Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

I Enjoy the Car, I Really Dislike Tesla the Car Company

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Well my honest assessment, based on over six years of interactions, is all positive.

Does that make me a fangirl because I haven't had the same experience as you? Or is that just an easy way to dismiss any real life experience that is not in alignment with your beliefs? Six plus years of experience. Seems like that should count for something.


With all due respect.. not at all..

I'm sure many Tesla owners (especially the very early adopters) have had only the best experiences..

I don't see that being true today...

Again, everyone's experience may be different, depending on where you live...

I am just sharing w/ TMC (mine)

I do say however, that MOST OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE is highly positive on Tesla.

Extremely SKEWED in their favor... esp by their customers...

And yes... Tesla Fan Boys do exist...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sir Guacamolaf
I browse TMC on mobile browser and use the "latest post" option to read the newest writings.

Bluntly, your complaint threads are very frequent and say substantially the same thing over and over.

If the car is causing you this much problem, you should dump it. And if Tesla simply hasn't repaired it properly, you should look into your state's lemon laws and try to get Tesla to buy the car back. That's the only way Tesla improves. Complaining here to excess will not get the message to Tesla, and almost nobody here can help you.

.

Thanks for following my posts... you must be fan...

To comment...

My car is not a Lemon.

For the most part, it drives great...

I just have an issue w/ Tesla the car company and how they deal w/ their existing car owners.

Things should JUST BE A LOT SMOOTHER...

I hope my posts help GUIDE Tesla to that path...

and also inform new Tesla would be buyers about what they're getting themselves into (as it stands in 2017)

1. Is it acceptable that I have to make numerous phone calls, emails and chase TESLA down to get an appointment?
2. Am I whining if I get a Tesla loaner car that happens to be filthy inside w/ littered soda bottles and food?
3. Am I being over zealous if my car comes back from a warranty service w/ additional "broken" things that wasn't there before?
4. Is it too much to expect a car company that has a higher valuation than GM, Ford, VW, Toyota (maybe even combined) to run a smooth service dept?

Tesla the automobile is something special, but Tesla the car company is anything but below average (from my very humble experieince)...


.
 
I understand the worries of the OP.

But this may be an outlier. My experience was quite different.

Yes the car had issues in the beginning (a 2014 build, VIN 29xxx). They were all taken care of by the SC. SC was always great (thans you guys and girl at Feldkirchen). Always got a loaner; mostly a Tesla. That gave me a chance to check out all the new bells and whistles my car lacks. Happy as can be.

For the last two years; no more issues. I go there for tire change and annual service (I drive about 50,000 miles per year). That's it. Always get a loaner.

Once it was an ICE and I joked about my allergy of going to a gas station - haven't needed one in the past 3 years. The service manager said, I could return the loaner empty ;)
 
I just have an issue w/ Tesla the car company and how they deal w/ their existing car owners.

I hope my posts help GUIDE Tesla to that path...

and also inform new Tesla would be buyers about what they're getting themselves into (as it stands in 2017)

Your posts won't help Tesla. This isn't the company's message board and their employees do not active monitor.

Service quality also varies by geography, which is unfortunate. I think it is fair to complain. But at a certain point people are going to think it is excessive.
 
I browse TMC on mobile browser and use the "latest post" option to read the newest writings.

Bluntly, your complaint threads are very frequent and say substantially the same thing over and over.

If the car is causing you this much problem, you should dump it. And if Tesla simply hasn't repaired it properly, you should look into your state's lemon laws and try to get Tesla to buy the car back. That's the only way Tesla improves. Complaining here to excess will not get the message to Tesla, and almost nobody here can help you.

It's not that easy to dump the car. You can barely get in touch with them and you can't apply for the lemon law before 30 business days in service. It took me one month to schedule an appointment and the car is still in service, almost 2 months now.
At this point I drove the loaner twice as long. The loaner is now my car, not the car I bought.

The forum is the only way people in our situation can vent and complain. No one at Tesla really cares, although they are nice about it.

Based on all the positive reviews in the media and this forum I decided to buy one. I got unlucky and no one seems to care. I can only envy the other owners. I know most buyers had a good experience, why not us? We payed the same price.
 
Last edited:
I had a serious issue with my newly delivered car 2 weeks ago (cracked in the a pillar structure) and I have to say that almost everyone treated the situation as well as they could have given the circumstances. I emailed he issue along with pics to my delivery specialist at 10pm and got a call from the service center the next morning to bring the car in. This then of course went down a rabbit as no body have seen such a defect. I got a loaner while it is being sorted out and in the end, the decision was to ship the original car back to the factory and have them make a new one. Now, I am still working on the rebuild and transfer process so it is not out of the woods yet, but am cautiously optimistic that Tesla will do make this work out in the end.

Note that I also have other minor issues is slightly mis-aligned door and missing paint patch on the side view mirror, but are nothing that I can't wait for and got an apt scheduled on my 2nd day of ownership for 3 weeks out (before discovering the cracked a-pillar) for service to fix those up.

While its nice to see Tesla is looking into this for you the bigger issue is with their quality control that missed a cracked pillar which is a really serious defect. It just shows that they are not thoroughly going over cars before they ship them out from the factory.
 
  • Like
Reactions: davidc18
Your posts won't help Tesla. This isn't the company's message board and their employees do not active monitor.

Service quality also varies by geography, which is unfortunate. I think it is fair to complain. But at a certain point people are going to think it is excessive.

.

How many times do I want to read about someone's "awesome" delivery experience and about how great the car drives...

...Pat you on the back and congratulate you on your wise decision to buy a Tesla..

TMC has plenty of those kind of threads...

I want to weigh in on the other side...

Every "complaint" post (as you call them), addresses a different issue and a different experience..

This thread is a look at Tesla the Car vs Tesla the Car Company and how wide that gap is...


.
 
I know there are issues in some areas, and I agree it sucks when Tesla doesn't even have enough employees at your service center to call you back. It really sucks; sorry to hear about your experience.

But if your objective is to inform new buyers of what they are in for, they should know that is not the case everywhere. I took my car in today for the most minor things I can think of: to swap winter/summer tires, and get a detail before car show season.

I inquired a week ago, and was easily able to get in today (my choice of days). I got a nice Model S loaner, just like I always do.

Absolutely no complaints here, things are great. All three of my cars were delivered without issues as well. I understand things are not great everywhere.

When I got my first Tesla in 2009, the closest service center was 800 miles away. Now they have two big ones within 20 miles. There were several steps of growth along the way.
 
I hope balance the "fanboys" who are online about Tesla... and give an honest assessment of the vehicle and the company.

Here's my view after reading a number of your posts: You like to stir the pot and complain -- not just once but as much as possible. Then when others say "enough already" you use others who say good things about Tesla as justification for your repetitive negative posts.

Here's my view of why you are misguided: Before Tesla emerged, experts said it was impossible to start a new car company in the US, let alone one that in a few short years would outsell Mercedes, BMW, Audi, And Porsche In the US. Yet according to you:

I do say however, that MOST OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE is highly positive on Tesla. Extremely SKEWED in their favor... esp by their customers...

Tesla has done the impossible but the press shouldn't report on that - that's skewing the press! The press and even customers should contantly bash Tesla like you do. There's no room for growing pains in your perfect world. Also, it's not good enough for you to once point out your problems, you must hammer and hammer away at them. The fact that Tesla is alive and thriving, beyond expectations, when Tesla was in fact expected to fail, so bothers you that you can't bring yourself to post once about a problem, you must do so multiple times because: How dare the press and customers sing Tesla's praises when you have lists you keep repeatedly posting here to balance out all that!

The thing about it is that there is merit in what you say but you seem to relish so much in bashing Tesla that if I did not own one, you might have possibly turned me off from buying one. If anyone is on the fence, your constant negative posts might serve to push them back over so they won't buy one.

However, I bet if someone asked you to simply answer "yes" or "no" as to whether they should buy a Tesla... you would say "yes". You'd have to bite your lip not being able to tell them all of your complaints, but all of those complaints still do not bring you to the conclusion that you regret buying your Tesla. That's my view at least. And if you don't regret buying a product, how can you be so dead set at repeatedly bashing the product?
 
1. You'll be lucky to get a perfectly delivered car...
2. If you have issues on your car.. you'll likely not have your car for weeks..
3. You may or may not even get a Tesla loaner vehicle
4. You may or may not even get a clean loaner vehicle.
5. You may get a Tesla that's all beat up and several years old.
6. Once you get your car back, likely, there will be other problems w/ the car, that wasn't there when you first left it.
7. Good luck getting a service appointment, it's weeks away, if they even bother to call you back, or schedule you!
8. More or less likely, you have to push and DEMAND a service appointment.

9. The Fanboys will attack you viciously if you are stuck in a predicament with your $100K expense that you can't get serviced.


@Canuck - fair points. However, don't forget that the first 4 years of Tesla were qualified by exemplary service, and extremely forgiving owners with deeper pockets.You can forgive reliability issues if the excellent service makes them disappear out of your life. That is just not the case anymore. My personal experience with service hasn't been that great - I wish it was, but it hasn't been.

So while Tesla was expected to fail - and it beat the odds.
The reverse can also be true. If they don't get their act together like yesterday, it can still fail.

It doesn't matter where have you come from. What matters is where you are going from here.
 
Last edited:
  • Helpful
Reactions: TaoJones
There are a lot of really good car companies selling cars in the US. In the past few years I've bought a new Ford and a new Toyota. My neighbor bought a BMW and said the experience was amazing. The service I get is always really good. I enjoy going to the car dealership. You can have coffee and a doughnut while you wait. The girls who greet me when I go there are really pretty. I never have trouble scheduling a service, even when I don't need any servicing. I've never needed a loaner because my cars were perfect, but I know people who have and they got clean, new cars - always, every time. Also the salesmen who give me their business cards out on the lot are really powerful. They can make decisions - like giving me a free car wash - all by themselves. And the salesmen inside who I sometimes sit down with to talk about buying a car are like super powerful. We're talking an extra $500 on my trade-in, decided all by themselves. Tesla could learn a lot from some of the other car companies.

I wish Mercedes or the VW group would buy Tesla. Then I could buy an Audi that drives like a Tesla. Salesmen at those German car dealerships are so classy. I love when they shake my hand. And they would never deliver a car with so much as a hairline scratch. I wish I could afford a German automobile (well not like a Seat or a Skoda - a real one). But honestly, I've never had a bad experience buying a car in my whole life. I think Tesla should stop trying to innovate (thereby ****ing everything up in the process) and also try to emulate the proven car companies a little bit more.
 
Here's my view after reading a number of your posts: You like to stir the pot and complain -- not just once but as much as possible. Then when others say "enough already" you use others who say good things about Tesla as justification for your repetitive negative posts.

Here's my view of why you are misguided: Before Tesla emerged, experts said it was impossible to start a new car company in the US, let alone one that in a few short years would outsell Mercedes, BMW, Audi, And Porsche In the US. Yet according to you:



Tesla has done the impossible but the press shouldn't report on that - that's skewing the press! The press and even customers should contantly bash Tesla like you do. There's no room for growing pains in your perfect world. Also, it's not good enough for you to once point out your problems, you must hammer and hammer away at them. The fact that Tesla is alive and thriving, beyond expectations, when Tesla was in fact expected to fail, so bothers you that you can't bring yourself to post once about a problem, you must do so multiple times because: How dare the press and customers sing Tesla's praises when you have lists you keep repeatedly posting here to balance out all that!

The thing about it is that there is merit in what you say but you seem to relish so much in bashing Tesla that if I did not own one, you might have possibly turned me off from buying one. If anyone is on the fence, your constant negative posts might serve to push them back over so they won't buy one.

However, I bet if someone asked you to simply answer "yes" or "no" as to whether they should buy a Tesla... you would say "yes". You'd have to bite your lip not being able to tell them all of your complaints, but all of those complaints still do not bring you to the conclusion that you regret buying your Tesla. That's my view at least. And if you don't regret buying a product, how can you be so dead set at repeatedly bashing the product?

.

Thanks for your feedback..

1. I do not complain, just to complain. I try to make points.



2. I complain because I KNOW Tesla should be so much better...

It's like scolding the smart kid in class, not because he's not intelligent, but because he's got so much potential.



3. Regardless of where Tesla was and what they've "done"..

Im speaking as a consumer.

.. and as a consumer who just spent over a 100K on a car.. I expect BETTER.




4. As the thread title clearly states, I enjoy the car..

I like the car..

I just don't like dealing w/ Tesla Service.

From my experience, their PROCESS is broken.

As a customer, the PROCESS is FRUSTRATING.

And it just shouldn't be like that...


5. I believe most of the media coverage has been very positive, and I'm not necesarily bashing that...

I'm just throwing a cold water of reality to what it's like to own a Tesla and deal w/ them as a 2017 customer in the

Los Angeles Area.

If you live in Utah, and your experience has been great.. good for you...

I didn't purchase a Tesla because I'm on some mission to save the world.. I just wanted a great CAR backed by an even

better Company.

One of the MAIN reasons why I chose Tesla was because of all the great feedback I heard about being a Tesla owner and the amazing service you get...



6. I'm not hammering and hammering away at the same issues...

I see it more like peeling an onion..

as I peel away the layers of being a Tesla owner..

I experience MORE frustrating things that is just surprisingly unexpected...

eg. Right now, I can't get a service appointment... why is that so hard?

IT'S BAFFLING!


.
 
.
2. Am I whining if I get a Tesla loaner car that happens to be filthy inside w/ littered soda bottles and food?
Could be worse. I got a loaner last year that had a bunch of dog hair in it (all in the back, along with a little slobber on the back seats), but I discovered it about half way through my hour long drive home from the service center... because I'm violently allergic to dogs.
 
There are a lot of really good car companies selling cars in the US. In the past few years I've bought a new Ford and a new Toyota. My neighbor bought a BMW and said the experience was amazing. The service I get is always really good. I enjoy going to the car dealership. You can have coffee and a doughnut while you wait. The girls who greet me when I go there are really pretty. I never have trouble scheduling a service, even when I don't need any servicing. I've never needed a loaner because my cars were perfect, but I know people who have and they got clean, new cars - always, every time. Also the salesmen who give me their business cards out on the lot are really powerful. They can make decisions - like giving me a free car wash - all by themselves. And the salesmen inside who I sometimes sit down with to talk about buying a car are like super powerful. We're talking an extra $500 on my trade-in, decided all by themselves. Tesla could learn a lot from some of the other car companies.

I wish Mercedes or the VW group would buy Tesla. Then I could buy an Audi that drives like a Tesla. Salesmen at those German car dealerships are so classy. I love when they shake my hand. And they would never deliver a car with so much as a hairline scratch. I wish I could afford a German automobile (well not like a Seat or a Skoda - a real one). But honestly, I've never had a bad experience buying a car in my whole life. I think Tesla should stop trying to innovate (thereby ****ing everything up in the process) and also try to emulate the proven car companies a little bit more.

"Salesmen at those German car dealerships are so classy. "

Perhaps in Germany but.....as someone who has purchased many BMW's, Mercedes and Porsche in North Carolina & Florida, I've experienced lots of problems with the sales process, the quality of product and while in service.

My wife's 2 yr old Macan has been recalled 3x and in service 6 times for various failures (good luck getting a status callback from Naples Porsche...but they do offer breakfast while you wait on Saturdays) and her previous car a Mercedes E class had the driver's window just fall and break after 2 weeks of ownership.
 
With all due respect.. not at all..

I'm sure many Tesla owners (especially the very early adopters) have had only the best experiences..

I don't see that being true today...

Again, everyone's experience may be different, depending on where you live...

I am just sharing w/ TMC (mine)

I do say however, that MOST OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE is highly positive on Tesla.

Extremely SKEWED in their favor... esp by their customers...

And yes... Tesla Fan Boys do exist...
Yeah, it does actually count for something.

Yes, my early experience was good. I also moved recently to another part of the country & gained a new service center. On the drive here, moving the Roadster, my windshield was hit with a large rock and needed replacement. The Tigard service center didn't know me, but when I called, they answered the phone, scheduled an appointment, and took care of things. Since then, I've had no problems making appointments, usually handled over email.

That's recent enough (end of 2016) to qualify as 'being true today'.

But I recognize you don't want any positive stories, so carry on.
 
.

How many times do I want to read about someone's "awesome" delivery experience and about how great the car drives...

...Pat you on the back and congratulate you on your wise decision to buy a Tesla..

TMC has plenty of those kind of threads...

I want to weigh in on the other side...

Every "complaint" post (as you call them), addresses a different issue and a different experience..

This thread is a look at Tesla the Car vs Tesla the Car Company and how wide that gap is...


.

"Tesla the car company" is kind of vague. That could be interpreted to encompass a lot of different things. Your complaints about the company seem to center around the quality of the cars and the service. Those are very specific aspects of Tesla the company. It also might be difficult to determine how much of your complaints are due to the specific people you dealt with vs. a systemic problem with Tesla.