Andyw2100
Well-Known Member
Yes, I am really suggesting that a Tesla employee would not be told to deliberately lie or mislead.
That wasn't exactly the question I posed, but I guess it's close enough to it.
But I don't believe that any employee was instructed to continue to mislead people. For what possible reason would they do that? What did they gain from that other than some very angry customers?
I'm still not suggesting that anyone was instructed to mislead anyone in this situation. But I'm going to continue the discussion with examples, to make the point I've been trying to make all along, which is that it's not incredibly unreasonable to expect that this could happen.
We know the other finishes were removed from the online store at least two weeks ago. I think it is reasonable to believe that the person or people responsible for answering the email inquires about items available in the store would have noticed this at some point, even if they weren't involved directly in their removal. At that point they might have asked someone, "What's up with that?", or, they might have decided they didn't want to know, because they didn't want to get a straight answer, and then be in a position where they were having to lie to customers. If they did ask, and were not given a straight answer, does that make it any better? It would still be pretty obvious to the person in that position what was going on when the items were removed from the store at least two weeks ago.
Completely leaving aside this particular situation, and getting back to your question:
But I don't believe that any employee was instructed to continue to mislead people. For what possible reason would they do that?
There are reasons this could be necessary. When the autopilot cars were coming out, no one would have ordered a non-autopilot car just before autopilot was to be added if they had known autopilot was about to be given to them at no additional cost if they waited just a little longer. Tesla had to keep that as quiet as possible, to put as few employees into awkward positions as possible, and I expect that they did that. But I'm sure there were some employees who did know the scoop, and I'm sure those people couldn't say anything about it, because if they did it would have had major negative ramifications for the company. So I expect it was understood, even if it was never explicitly stated or requested, that if it came down to it, those people would, if needed, lie to protect Tesla's interests.
I would expect similar things happened with the more recent release of the 70D. People had to know about it, yet if word had gotten out S60 sales would have been negatively impacted. And no, I'm not saying that there was a memo to the sales force a month before the 70D was announced that said it was coming, and that also said, "but keep pushing the S60s." All I'm saying is that as far as "what possible reason would they have to do that?", the answer is that when a Tesla empployee does wind up with knowledge of a future product that is not yet public knowledge, and the public knowledge could hurt Tesla, that employee has a pretty reasonable and perhaps even justifiable reason to not be forthright.
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