Part of my motivation for posting was to see if anyone else felt the same. If maybe someone would have something to say like the ownership experience isn't as much of a mess as the ordering and delivery process would suggest. Or maybe someone could provide some insight about not really fully appreciating the car from a short ride along or test drive, but rather the car grew on them over time vs. most cars that are most appealing the second you buy them.
It is really a hard choice when other cars are cheaper, come with rebates, have better customer service and slowly each Tesla advantage is being ticked away. For now, Tesla still has exclusive use of the SC network and is the first for a lot of the EV tech so I just feel painted into a corner if I want an EV that has the best in some ways while other things are way below even the most budget brands.
I have 2 of these cars a 2018 Model 3 Performance and a 2022 model Y performance. I liked the model 3 enough to sell my wifes 2019 BMW X3 M40 and get the model Y performance. I have not had a bunch of issues with tesla in person, and the car buying experience is the easiest one out there. T
There is no "let me talk to my manager" no finance person trying to sell you an extended warranty on the brand new car you just got to "protect your investment", and the order form when you buy the car is like 2-3 pages, not 12+ pages of dot matrix print with hard to decipher charges that always seem to have "a mistake" in them, but that "mistake" is NEVER EVER in your favor.
Tesla service people in person are generally helpful, as long as people treat them like human beings, and dont start in with "Teslafi says my battery is in the 50th percentile, but you wont do anything!!!!! " or anything like that. In general, most (but not all) complaints here are about cosmetic things, or lack of hand holding when it comes to orders. They do break, I can point to some threads with new cars that are like that, it its somewhat rare.
There is not a huge infrastructure of repair options, so that can take a while if something happens. Reports here of many things are somewhat overblown, even though they do happen.
With that said, for some people, the lack of hand holding during the order process, or ordering a car like its a back ordered video card on amazon or something bothers them. For some others, they expect from their previous experiences with brands like BMW, Lexus, etc for the "dealer" to fall over backwards to help them, because "they bought a car from them" and that isnt happening with Tesla.
Tesla employees will help you, but in general it wont be because they treat you special because you bought a car. It will be because you treated them with respect or as humans, and not customer service lemmings (or they wont treat you like that because you didnt treat them like that).
its a different experience, but I am not going back to driving ICE vehicles, and my interactions with tesla (across 2 vehicles, Tesla solar, and later tesla powerwalls) has been fine, other than the fact that it sometimes takes a while and some prodding to resolve things.
If none of the above interests you then its probably better you cancel your order. No one should spend this much money when they are already hesitant, as every single thing will be magnified in an "I KNEW IT!!!!" manner. So, its likely better you cancel your order, or understand that they are going to operate differently, and the product is a decent one.
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