max. I don't know what to do now, it's almost comical, I guess you don't become the first new car company in a century by giving people's money back easily.

 

[pslawing]

4 weeks

 

[ayucna]

4 weeks

Hi have you received your refund?
I'm also having trouble receiving my refund ..

 

[pslawing]

Hi have you received your refund?
I'm also having trouble receiving my refund ..

Yes took about 4-5 weeks.

 

[flankspeed8]

Yes took about 4-5 weeks.

curious, was it returned back to your credit card or as a check?

 

[pslawing]

curious, was it returned back to your credit card or as a check?

Back to credit card then that took another week!