We had our Service Center appointment yesterday. I was the first customer (light holiday traffic) and was promptly greeted by an employee who checked me in on a clipboard. Then, I was further "checked in" by the technician who would be doing the repairs.
The technician and I discussed the two rattles and the passenger side door gap. He was familiar with the dash rattle, and even though the rattle was not presently occurring, he said he would fix it anyway. I did show him a video of the rattle.
Our C Pillar Cover rattle was an issue with which he was not familiar, and since I did my own "fix" by placing several thin foam pieces between the cover and the headliner which inhibit movement of the cover and significantly reduced and/or eliminated the rattle, he said he would not repair this rattle. So, the underlying cause of this rattle remains, but my jerry-rigged solution works well enough.
Initially, he said the door gap was a due bill situation, and at just over 3,000 miles and four months past delivery, we were outside the time window for this repair, but he quickly segued to saying he would fix it.
The technician then introduced me to the service advisor to whom I also provided the video. The service advisor told me she would text me when the car was ready. I received a $100 Uber voucher for the day. At first, the voucher showed as "invalid" in the Uber App, and I had to go back to the service advisor to create a new voucher. Since we live relatively close to the service center (within 10 miles), I used Uber Black.
About four hours later, I received a Tesla iPhone notification that service was complete. When I tried to pull up the notification for more details, I couldn't locate it. I did not receive a text from the service advisor. With no way to contact the advisor, I was stumped for about 20 minutes because my iPhone Tesla app showed the car was still being serviced.
After about 20 minutes, my iPhone Tesla app returned to normal, and it showed a new location of the car. I had heard her tell a customer ahead of me that his car would be at an off site parking lot when it was ready to be picked up. She did not give this off-site delivery info to me, but since I overheard her conversation with the other gentleman, I decided to take Uber to the location in the App.
The address was an old, empty Ikea store. In the front parking lot were two dozen or so Tesla cars and an unmanned white Tesla podium. I surmised this must be the place, and I thanked the Uber driver. There was no Tesla employee to be seen. There were no people except for me and a young security guard who was sitting 50 yards away in the shade of the building. I asked if anyone from Tesla was there. No, he said.
I spotted our car.
OK. I guessed I was just supposed to get in our car and go home. Since I had my iPhone, the door opened when I pulled the door handle. The key card was in the cupholder. I wondered if the car had been unlocked the whole time with the key card in the cupholder. The car cannot be locked as long as the key card is inside, right? That was odd. Maybe the nineteen year old kid was supposed to thwart a theft?
There was a pre-printed card hanging from the rear view mirror thanking us for using Tesla service.
The dash had been fixed. I could tell because tapping on it near the location of the rattle now produced a deadened sound rather than a plasticky rattle. We won't know for a while if this rattle is definitely fixed, but so far it seems as though it is.
The door gap was fixed.
What's the take-away?
The problems seem to have been repaired.
The delivery experience...from notification of completion to pick-up was extremely odd. It is wildly out of line with common service experience of other brands where a customer is greeted, provided with an invoice of work performed, and shown to their car...and perhaps someone explains what was done during the service. If I was asked by Tesla for comments, I would suggest Tesla hire an experienced automobile customer service executive to improve this area of the business.
