I have a slightly different take.
"It is the Tesla way" is an accurate statement.
It is also accurate that the disgust of the order/sales experience will fade when you get the car.
The question for me is (1) is it ok for Tesla to behave like this and (2) if it is not, what can or should be done about it.
The Service Center Sales Manager used an interesting term yesterday when I was speaking with her about who in upper management would be best to target with a quick note regarding my issues. She said that was hard as they are not "customer facing". This tells me that Tesla has learned from nine years of unacceptable business practices. What they have learned is that they need to build better walls and improved defenses to keep customers from reaching decision makers and requiring them to address issues. They have now effectively limited the customer facing elements of the company to prevent customers from having issues addressed by decision makers.
The above removes the issue of intent for me. Tesla management knows what they are doing and are intelligently going about doing it. Right and wrong is not part of the calculus. The most generous view for me is that the ends justify the means when achieving "the mission" (a term you will hear frequently when interfacing with the "customer facing" side of sales).
I agree with much of this.
I was fairly disgusted with the handling of BatteryGate and ChargerGate and, at one point swore Tesla would never get another penny from me. So, how did I get from there to sending them another $150K?
The TL;DR answer is intent matters a great deal to me too.
For me, the answer to #1 is "not at all" and the answer to #2 is nothing will change until Tesla sees market repercussions.
That being, said, leading an official owner's club, I occasionally interact with leadership and get a peek behind the curtain, so let me share some impressions. The answer to #1 is more complicated. From my experiences, Tesla folks are not calloused or indifferent to a poor customer experience. I don't think I have ever run into an employee who was not trying to do the right thing. As I have previously mentioned, I have a friend that works on the team that collects and correlates survey data and the like, so I know all the complaints, QA issues and the like get propagated upwards--leadership is not in an echo chamber or otherwise unaware. However, I think Tesla's course of action is sometimes not what one would expect or understand. For example, inability to talk to easily someone in Service is a constant source of unhappiness. Tesla's approach to improving the service experience is not going to be to re-hire a bunch of people to answer phones, but rather to lean-in on the functionality of the app to improve the service experience. The broader theme I see is to invest headcount in people that will solve the problem vs investing in people that will tell you about the problem. Even a simple thing like providing an update on the 19" wheels or the delivery hold probably involves 4 or 5 people (problem owner, comms manager, writer, legal, plus execs to review and sign-off). Is it better to invest headcount in increasing capacity on those roles or invest in more capacity in supply chain or engineering to actually solve the problem and get you you car sooner? Personally, I think there is a middle ground between these two approaches,as the current approach lacks empathy for the customer. I think the company will get better because they get the status quo is lacking, but the leadership team needs to evolve a bit more for that to happen.
I kinda have to argue that, net-net, the approach is paying off in that its been 8 years since the Model S was introduced and other manufactures are still playing catch-up. I am pretty sure everyone here has spent some time looking at Porches, Audis, MBs, Lucids, Rivian's, etc in the last few months, yet here we are, because, while other cars might be better in some single area, I don't think there is a more complete EV out there. The "bad" news is that there is little incentive in that for Tesla to change their approach.
. What a joke.
:
