I've not got the car yet, but it's worth mentioning a few things about the pre-sales experience:
- I've had VW dealers and their salespeople falling over themselves to sell me a car. Now, this may not be necessarily good news, but it has meant that I've been able to talk to "real people" and they call me back too! Woo - there's a novelty.
- There's competition between the dealers which you can use to negotiate the price down. It's a double-edged sword of course since I find the whole merry dance around car deals tiring - but the net result is that I've managed to get almost £9k of discount (incl the PICG) off the car's list price. That puts it over £10k cheaper than a reasonably-comparable SR+ (i.e. with alloys and metallic paint). That's a big difference. So two cars that are close on price at list are quite different when it comes to what you actually pay.
- I am completely in the loop on where the car is, when it'll be delivered, what's happening with the finance etc. If I send a query to the sales guy, I get a reply - often within minutes. I remember having to endlessly call Tesla (with waits of 45 mins quite common), just to find out how the hell I pay the invoice! The dealerships and VW UK have created processes and systems, and have the personnel, to make the whole ordering and delivery experience work in a smooth way. Tesla really are miles behind in this regard.
Now all this is really no surprise - I'm sure we've all dealt with dealers before. But I for one have become used to the "minimalist" Tesla customer service experience so this comes as a bit of a refreshing change. In normal times of course I would also have been able to visit the showroom, take a test drive, have a coffee etc.
Looking at the picture more widely though, I wonder if the Tesla sales model will succeed or not in the longer term. The cost of all that dealer attention will have to be paid for somewhere, somehow. OTOH, dealing with Tesla is sometimes just too painful.
Now let's see if the car lives up to the pre-sales !
