Update on my experience
03/15/2020 Bought Tesla
03/22/2020 Broke right side view mirror and quarter glass by hitting it on a parking structure.
03/22/2020 Booked appointment which was changed to mobile assistance set on date 03/27/2020
03/27/2020 A service person called in the morning and said they don’t have the parts and had to postpone it to 04/01/2020
04/01/2020 A service person came replaced quarter glass and side view mirror, but didn’t fix the bend on the door. He left without even mentioning that to me. When I drove, I hear a whistle noise from that quarter glass area. I again booked an appointment.
04/09/2020 A service person came looked at the car and gave the following report:
“Technician inspected customer concern and found the original impact that caused damage to the front passenger door mirror and door quarter glass was heavy enough to cause damage to the door itself, which is what the side mirror and the door quarter glass mount to. Upon further inspection, technician verified the mirror and quarter glass are out of alignment due to the mounting points of the door being out of alignment, which seem to be caused by the previous collision. Technician showed customer the damage--some of it can be seen from outside of the vehicle with a keen eye--and recommended having a body shop assess the damage and recommend further necessary action. Per the inner seal not seating correctly, the technician also confirmed the concern. Technician removed door panel trim for the front passenger door and found the seal was not correctly seated due to a flap being on the wrong side. Technician re-seated the seal correctly and verified the seal is now per design. Informed the customer that the noise he is hearing is due to the moving glass (window glass) for the front passenger door not being flush with the quarter glass--due to the quarter glass being out of alignment. “
As per his advice I setup a body shop
04/11/2020 I took my wife on ride around Bay Area. Since our car was on the shop and unusable for almost a month, we thought we needed a break. We were in Scotts Valley Supercharger. The charger won’t work. The charge door won’t close either. I was getting a flashing blue light. I called road side assistance and they said, Scotts Valley chargers are all down and asked me to try some where else. I see many others charging there at that point. I tried several stalls where some one just charged and left. It still didn’t work. I drove the Los Gatos charger and tried several charger with a road side assistance guy on the phone. I did everything he told me to do. We did reboot the car several times. It still didn’t work. He asked me to drop the car in Sunnyvale service center. It was Saturday, they were closed and he said, they will only look at it only on Monday. They whole weekend was a waste. I barely had any charge when I reached the service station and it died right there. I had to mention my wife is pregnant. What would I have done with my pregnant wife, in the middle of pandemic if the car just died somewhere?
04/13/2020 I called Sunnyvale service center and told them I left my car there. By afternoon they said they have fixed it and it charges. When I asked first, they said there was no problem with it. When I questioned on why it didn’t charge on Saturday, the manager took a look at it and said, there was a calibration with the door and they had to re calibrate it.
04/16/2020 I left the car in San Jose body shop. They said they ll tell me the estimate that day itself. But didn’t hear back.
04/20/2020 I called them and asked for status and they said, the estimator still hasn’t looked at the car and that they will do it that day.
04/21/2020 I again call them and escalated he issue, only then they look at the car. At this point its been 1 month since the accident and the issue is not fixed. They then said they are ordering some parts. They asked for my authorization. I said, I do but I don’t want to go to a service center again for this issue and that Its really time consuming and irritating. They said yes.
04/24/2020 They said the car is ready. I went there and they still didn’t fix the bend. They said, it within Tesla specification. There was a minute dent on the side door, which is really hard to see, but the replaced that. I don’t know how that is within the specification and this visible bend is not. At this point I was fed up and I decided to live with this if at least the whistle sound is fixed.
04/26/2020 The whistle sound started again. I guess all they did was the dismantle the car and put it back again. Due to some fit, it was working for a day and As I drove more it started again. I escalated with the manager there that their service was poor and its over a month and the car still has problems. They offered to change the door.
05/08/2020 It is now almost 1.5 months. They took my car again to replace the door.
05/14/2020 They said the car is ready. It took week to gave it back. The bend seems to have gone and I see some sort of black fudge in the quarter glass area. But at this point I already gave up. I was ok if the whistle sound is gone. The sound seems to have mostly gone. At this point I am ok with this.
05/24/2020 I again took my wife out and now my gps got stuck and it wouldn’t update. The FSD Visualization preview stopped working and software update wouldn’t start downloading either. I called road side assistance and they just asked me to restart the car. It didn’t work. They said I have to go to service center again. The next appointment I got was for 05/29/2020. That another week out. Until then the Auto Pilot won’t work. This is the quality for $100000 car. When I said, this is not acceptable and I want to escalate, they said there is no provision for that and the only thing I can do is to go to a service center. They said the car is manually drivable and that’s it. A feature the musk talk about again and again in tweets. Lauding that the Auto Pilot is work $100000 all the time. Their main sales tactics to keep Tesla apart from competitors is the advertise their FSD. Its not free either Autopilot + FSD costs $3000 + $7000. The main feature that I both Tesla for doesn’t work and according to them it doesn’t matter. A $20000 car will do that. Why should I pay a premium for this car?
I haven’t even enjoyed 10 days with this car without something breaking down. I couldn’t enjoy my family time without something going wrong. What if on a long weekend go to LA with my wife and baby and this thing breaks down? I am supposed to drop the whole vacation and tow the car back? This is not acceptable. I google the problem and people reported this problem in 2015. Its been 5 years and they haven’t done anything about this. This car is highly unreliable that I can’t plan a vacation with my family.
Tesla is not a startup anymore. They have been there for 16 years. Their CEO is getting paid $700 million. They don’t give a *sugar* about their customers. All these cars have internet and they could have easily created bunch of tools to troubleshoot and fix frequently occurring issues for their Customer Service Representative. This would have solved majority of the problems. But all these years the only solution their CSRs have is to restart the car. That’s it. This is willful negligence.
The car has 351 miles range. Though that is not optimal, I agreed to that when I paid for the car. I know that’s what is technologically possible now and I am ok with it. But I seriously couldn’t digest their lack of service. Setting up a Customer Service Center and giving them tools to fix frequent problems remotely round the clock is not much. Other companies do that. As a software engineer, I have done that. A 16 year old company not doing that is un acceptable. The way these service people talk is irritating and ridiculous. They keep repeating the same thing again and again. When I say it’s unacceptable, they wouldn’t give me any way to escalate.
While Musk is enjoying his life in million dollar mansions, I am here wasting my vacation with my family to beta test his cars.
This American business model of getting rich soon by selling a futuristic idea to people and make them all sacrifice their happiness to make one man happy has to change. This is not jus the problem with Tesla. Many other companies does the same thing. This should stop.
