Well folks, my lurking here is coming to an end. I thought I’d wrap up with a brief history of my wait these past three months to give a head’s up to future buyers. I ordered our new 2021 Model 3 MSM/White LR AWD back on January 2 here in northern CA. After ordering I immediately applied for a Tesla loan, which was approved in three days and was good for 60 days. I didn’t know that at the time, I just wanted all my ducks in a row.
My Tesla page initially gave me a delivery window of March 16-27. Over the next month nothing much happened but I did read about and observe that Tesla apparently delivered east to west, building and delivering in batches, starting in Europe. So, I kept a watch out for my configuration.
In early February my delivery window jumped to February 12-16 briefly, then switched back to late March, then briefly late February again, and then cycled to a 1-12 week from order date window. The dates changed repeatedly giving me hope of an earlier delivery, but eventually settled back on the end of March, apparently the standard for the west coast. This appears to be a standard Tesla quarterly cycle which will start again soon.
As the end of February approached I asked my loan officer to refresh my loan with the bank Tesla was using, and he did. It switched to a simple extension until our delivery, but did require a re-pulling of our credit. Not an issue for us, but may be for others, so don’t rush getting loan approved if delivery isn’t expected within 60 days.
We received our VIN last night, Tesla text giving us our delivery window over the next five days, and email telling us to proceed with down payment processing and giving them confirmation of auto insurance policy for new vehicle. They also said they’d be delivering directly to our house, which we definitely didn’t want.
So, I spent this morning trying to contact our Sales Associate by text who replied that she’s out sick and to email another person or the Service Center. Thing is, Tesla’s call tree doesn’t actually connect to a live person, only to online FAQs and voicemail boxes, so no way to talk to anyone over the phone, and local delivery Operations Manager has full inbox that takes a week to respond. So, I had to drive to the Service Center, fortunately only 30 minutes away.
She was very nice, albeit very busy, and changed our delivery window to next Monday with something called an Express Delivery. They wash the car, park it in their lot, leave a packet of documents for you to sign in the car with the key cards, lock the car, and text you with instructions to use your smart phone to log into the Tesla app when you arrive to accept delivery, which will give you access to the interior of the car to sign the documents, to then leave in a drop box. Then, you drive away.
So, our saga ends. We’ve had many exciting moments over the past three months, watched many videos, read and replied to many posts, and now look forward to the next phase. I hope our car won’t be one of the horror stories I’ve read in these forums, but of course those are the stories that get posted. We have many local friends with Teslas, and they all love them. Fingers crossed for Monday!
P.S. - My last post addressed a pricing discrepancy on my Manage page which turned out to be nothing. They definitely did NOT jack up my price by $1,000 for the LR AWD option. Turns out the price change for this configuration which dropped last month and was appropriately applied to my final sale price wasn’t reflected in another document on the site which made me fear they were raising it back up. That document quietly dropped off my Manage page today.