My CPO experience is already awful.

[iqless]

... and I don't even have the car yet. Could get a lot worse! Here is everything that was wrong.

1. I had to get in contact with a CPO advisor to find me cars that weren't on the website yet. Tesla didn't direct me towards one at all. Insisted the website inventory was the only one. Had to scour the internet to find names & emails

2. The CPO advisor's off-website cars didn't do it for me, so I gave him my list of must-haves and he said he'd send me any car that satisfies them as they arrive. He never did. I had to ask every time and towards the end it got embarrassing

3. When I found a car that I liked and told him I wanted to put a deposit on, he didn't respond for a while, and when he did as I was about to put the deposit down, suddenly he says "ah I should tell you that car was sold an hour ago". Mind you this car was very important to me as I had been looking for months to find one. Then he proceeded to not send me any new cars in the coming weeks

4. I sent a "last call" email to him and he sent me a bunch of cars, one of which I liked, but when I tried to put the deposit down he again was unresponsive (for more than a day), I had to pull all kinds of tricks to get to someone to put my deposit down, which I did

5. As I was putting my deposit down they increased the price on me by $3,500. Seriously. By that time there was nothing I could do so I went with it, still bites me to this day

6. I was told a delivery time of 4-6 weeks (before I made the deposit so it's OK in that way, but it's still a very long time!)

7. I have no pictures of the car. The CarFax record they sent me was from when the car had 50 miles on it

8. The CPO advisor almost completely stopped responding after I put the deposit down

9. My delivery specialist has NOT ONCE responded to an email. For various issues and questions I sent him more than 5 emails, with reminders, and not only did he not reply, he did not even call me back once. I had to call him every single time for every single thing, including very time sensitive issues

10. It has been more than 3 weeks, still absolutely no word on delivery, no updates, no pictures, nothing

====

Of course, the majority of the "CPO experience" starts with the actual delivery. From what I've heard, this can get a lot worse or maybe the delivery will be very smooth. All I wanted to say was, the part up to now has been awful, and mostly because of the people involved.

 

[Tam]

Don't you just go to the web and click the one you want for $1,000 deposit?

It sounds like you are doing a customized buying service by paying $3,500 for Tesla to choose one that fits your request instead?

 

[iqless]

Don't you just go to the web and click the one you want for $1,000 deposit?

It sounds like you are doing a customized buying service by paying $3,500 for Tesla to choose one that fits your request instead?

Not really, it's the same process. It's just through a CPO advisor, who tells you about some cars in advance.

 

[bakerboy]

I called and spoke to a CPO adviser, gave him my list of "features/packages" that I wanted to have and within 20 minutes found a 2013 P85 that wasn't even listed on the website. Gave him my $1000 deposit over the phone and with in an hour received an email and instructions to log into My Tesla page.

 

[iqless]

I called and spoke to a CPO adviser, gave him my list of "features/packages" that I wanted to have and within 20 minutes found a 2013 P85 that wasn't even listed on the website. Gave him my $1000 deposit over the phone and with in an hour received an email and instructions to log into My Tesla page.

I immediately got a reply with a list of cars too initially. my problem was that none of the cars fit my criteria. And after I told them my criteria they never really replied back, I had to email them all the time. It's annoying but honestly it wasn't a huge problem. It's the accumulation of all the other stuff that's bothering me.

 

[SHAWNSUNNYVALE]

I would email my CPO person twice an month with my criteria. I guess my happy new year email on 1/8 must have worked, because she came with a deal. She was out of the country but hooked me with someone else who starting texting me that evening. There were a few glitches, them saying the car had ap1, but the website said it did not (they said it was a glitch in the system) After I put the deposit down my ds told me it would be 8 weeks and sure enough it was 8 weeks. But I totally get your frustration as well I think the thing with CPO if you are patient the right deal will come up.

 

[MRPLUGIN]

I had trouble too, The best response for me was to contact the sales manager at my local store. (if you have one). The delivery specialist works at the store and the manager was the only one to get the info flowing. It's crazy, I know, I have been there. I did not care if it was going to take 6 weeks, I just wanted to be kept in the loop. I say, put them on commission and maybe they would put a little more effort in.

 

[freeewilly]

Who is your CPO advisor?

 

[iqless]

I have no intention of "outing" people, for all I know there was something wrong going in their lives etc. I have been extremely dissatisfied by the way I have been treated, and it's all across the board (pretty much everyone is very unresponsive to the point of causing deals to not take place) so I doubt it's a problem based on specific people

 

[Darren Donovan]

I have no intention of "outing" people, for all I know there was something wrong going in their lives etc. I have been extremely dissatisfied by the way I have been treated, and it's all across the board (pretty much everyone is very unresponsive to the point of causing deals to not take place) so I doubt it's a problem based on specific people

Sorry that OP has to go through this bad CPO buying experience, hope you find a car that fits your requirements soon. However, I don't understand the reluctance to "out" somebody. If a vendor, advisor, .... provides excellent customer service/product, I'll sing their praises so that more people will go to them. Conversely, if someone doesn't do their job, I'll let people know too, so that they will know who to avoid. Most people go to forums to get information, and I for one, would appreciate not having to go through the bad experience like OP, if this sales person keeps up his/her way of treating a customer..

 

[gaswalla]

you sound way too desperate and needy in making this purchase.. sorry, but it sounds like your were making emotion-based decisions throughout the process, and now you look back, and you regret it - appropriately. You had a bad advisor - that is what happened. The organization is to blame mainly for not having full transparency on their website - not sure why

 

[RayW]

Use the Tesla EV-CPO website Tesla EV-CPO Consolidator / Hunter / Tesla Preowned and Inventory Listings / ev-cpo.com when you get the 2nd one for your wife

 

[iqless]

you sound way too desperate and needy in making this purchase.. sorry, but it sounds like your were making emotion-based decisions throughout the process, and now you look back, and you regret it

There has been no compromises, desperation, or emotion based decisions at all. I had been looking since January. It took me more than 2 months to be able to find the car I wanted, as I did not at all compromise on what I wanted to get. There was no rush - the deal was good, and it was still the car I want, even after the price increase. But it's still a bad experience, don't you think?

 

[iqless]

Use the Tesla EV-CPO website Tesla EV-CPO Consolidator / Hunter / Tesla Preowned and Inventory Listings / ev-cpo.com when you get the 2nd one for your wife

I already did, but the CPO Advisor is able to give you way more cars than are on that or any other website.

 

[Az_Rael]

I would have backed out at the $3500 price increase.

But, yeah the process sucks. I almost missed my car because my advisor took 3 days to reply to me.

You aren't out of the woods on your car either. Many of them are loaners and sometimes have damage found when retrieved. Then you get to switch cars again. That happened to me once, and another forum member twice.

 

[iqless]

I would have backed out at the $3500 price increase.

But, yeah the process sucks. I almost missed my car because my advisor took 3 days to reply to me.

You aren't out of the woods on your car either. Many of them are loaners and sometimes have damage found when retrieved. Then you get to switch cars again. That happened to me once, and another forum member twice.

Yeah that's what I've been fearing. I haven't paid them anything but the deposit so I reserve my right to walk away if I see fit.

 

[Az_Rael]

Yeah that's what I've been fearing. I haven't paid them anything but the deposit so I reserve my right to walk away if I see fit.

They are pretty good about that. I was offered the option to switch cars or get my deposit back when they found the damage on the first car. On the 2nd car an option was missing that they told me it had, so they offered a refund again if I wanted. I decided to proceed since the option (folding mirrors) wasn't that critical. (And I haven't missed them)

 

[gavine]

How outlandish are your requirements? Are they pretty mainstream or a very rare combination that's hard to find? I'm not making excuses, but if your requirements were less restrictive, do you think the situation would be different?

 

[iqless]

How outlandish are your requirements? Are they pretty mainstream or a very rare combination that's hard to find? I'm not making excuses, but if your requirements were less restrictive, do you think the situation would be different?

Not outlandish! My "must have" was Autopilot, and my "I'd like to have" was Ultra High Fidelity sound. I was looking for lower end of the spectrum (sub $70k cars). The problem is, for some reason, there are very few S60's and S70's with AP1 on CPO. Even to this day there's only like 3 sub $70k cars with AP on CPO.

In any case I'm not blaming anyone for lack of cars, my problem was the non responsiveness. I felt annoyed AND annoying because I had to nag my CPO advisor every time instead of him sending me cars as they came along as he said he would. That whole aspect though is a minor problem.

They are pretty good about that. I was offered the option to switch cars or get my deposit back when they found the damage on the first car. On the 2nd car an option was missing that they told me it had, so they offered a refund again if I wanted. I decided to proceed since the option (folding mirrors) wasn't that critical. (And I haven't missed them)

Good to know they're good about that. I think generally they're good about putting things on the due bill too, no?

 

[iqless]

Earlier today I got a call from my CPO advisor about the email I sent him the other day, asking for updates. He said the car is currently being refurbished, and gave me a timeline. Not a particularly good one, but we're still within the original 6 weeks estimate, so it's fair, and I'm glad I got an update. No pictures still.

But more importantly, I just got another call from Tesla. They had read this thread and from my location figured out who I was. I got to talk to them about my problems too, which was nice. I was informed that my previous CPO advisor is now on paternity leave, which means that at the time when he was being unresponsive he was probably dealing with these issues, so that explains a lot.

He also acknowledged that the price increase halfway through the deal was a significant error on their part, and to make it up to me, they're.. GIVING ME THE CAR FOR FREE!!!! Just kidding. But they are throwing in a free LTE upgrade, which I had requested and was getting ready to pay for. It's worth about $500 plus tax. So it's definitely something, and makes me feel better about the whole thing.

I am hoping for a smooth experience from now on - I will definitely inspect every nook and cranny in the car before I take delivery, and hopefully they will be understanding about that, too.