Motley Fool story - Tesla Replacement Part Delays

[AmpedRealtor]

With all due respect, what is your point?

That it's ok for a Tesla to be in a body shop for 12 months because it' a safe car to drive?

Why can't Tesla owners have BOTH?

A safe car.. and accessible parts for repairs... Let's not "normalize" this..

Because some Tesla owners are also Tesla Apologists.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

Jon thanks. Looking forward to real improvements. I was pretty close to selling my car, but will wait and see if there is improvement. Any comments on the very high repair costs of Tesla also?

 

[anonim1979]

Hi everyone –

This week, the service team hit a global customer service satisfaction record. The team has done a fantastic job on what we control currently: our own service centers. We’re now turning our efforts on the centers we don’t control: accident repairs in body shops.

The body shop in the OP article did not begin repairs on the car for three months and then ordered more than 90 parts and took over seven months to repair the car. Neither of those are indicators of competence. To top it off, they blamed their performance on Tesla. We know from complaints that the body shop experience needs to get a lot better – and fast.

What the service team has done so far is a roadmap of how we’re going to fix the autobody experience. Wait times for appointments measured in hours and a handful of days currently. We’re providing same-day service from the Bay Area to Oslo and everywhere in between. In fact, almost 20% of jobs in our flagship center in Palo Alto are handled before the customer can finish their cup of coffee (yes, you read that correctly).

Thankfully, only a handful of our owners experience accidents each year. Since customers schedule and interface with the body shops on their own, we’re largely blind to the service pace.

Most of the customer complaints about body shops mentioned parts, so we focused on this issue. To date, we’ve reduced backlog by over 80%.

Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints. What we found was astounding – cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.

We are applying brute force to this immediately. We will have individuals on our team personally manage each car on behalf of our customers that are in 3rd party body shops.

We’re also going to increase our approved shop count by 300 over the next few weeks as well as eliminating poor performing shops.

If you have an issue with a shop, please PM me directly and our team will advocate and manage your repair.

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Thanks to the entire service team for their commitment to setting the highest standard for service in the industry,

Jon

Wow.
I would love to be a fly on the wall in Elon's office after that article got posted in the media.

 

[Driver Dave]

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

If this was a normal car company the reaction would be something like:

GM owners will get the service they expect from the dealers - period.... so leave us alone.

 

[larmor]

Hi everyone –

This week, the service team hit a global customer service satisfaction record. The team has done a fantastic job on what we control currently: our own service centers. We’re now turning our efforts on the centers we don’t control: accident repairs in body shops.

The body shop in the OP article did not begin repairs on the car for three months and then ordered more than 90 parts and took over seven months to repair the car. Neither of those are indicators of competence. To top it off, they blamed their performance on Tesla. We know from complaints that the body shop experience needs to get a lot better – and fast.

What the service team has done so far is a roadmap of how we’re going to fix the autobody experience. Wait times for appointments measured in hours and a handful of days currently. We’re providing same-day service from the Bay Area to Oslo and everywhere in between. In fact, almost 20% of jobs in our flagship center in Palo Alto are handled before the customer can finish their cup of coffee (yes, you read that correctly).

Thankfully, only a handful of our owners experience accidents each year. Since customers schedule and interface with the body shops on their own, we’re largely blind to the service pace.

Most of the customer complaints about body shops mentioned parts, so we focused on this issue. To date, we’ve reduced backlog by over 80%.

Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints. What we found was astounding – cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.

We are applying brute force to this immediately. We will have individuals on our team personally manage each car on behalf of our customers that are in 3rd party body shops.

We’re also going to increase our approved shop count by 300 over the next few weeks as well as eliminating poor performing shops.

If you have an issue with a shop, please PM me directly and our team will advocate and manage your repair.

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Thanks to the entire service team for their commitment to setting the highest standard for service in the industry,

Jon

Mesh the new CPU with an AI engine-- then technicians, car owners can communicate to the car about delays in parts ordering, processing, waiting around. The car would simply respond with texts/emails to tesla, the body shop, and the owner, and basically just provide updates when it is out of the tesla umbrella at another shop. The car becomes its own advocate. It does not have to do anything fancy, just provide alerts. The alerts alone facilitate the multi party communication problem and can take advantage of all ready available QA and QC processes.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

With all due respect, accidents happen "accidentally".

Your argument is the same as other posters that say, "don't open the window, and you won't have any problems w/ it..."

Not really.

 

[demundus]

Hi everyone –

This week, the service team hit a global customer service satisfaction record. The team has done a fantastic job on what we control currently: our own service centers. We’re now turning our efforts on the centers we don’t control: accident repairs in body shops.

The body shop in the OP article did not begin repairs on the car for three months and then ordered more than 90 parts and took over seven months to repair the car. Neither of those are indicators of competence. To top it off, they blamed their performance on Tesla. We know from complaints that the body shop experience needs to get a lot better – and fast.

What the service team has done so far is a roadmap of how we’re going to fix the autobody experience. Wait times for appointments measured in hours and a handful of days currently. We’re providing same-day service from the Bay Area to Oslo and everywhere in between. In fact, almost 20% of jobs in our flagship center in Palo Alto are handled before the customer can finish their cup of coffee (yes, you read that correctly).

Thankfully, only a handful of our owners experience accidents each year. Since customers schedule and interface with the body shops on their own, we’re largely blind to the service pace.

Most of the customer complaints about body shops mentioned parts, so we focused on this issue. To date, we’ve reduced backlog by over 80%.

Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints. What we found was astounding – cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.

We are applying brute force to this immediately. We will have individuals on our team personally manage each car on behalf of our customers that are in 3rd party body shops.

We’re also going to increase our approved shop count by 300 over the next few weeks as well as eliminating poor performing shops.

If you have an issue with a shop, please PM me directly and our team will advocate and manage your repair.

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Thanks to the entire service team for their commitment to setting the highest standard for service in the industry,

Jon

PM'd, hopefully you can help!

 

[Barry]

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Jon,

Thanks for your post. it's very reassuring, after reading many horror stories about parts (including my own).

Below, I'm posting the link to a thread on the Tesla forum that I started over a year ago. In my case, I spoke directly with someone in the Tesla parts department and was told that the hold-up was rivets(!), on back-order for almost 2 months from Japan. We can't blame the body shop for that one, though it is an interesting coincidence that my car was repaired by the same body shop as the OP's.

Some Tesla management need to be fired and replaced | Tesla

 

[seclinton]

Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints. What we found was astounding – cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.

Jon

- That's great, and I agree, never had an issue with Tesla Service; always top notch.

That being said, I can call BS on you Jon; at least in my case; and I know I am not alone.
- I can show you documented accident teardown reports w/dates; confirmed estimates (within 4 days)
- I can show you secondary estimate also confirmed w/insurance; we can both verify when part orders were placed, let's be transparent. (w/in 3 weeks)
- I can show you time stamped tear down photos of my car (I went an took photos)
- I can show you a list some 2 months later with no less than 12 parts still pending from Tesla. (I have it hanging at my desk)
- I can now give you the name and number of the one person I was able to reach who personally pulled the parts to get to my repair center (3rd party); after I got a copy of the missing parts list from my repair center, that's when Tesla jumped on it.
- I can show you time stamped photos from Feb 24 showing body work finally completed as the parts were finally available
- I can tell you the exact part it took Tesla 2+ months to provide (Rear bumper rail)
- I can show you my RFS parts list, the order date, and that was in stock and shipped immediately.

11/14/16-->3/10/17 (4 days shy of 4 months from accident to repair) Go take a look, my car is at the factory as I type this getting sensors checked, alignment, and software upgrade. Leave a note inside if you checked it. (It's the black P85 with RFS, tinted windows, CF wrapped handles, and an EVAnnex CCi)

Stop blaming the 3rd party shops for short supply of OEM replacement parts.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

Stop blaming the 3rd party shops for short supply of OEM replacement parts.

The way I see it, no matter who drops the ball, it is Tesla owners who suffer, and by extension eventually Tesla. And that makes it a Tesla problem.

And yes, far too much evidence, that this is a Tesla issue more than a body shop issue.

If it was a body shop issue, you'd see isolated issues geographically speaking. The situation now however seems to be that anywhere in the world if you have an accident, you are in for months of repairs, absurd repair costs, and frequently the car is written off.

Good and encouraging to see Jon reply here.
But seriously man, quit pointing fingers at body shops and own the damn problem.

It is your problem either way!

 

[RobStark]

Any comments on the very high repair costs of Tesla also?

It is a low volume aluminum car.

It is not a Camry.

Look at repair cost for Audi A8 and Jaguar XJ.

 

[Ace007]

I think it is certainly an issue on both sides. I think our car sat at the body shop for 3-4 weeks before they even took a look at it and started ordering parts. I think it took at least a month (from what the shop told me) for parts to start coming in. I have had good luck reaching our to Tesla corporate support number at 877-798-3752 and ask them to look in to your parts. Within a week the shop now has everything except for the front bumper which is in transit. Unfortunately the shop (same one as original author) is saying there are several cars ahead of us and he does not yet have a start date for them working on the car.

Tesla did say they in their email that they are working on expanding the number of qualified shops in their network. As we all know that is certainly their challenge growing the support network to not only support current owners but future ones as well. I'm trying to keep the faith that they will fix this issue and continue to grow.

 

[mikevbf]

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Jon thanks for such a pragmatic positive response of what you have done and will do about this. Teslas are truly great vehicles and I want to full heartily be able to recommend them to everyone. With the the hope of body shop/parts logistics issues solved in the near future, I look forward to singing Tesla's praises with no caveats once again.

 

[nikolai]

Wow.
I would love to be a fly on the wall in Elon's office after that article got posted in the media.

I was thinking before it got posted actually. I can imagine Elon pointing out the blog in question and telling Jon "Fix this *sugar* NOW."

 

[idealsol]

We’re also going to increase our approved shop count by 300 over the next few weeks as well as eliminating poor performing shops.
Jon

Just wondering how you can quickly add 300 shops. Most of what I've read always seems to focus on how highly specialized these shops are with a big investment in equipment, training, etc

Are these proposed 300 shops going to be able to handle all things Tesla immediatley?

 

[nnick01]

Hi everyone –

This week, the service team hit a global customer service satisfaction record. The team has done a fantastic job on what we control currently: our own service centers. We’re now turning our efforts on the centers we don’t control: accident repairs in body shops.

The body shop in the OP article did not begin repairs on the car for three months and then ordered more than 90 parts and took over seven months to repair the car. Neither of those are indicators of competence. To top it off, they blamed their performance on Tesla. We know from complaints that the body shop experience needs to get a lot better – and fast.

What the service team has done so far is a roadmap of how we’re going to fix the autobody experience. Wait times for appointments measured in hours and a handful of days currently. We’re providing same-day service from the Bay Area to Oslo and everywhere in between. In fact, almost 20% of jobs in our flagship center in Palo Alto are handled before the customer can finish their cup of coffee (yes, you read that correctly).

Thankfully, only a handful of our owners experience accidents each year. Since customers schedule and interface with the body shops on their own, we’re largely blind to the service pace.

Most of the customer complaints about body shops mentioned parts, so we focused on this issue. To date, we’ve reduced backlog by over 80%.

Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints. What we found was astounding – cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.

We are applying brute force to this immediately. We will have individuals on our team personally manage each car on behalf of our customers that are in 3rd party body shops.

We’re also going to increase our approved shop count by 300 over the next few weeks as well as eliminating poor performing shops.

If you have an issue with a shop, please PM me directly and our team will advocate and manage your repair.

Tesla owners will get the service they expect from us – period.

Thanks to the entire service team for their commitment to setting the highest standard for service in the industry,

Jon

This is a very professional response. At this point the past is the past, but today and the future is what matters most. Hopefully the clients of Tesla that have suffered from this will see very quick movement in having their vehicles repaired.

JonMc, on another note. It is well known that LION batteries can take on significant wear and even damage if left under-charged. Considering all these vehicles waiting months and months at the repair shops, and probably not left on a charger, has the possibility of degradation of the battery been considered in all these delays? I know this is probably not something Tesla wants to hear, but from my chair it seems like looking into this is due diligence, and perhaps would go a long way in healing the relationship between Tesla and the clients who have been waiting months to get their vehicles back. Just something to consider.

 

[hockeythug]

So 300 new body shops that will be waiting on parts from Tesla.

 

[anonim1979]

@nnick01
Don't worry about a main battery - it had bottom charge and can lie down for months unattended no problem.
It is 12V lead acid battery that will be dead in no time in a shop that doesn't disconnect it.

 

[trayloader]

sorry, but the answers we got today are no answers.

The word "schmuck" comes to mind.
Appeasement policy before the shhhh hits the stock market

• only reacting under pressure
• always blaming others
• "brute force"- ridiculous. Replace with "Pro Active", strategy and foresight. heck even the TESLA OWN SECs don´t receive parts. ha!

guess the expansion strategy is beginning to backfire.

Reading forums and deriving a PR "patch" out of this is cheap.

We deserve better. Now we know why the fish stinks.
That didn´t happen neither under Blankenship nor Jerome.

 

[RayW]

Here's my real-life example:
Need a new bumper cover (just the outer plastic, everything OK underneath): Tesla-approved shop tells me $2,300 and 1-month to get parts
Had bumper cover replaced on my BMW last year (same thing, outer plastic only): BMW-approved shop charged $980 and got part in one day.

There is nothing specialized about replacing and painting plastic bumper covers, Tesla has been selling cars in volume for over 5-years, and they sell more Model S's than many other models by other manufactures... time to stop using the "small boutique brand" excuse.