How to order parts for Model 3? Tesla wont sell to non authorized body shop

[bhzmark]

Tesla body shops are trained to look for and identify conditions that could cause "a thermal event"

If Tesla makes it easy for John-Boy & Sons Body Shop and Laundromat to tinker with their cars we will hear about more thermal events and other bad things and it will be blamed on Tesla, not the body shop.

They just need to get more body shops. That will come in time.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Yes but that doesn't mean any body shop who hasn't been trained by Toyota to repair their Prius models with radar, ultrasonics, and cameras knows how to repair them without causing issues like I had on my 2015 P85D front bumper repainted by a 30+ year old quality but non-Tesla Certified body shop. Autopilot stopped working after bumper wasn't reinstalled correctly requiring the Autopilot to be recalibrated. FACT not conjecture. I then had the complete opposite experience up when I had Tesla's own "in house" body shop replace our rear bumper after being rear ended by a motorcycle. ZERO issues.

YMMV but IMHO the technology in a Tesla far exceeds any other vehicle on the road. Taking your Tesla to any body shop that hasn't invested the $$$ to train their employees the correct way to repair Teslas and purchased the necessary tools to do it correctly will certainly increase the odds you'll have issues after you get your Tesla back from your non-Tesla Certified Body Shop.

Yep and if you do a search you'll find people having problems with sensors being screwed up at Tesla certified shops (everyone sucks at what they do!). I'm sure Tesla certified shops are better than the average shop at fixing Teslas but it's not unreasonable to take into account time, cost and convenience when deciding where to repair your car.
No one ever seems to able to say what the mysterious "technology" that Teslas have that makes them so unique in terms of body repair. The Model S/X are all aluminum so that certainly requires a body shop with the expertise and tools to repair aluminum cars. That's the only specific thing I've every seen mentioned.

 

[BrokerDon]

Fair points and I don't necessarily disagree.

That said, a "Tesla authorized" shop should not be 4x the price and tell me I could be without my car for 30+ days and it could be thousands more. The guy there made it sound like the world was ending... I wouldn't take anything there to be repaired. I want a fair price for the work that needs to be done - they couldn't offer that.

For the insurance, the responsible party had minimum limits - $5k property damage (NJ)... the whole ordeal was in another post... she left the scene and I only "caught" her because I have a camera at my house. If I was to go any other route, I have to turn in to my insurance carrier which I would rather not do especially since it's only a few thousand repair plus rental, etc.

Well I see where your coming from, but you made a choice to take your Tesla to a non-Tesla Certified body shop... and now have to bear the consequences OR take your Tesla to a Tesla Certified body shop or a Tesla "in house" corporate body shop inside a Tesla Service Center. Have you investigated the latter? That's what I did and had a FAST and flawless outcome.

FYI I also got higher "estimates" from the Tesla Certified Body Shops with disclaimers that the number would likely go up... and I would be responsible for the increase if the insurance companies didn't approve their "supplements" which they said would probably happen. Tesla's "in house" body shop guaranteed the total cost of my repair would leave me with a ZERO dollar financial responsibility.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Tesla body shops are trained to look for and identify conditions that could cause "a thermal event"

If Tesla makes it easy for John-Boy & Sons Body Shop and Laundromat to tinker with their cars we will hear about more thermal events and other bad things and it will be blamed on Tesla, not the body shop.

They just need to get more body shops. That will come in time.

This is the kind of talk that gives people the impression that Teslas are ticking bombs. Fixing a fender is not going to cause a thermal event. Think about the implications of that, it would mean that a "fender bender" could cause your car to catch on fire.

 

[TeeEmCee]

No one ever seems to able to say what the mysterious "technology" that Teslas have that makes them so unique in terms of body repair.

Easy: their body parts have such variance that fitting them together such that they look halfway decent takes a lot of skill and experience. This was what I gathered from conversations with two certified body shops.

Why else would we see the so many scratched doors, misaligned hoods and such?

 

[molder101]

Tesla "in house" corporate body shop inside a Tesla Service Center. Have you investigated the latter? That's what I did and had a FAST and flawless outcome.

I'm in NJ-south near Atlantic city. I'm not aware of any tesla in house body shops... Seems like most of those are in CA.

Closest "certified" shop was an hour away.

Looked it up and the closest tesla body shop is...

Tesla Body Repair Center - Owings Mill

That's 2.5 hrs away, about 120 miles.

Might give them a call to see what they can do. Not opposed to doing that especially if they give me a car to use in the interim. Question is the total repair cost...would be nice if they could ballpark without me having to drive down there.

 

[BrokerDon]

Yep and if you do a search you'll find people having problems with sensors being screwed up at Tesla certified shops (everyone sucks at what they do!). I'm sure Tesla certified shops are better than the average shop at fixing Teslas but it's not unreasonable to take into account time, cost and convenience when deciding where to repair your car.
No one ever seems to able to say what the mysterious "technology" that Teslas have that makes them so unique in terms of body repair. The Model S/X are all aluminum so that certainly requires a body shop with the expertise and tools to repair aluminum cars. That's the only specific thing I've every seen mentioned.

Tesla "in house" corporate body shop inside selected Tesla Service Centers solve the costly time and $$$ delays getting the electronics restored after body work. That's why Elon created them... to address the current less than ideal Tesla body shop repair process / choices. Was fantastic for our 2015 Model S P85D's rear bumper replacement which only took 5 business days vs. the 4 to 8 weeks estimated by the 3 Tesla Certified Body Shops I contacted.

 

[BrokerDon]

I'm in NJ-south near Atlantic city. I'm not aware of any tesla in house body shops... Seems like most of those are in CA.

Closest "certified" shop was an hour away.

Looked it up and the closest tesla body shop is...

Tesla Body Repair Center - Owings Mill

That's 2.5 hrs away, about 120 miles.

Might give them a call to see what they can do. Not opposed to doing that especially if they give me a car to use in the interim. Question is the total repair cost...would be nice if they could ballpark without me having to drive down there.

Great! I hope they can resolve your issue.

Our Tesla Body Shop was able to give me an estimate from the pictures I emailed them along with the other body shop estimates which detailed many of the parts. The other parties insurance should provide rental car coverage... albeit NOT a Tesla. Their insurance provided a 2019 Mercedes C-Class from Enterprise which was a real button overloaded quirky turbo 4-cylinder confusing controls POS to drive coming from my 2015 Model S P85D. The C-Class was so bad I chose not to drive at all... or drove our usually garaged lifted and supercharged 15 MPG Jeep Wrangler rock crawler. Fun to drive but OMG had a true WTF moment when I went to fill it up with Premium gas. OUCH. Made me miss our Tesla even more!

 

[molder101]

I'm in NJ-south near Atlantic city. I'm not aware of any tesla in house body shops... Seems like most of those are in CA.

Closest "certified" shop was an hour away.

Great! I hope they can resolve your issue.

Our Tesla Body Shop was able to give me an estimate from the pictures I emailed them along with the other body shop estimates which detailed many of the parts. The other parties insurance should provide rental car coverage..

Other party had min limits... Paying out of pocket. Will attempt to reach out to them tomorrow. Would be very happy if they can do it... Esp if I get a car in the meantime.

 

[BrokerDon]

Other party had min limits... Paying out of pocket. Will attempt to reach out to them tomorrow. Would be very happy if they can do it... Esp if I get a car in the meantime.

Rental cars can be CHEAP these days, especially since summer is over. Also, rental cars can be cheaper over the weekends, especially at Enterprise ($16 / day). We've seen $167 a week (less than $21 a day) in SoCal renting Friday afternoon and returning Friday afternoon.

 

[zyzz]

I strongly belive these vehicles are going to be the future of the automotive industry. Shops either need to adapt or die.

you wrote that to the shop that agreed to fix your car?

 

[OCR1]

I think you are just asking for trouble going to a non-certified repair shop. Even the certified ones have problems getting parts out of Tesla.

I recently maxed out my rental car coverage on our insurance policy to protect against the possibility of a lengthy downtime for repairs. It’s probably the best thing you can do to minimize your financial risks in case of an accident with a long lead time for repairs. For $89/year I was able to get $5,000 of rental car reimbursement per accident, with no daily limit.

 

[Vegas m3d]

It's my understanding that the parts requiring a certified shop are all structural. I was told "mom and pop" shops couple order bolted on parts, but for anything welded, glued or riveted, the shop had to be certified. I'm surprised you ran into this for a fender....

 

[MentalNomad]

you wrote that to the shop that agreed to fix your car?

No, that's what the body shop wrote in their reply to him.

 

[boiler81]

Surprised no one's talked about the safety aspect of "non-certified" body shops working on Tesla's. What they don't know can hurt or kill them. Tesla holds training classes for first responders, so they can cut open the car without getting electrocuted. Risk to body shop personnel and the vehicle can be significantly reduced by certification programs.

 

[molder101]

you wrote that to the shop that agreed to fix your car?

No, the shop manager responded back to me with that. He wants to be on the forefront as he sees electric as the future.

 

[DrDabbles]

Looks like there may be a process... though I can't tell if that is to be an actual "authorized shop" or simply the minimum to show proficiency with working on Teslas.

https://service.teslamotors.com/sit...sla_Body_Repair_Program_Training_Overview.pdf

Forwarded to the body shop and will see what materializes.

Just a bit of info I found out when watching an interview with a certified third party shop. The training is something like $50k each for techs. For smaller shops, that's an absurdly expensive course.

As for warranty, as others have said, Tesla would need to prove that the repair has caused whatever the warranty claim is. Which they wouldn't be able to do unless the claim was a corroding frame caused by steel fasteners on an aluminum member. Basically, waving "but what about the warranty" is a bullshit scare tactic.

Also a fun note, those "warranty void" stickers on everything you own? They don't mean a damn thing in the US. FTC Staff Warns Companies that It Is Illegal to Condition Warranty Coverage on the Use of Specified Parts or Services

 

[Daniel in SD]

Surprised no one's talked about the safety aspect of "non-certified" body shops working on Tesla's. What they don't know can hurt or kill them. Tesla holds training classes for first responders, so they can cut open the car without getting electrocuted. Risk to body shop personnel and the vehicle can be significantly reduced by certification programs.

Has anyone actually been hurt working on an EV or hybrid? Common sense says that you should disable the main relay before doing work near any high voltage lines. Disconnect the loop on the left side of the hood near the windshield and you should be good to go. There are millions non Teslas with lithium ion batteries and high voltage wiring, are there body shop workers dying from working on them? I would say this seems like FUD but it often seems to be Tesla fans that are saying how dangerous EVs and hybrids are.

 

[DrDabbles]

Has anyone actually been hurt working on an EV or hybrid? Common sense says that you should disable the main relay before doing work near any high voltage lines. Disconnect the loop on the left side of the hood near the windshield and you should be good to go. There are millions non Teslas with lithium ion batteries and high voltage wiring, are there body shop workers dying from working on them? I would say this seems like FUD but it often seems to be Tesla fans that are saying how dangerous EVs and hybrids are.

On EV specifically? Maybe, maybe not. But on high voltage battery systems, yes absolutely. The standards for how to protect yourself and which PPE to use has been discovered over decades of deaths and injuries. Massive DC power buses and DC battery banks in datacenters have led to fatalities, and those battery banks can be smaller than 75 or 100 kWh.

This is why interlock devices and tag in / tag out exist. People make mistakes all the time, they think they de-energized a system, and they're severely injured or dead an instant later.

 

[Garlan Garner]

This is one of the downsides of Tesla's refusal to support a dealer network. For any other brand, there is always a dealer somewhere willing to make a buck by selling factory parts to third parties. It may ultimately require legislation to break this very unreasonable policy.

Edit: It wouldn't surprise me if refusing to sell parts to third parties is against the law in some jurisdictions now.

I disagree.

I was recently in accident where I was rear ended. Tesla called me within 30 seconds because my car somehow alerted them that I was in an accident.

Tesla towed my car to a certified body shop that pays a ton of money each year to Tesla for a license.
Why? Because Tesla says that they will certify that any Tesla certified body shop WILL return my car to me in showroom condition - where there will be no question of safety or anything due to the fact that my car was in an accident.

Tesla certified body shops WILL NOT bend parts back into place. They won't paint over defects. They won't....do a lot of things a non certified shop will do. When a lady hit me from behind there was an "un-noticeable to the naked eye" bend in a frame plate. The Tesla shop told me that Tesla will not allow them to straighten anything out. They were required by Tesla ( to keep their certification ) to replace the frame member. It showed up 4 business days later and I was rolling a few weeks after that.

So... "Tesla certified" is a phenomenal thing to me and depending on what is being repaired...could pose a huge safety risk.

On another note. The damage to my car was in the rear....however the pyro fuse in the safety belt restraint system blew. That is a safety function. The body shop replaced the pyro and all of the one-time-use safety belt parts.

I got my car back and noticed that my car wouldn't update properly. I took it to Tesla and they said that the RDU needs to be replaced because when a Tesla is in an accident....that the RDU ( located in the center console somewhere - because you have to take the entire center console out ) also blows and needs to be replaced and should have been replaced. The RDU is also a one-time-use restraint controller part after an accident.
The certified body shop apologized profusely and indicated that it was their mistake. Tesla ordered the part and installed it.

Its quite possible that a non-certified body shop will be able to make a dent look good, however do they know anything about how a Tesla fully works to where there are no additional errors or anything?

I doubt it.