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Idle fee because Tesla Service left the car plugged in

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RDoc

2021 Prerefresh Model S
Aug 24, 2012
2,805
1,767
Boston North Shore
I've never gotten an idle fee, but I did today. Dedham Tesla Service Center plugged my car in, without asking or telling me, and left it plugged in too long.

Since it was my first idle fee, Tesla waived the payment, but are threatening to stop my ability to Supercharge if I don't give them a credit card and that's my one freebie. I complained to Dedham and was told that if I got another idle fee, I could contact them and they would look into getting it waived. They have no way to remove it from my account record.

So the solution is that if a couple of years from now I get an idle fee, I should contact Dedham and they might ask Tesla to waive the fee. Right. :rolleyes:

We really like our car, but the Tesla company itself is moving down towards the Registry of Motor vehicles in my regard and respect.
 
Having a payment method on file became mandatory when idle fees were introduced. I can't blame Tesla for requiring a CC on file as long as they're allowing people to run up debts. It is odd that the service center superchargers charge idle fees though. That seems like quite a glaring oversight in the programming department.
 
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Reactions: jaguar36
I've never gotten an idle fee, but I did today. Dedham Tesla Service Center plugged my car in, without asking or telling me, and left it plugged in too long.

Since it was my first idle fee, Tesla waived the payment, but are threatening to stop my ability to Supercharge if I don't give them a credit card and that's my one freebie. I complained to Dedham and was told that if I got another idle fee, I could contact them and they would look into getting it waived. They have no way to remove it from my account record.

So the solution is that if a couple of years from now I get an idle fee, I should contact Dedham and they might ask Tesla to waive the fee. Right. :rolleyes:

We really like our car, but the Tesla company itself is moving down towards the Registry of Motor vehicles in my regard and respect.
Maybe call Tesla back and tell them you don't want this time to be a freebee, you want to pay the idles fee and save the freebee for another time. You can tell them they can bill it direct to the Dedham service center, or you pay and bill the Dedham service center yourself, with an appropriate billing fee for your hassles.
 
I've never gotten an idle fee, but I did today. Dedham Tesla Service Center plugged my car in, without asking or telling me, and left it plugged in too long.

Since it was my first idle fee, Tesla waived the payment, but are threatening to stop my ability to Supercharge if I don't give them a credit card and that's my one freebie. I complained to Dedham and was told that if I got another idle fee, I could contact them and they would look into getting it waived. They have no way to remove it from my account record.

So the solution is that if a couple of years from now I get an idle fee, I should contact Dedham and they might ask Tesla to waive the fee. Right. :rolleyes:

We really like our car, but the Tesla company itself is moving down towards the Registry of Motor vehicles in my regard and respect.

What would make you happy? Propose that and then see what they do.
 
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Reactions: whitex
What would make me happy would be to have the idle fee incident removed from my account. I did ask for that and was told they could put a request into the help desk but that they doubted it would make any difference.
Give them options maybe?
  1. Remove the idle fee from the account
  2. Add $100 supercharging credit to the account to cover future idle fee (since you have free supercharging, it will all go towards idle fees)
  3. 2 day P100D loaner at a location of your choosing
  4. Lunch with Elon ;)
 
So what happens when you don't have free supercharging? Service centers can just plug your car into their charging station and run up a bill at the pump without your authorization?

I don't get fanatical about too much but when someone spends my money for me without telling me? Yeah that'll do it.
 
Not a bunch of crap. Just something that Tesla needs to work out.

Tough crowd.
It is a bunch of crap. It’s typical Tesla service which is non-existent. This is just one of those things you fix for a customer. Everybody knows they will not fix this because they will never call you back. It’s how they roll. When people ask me about my car, I tell them that the car is an 11 but the company is a 1.
 
Yup, it happened to me at Dedham too. It was earlier this year. I ignored it and it eventually got waived. No CC on my account either. There's no way I'm paying for their misuse of superchargers.

It really bothers me because the chargers were obviously busy, and I didn't need the charge. Don't they have a bunch of wall connectors or something?
 
OP implied someone's first idle fee would be waived. The conspiracy theory therefore is, "They're putting idle fees on customer's cars so no-one actually gets their own freebie!"

So is this happening all over, or mainly in Dedham?

During the big push at the end of the last quarter, they were even parking delivery cars at the SC stalls; not even plugging them in. Like @Hota said, come on Tesla!
 
OP implied someone's first idle fee would be waived. The conspiracy theory therefore is, "They're putting idle fees on customer's cars so no-one actually gets their own freebie!"

So is this happening all over, or mainly in Dedham?

During the big push at the end of the last quarter, they were even parking delivery cars at the SC stalls; not even plugging them in. Like @Hota said, come on Tesla!


A wonderful quote I read years ago said, "Don't assume a conspiracy when mere incompetence will suffice."
 
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