I've loved Tesla for 7 years. But after years of abuse, I'm out

[tpedwards]

Yep! And many of them are only interested in short term gains it seems.
Bad customer service and penny pinching is great for now, but once teslas reputation goes down the drain their stock price will follow.

As soon as Elon Musk got rattled by shorts, Tesla turned attention to the short term stock price. Who knows where we’d be if Tesla was focused on being a good car company with excellent service. In service, I’ve only met good people. Policy, however, was poorly thought out and unevenly applied. That is due to middle management. Designing good customer service is a soft skill. Soft skills are not Elon’s strength. This is where a COO is important. Take that responsibility away from Elon and turn it over to a Tesla version of Gwynn Shotwell.

 

[Chaserr]

Back when Tesla had good service, they had a position of "director of service" or something, and he participated on this forum. When he was headhunted by another company Elon took over his service duties, and service became what it is. Bad service is an upper management problem.

 

[Cheburashka]

Tesla is a growth company. They dont care about churn since they are not a service company. The key to Tesla growth is new customer acquisition and everything in the organization is targeted at that.

 

[AMPd]

As soon as Elon Musk got rattled by shorts, Tesla turned attention to the short term stock price. Who knows where we’d be if Tesla was focused on being a good car company with excellent service. In service, I’ve only met good people. Policy, however, was poorly thought out and unevenly applied. That is due to middle management. Designing good customer service is a soft skill. Soft skills are not Elon’s strength. This is where a COO is important. Take that responsibility away from Elon and turn it over to a Tesla version of Gwynn Shotwell.

If I recall correctly things have been going downhill fast after Jon McNeil left the company and Elon took over the service portion of the company.

 

[whttiger25]

When I bought my first Model S, I got an umbrella and a coffee mug, and a personalized delivery experience that made me feel special. When I bought my second Model S, I got a coffee mug, and htey had the car waiting outside and they threw me the keys. When I bought my third model S, I got no treats, was ushered into a warehouse where a dozen deliveries were happening, and it felt like I was picking up an iphone at the apple store.

 

[whitex]

When I bought my first Model S, I got an umbrella and a coffee mug. When I bought my second Model S, I got a coffee mug. When I bought my third model S, I got nothing.

My order of "prizes" was, polo-shirt, hat, pen, mug+pen+umbrella. HOWEVER, I really could not care less about that - I assumed it was just free advertising for the company if I wear/use their branded products. What I do care about is service quality going down hill due to corporate decisions. But, as @Cheburashka said above, Tesla primary focus is profit from new customers, not repeat customers, so service is seen as just lost profit.

 

[AMPd]

My order of "prizes" was, polo-shirt, hat, pen, mug+pen+umbrella. HOWEVER, I really could not care less about that - I assumed it was just free advertising for the company if I wear/use their branded products. What I do care about is service quality going down hill due to corporate decisions. But, as @Cheburashka said above, Tesla primary focus is profit from new customers, not repeat customers, so service is seen as just lost profit.

Same exact stuff was given to me in a nice paper bag
This was in late 2013.

 

[Battpower]

I wonder if somewhere there is a corporate focus on service? If so, it is hard to believe based on the range of experiences, but it is also difficult to explain how pockets of (presumably) more expensive support excellence manages to survive without corporate support.

My recent experiences at Leeds (UK) have been great. A few days before appointment I got personal reminder emails AND PHONE CALL / SMS messages from my main service contact. The app has invoice history with detailed invoices. The detail in the invoices about every task carried out is great. Two or three examples of going above and beyond where minor issues I had not bothered mentioning were spotted and fixed without charge. Post-visit questionnaire was simple and direct and seemed genuinely intended to determine satisfaction level and invite further feedback.

I assume this is not just Leeds trying to over-achieve!

 

[whitex]

I wonder if somewhere there is a corporate focus on service? If so, it is hard to believe based on the range of experiences, but it is also difficult to explain how pockets of (presumably) more expensive support excellence manages to survive without corporate support.

My recent experiences at Leeds (UK) have been great. A few days before appointment I got personal reminder emails AND PHONE CALL / SMS messages from my main service contact. The app has invoice history with detailed invoices. The detail in the invoices about every task carried out is great. Two or three examples of going above and beyond where minor issues I had not bothered mentioning were spotted and fixed without charge. Post-visit questionnaire was simple and direct and seemed genuinely intended to determine satisfaction level and invite further feedback.

I assume this is not just Leeds trying to over-achieve!

Elon officially took over Scott McNeily's job - VP of Service. So it gets his attention for 5 minutes per quarter, maybe. However, Elon's focus on profit gets his attention 24/7. The result is service bound by profit margins, which means those same people who went above and beyond in the past fixing issues like Tesla putting unproven parts into production, today have their hands tied behind their backs with very little they can do for customers. Welcome to Elon's vision of what service should be like - left alone to self-manage while given ever more corporate restrictions (like no loaners, telling people their yellow screens are normal wear and tear, reducing warranty coverages wherever they can, etc). Obviously it's working, just look at Tesla stock.

 

[Battpower]

(like no loaners, telling people their yellow screens are normal wear and tear,

As I am singing praises of Leeds UK, I have also had reasonable loaner on each of my visits - although a few have had suspect eMMC chips and yellow boarders!

So do these cases of 'good service' stem from local staff going out on a limb, available funding / selective corporate financial support, or some other factor?

 

[croman]

I am drinking coffee in my Tesla mug and I stashed the umbrella in my trunk side compartment.

I've got plenty of mugs and umbrellas but Tesla stuff starts conversations. Tesla used to be smart about this stuff. It costs little but delivers on good will and customer loyalty. Oh well. Stock is high and Elon has 700M comp.

 

[ACA Man]

If I recall correctly things have been going downhill fast after Jon McNeil left the company and Elon took over the service portion of the company.

Exactly.

 

[Dr.K]

Too much to say on this subject
1- when there is a product that competes Tesla will either lose out or up its game.
2- for a company whose chief asset is based on the feedback data that it harvests each day they have no good feedback channel for business practice data, only vehicle ( product) performance. So we are talking to ourselves, and store employees are not talking to anyone.

Further they have little sense of previous business case study:

A- Auto. Toyota and Nissan decided to enter the high end market at the same time. Nissan engineered and designed a distinguished quality product, but sold it through their mass market outlet. Toyota created new boxes, new higher standards for service and pampering, and produced a MB imitation with a banal design and performance. Which product is considered ‘luxury’ today? Toyota’s Lexus.

B- video. Which is a better product. Sony Betamax or VHS?
Etc.

Accessible service is the key to long term success. Yes, innovation kills old tech periodically, it in between, its all about service and accessibility.

I just replaced ny 2015 P85D with a 2020 LR+, that is a complicated decision. It actually happened because their IT set up an ordering ambiguity: to get a ‘Y’ June delivery I needed to complete the order on line. But to do that I was instructed I must put in an insurance card with the new car’s VIN. BUT they had not given me the VIN! Three different sales people had email copies of my old car insurance (wrong VIN). And no documentation was ever provided that they had a work around and in nearly four weeks of that never a correction of the website everyone must use. No fife CTI ever feedback.

So one big question loomed and looms “ Am I stupid to trust that the vehicle is so good that I don’t need a human contact? “

It is not that service people are not pleasant, but they follow orders and cannot question them. And the sales front people are not adequately trained in the first place, I cannot count the times that they have been dead wrong in what they have said about the car or the ordering process.It’s not that all are Illinformed, its that their system moving people in and out and around gives no supervisor a chance to instruct. And no telephone that works, let alone email. Just text messages that can go poof. And when their computer web interface is wrong - there is no channel to get IT to fix it because there is no feedback loop.

So yes I have gambled. They see they sold an Inventory S instead of a Y.. what they don’t know, the Y was for my wife, the S was waiting (few months?) to be replaced by a Plaid. If they are looking at revenue the next 12 months: they just lost a lot.

 

[hill]

Tesla is a growth company. They dont care about churn since they are not a service company. The key to Tesla growth is new customer acquisition and everything in the organization is targeted at that.

New customers turn into disgruntled customers - once the SC begins giving you the runaround. Consider GM. It practically got run out of town, once the Japanese made GM quality look like . . . . dare i say it? . . . . look like Tesla quality.
.

 

[Proflig8tor]

Tesla cut the warranty on replacement MCU to 2 years or 25,000 WECF. That's just admitting to failure of the unit's design and passing it along to the end user rather than fixing it.

I'd love a Model S or X, but no, not with this expensive headache looming. Frankly, replacing the eMMC shouldn't be that big a deal that this costs what it does.

 

[Battpower]

Tesla cut the warranty on replacement MCU to 2 years or 25,000 WECF. That's just admitting to failure of the unit's design and passing it along to the end user rather than fixing it.

I'd love a Model S or X, but no, not with this expensive headache looming. Frankly, replacing the eMMC shouldn't be that big a deal that this costs what it does.

The whole eMMC thing does seem to have become something of a focal point / statement for design, ethics and support ethos. And the change in wty just crystalizes further.

 

[Matias]

Yep! And many of them are only interested in short term gains it seems.
Bad customer service and penny pinching is great for now, but once teslas reputation goes down the drain their stock price will follow.

I’m also a stock owner, but I, like you, believe, that in the long run treating customers right is the only viable way to do business successfully.

 

[SO16]

Tesla cut the warranty on replacement MCU to 2 years or 25,000 WECF. That's just admitting to failure of the unit's design and passing it along to the end user rather than fixing it.

I'd love a Model S or X, but no, not with this expensive headache looming. Frankly, replacing the eMMC shouldn't be that big a deal that this costs what it does.

Does anyone know when the MCU was given its own warranty terms in the first place rather than just part of the standard 1 year/12k miles part replacement warranty?

 

[Mike Robinson]

Same exact stuff was given to me in a nice paper bag
This was in late 2013.

I got exactly nothing when I picked up my 2018 MS 100D, but I do LOVE my car!!!!!

 

[AMPd]

I got exactly nothing when I picked up my 2018 MS 100D, but I do LOVE my car!!!!!