Hi everyone. This is a bit embarrassing, but I've damaged to damage my less-than-one-week-old Model 3.
I was taking it out yesterday morning and went into the garage, opened the garage door, and unplugged the car. I then got in the car and spent a minute or so setting up the podcast I wanted to play via bluetooth from my phone during the drive. I then put the car into reverse and started to back out.
What I hadn't realized is that somehow the garage door had come back down without me noticing. I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but I must have somehow pushed the button on the clicker (SR+ model, so no built in homelink) and then not heard the noise of the door because of the podcast playing (and likely also the congestion I'm dealing with from a cold). I then started to back up, with my vision starting to focus on the rearview screen - but the car only had inches to move before it contacted the door, so what got my attention was the car starting to complain to me.
When I got out to check on the rear of the car, I found a couple of paint scratches, including one that looks like it needs some filling to be repaired. These are on the farthest-back edge of the trunk, and (I think) are where the metal door handle of the garage door hit the car.
This is very little damage, and I'm sure that the car's sensors and safety systems prevented it fro being worse, even though I was only moving perhaps 1 km/h.
Apologies for the poor quality of the photo, but the rear of the car has some dust from rain on it. I've put boxes around the two areas of damage.
One of them looks like it might just need some paint but the other is gouged perhaps 1 mm deep.
What is my best approach to getting this fixed? Should I contact Tesla and have them arrange to do the work (recognizing that this isn't going to be covered by them)? Do I need to use a Tesla-certified body shop, given that it just needs some (I'd assume) buffing and filling?
Thanks for any help you can provide. I'm kind of mortified that I did this to my new baby, even given I have no idea how the door came down.
I was taking it out yesterday morning and went into the garage, opened the garage door, and unplugged the car. I then got in the car and spent a minute or so setting up the podcast I wanted to play via bluetooth from my phone during the drive. I then put the car into reverse and started to back out.
What I hadn't realized is that somehow the garage door had come back down without me noticing. I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but I must have somehow pushed the button on the clicker (SR+ model, so no built in homelink) and then not heard the noise of the door because of the podcast playing (and likely also the congestion I'm dealing with from a cold). I then started to back up, with my vision starting to focus on the rearview screen - but the car only had inches to move before it contacted the door, so what got my attention was the car starting to complain to me.
When I got out to check on the rear of the car, I found a couple of paint scratches, including one that looks like it needs some filling to be repaired. These are on the farthest-back edge of the trunk, and (I think) are where the metal door handle of the garage door hit the car.
This is very little damage, and I'm sure that the car's sensors and safety systems prevented it fro being worse, even though I was only moving perhaps 1 km/h.
Apologies for the poor quality of the photo, but the rear of the car has some dust from rain on it. I've put boxes around the two areas of damage.
One of them looks like it might just need some paint but the other is gouged perhaps 1 mm deep.
What is my best approach to getting this fixed? Should I contact Tesla and have them arrange to do the work (recognizing that this isn't going to be covered by them)? Do I need to use a Tesla-certified body shop, given that it just needs some (I'd assume) buffing and filling?
Thanks for any help you can provide. I'm kind of mortified that I did this to my new baby, even given I have no idea how the door came down.
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