New to Tesla...Is it really that bad?

[Pbzhb]

Hey everyone. You all have been great with helping me with my charger install. I just got my Tesla X (used) and I am reading horror stories about customer service. Warranty not being upheld. Service issues. Is it really that bad? I am regretting getting the car at this point. Why is everyone still buying these? If I had I known prior I would’ve stuck with my BMW. Would love to hear others experiences.

thanks for your time and help in advance.

 

[VT_EE]

No it probably isn’t for the majority of people. Nobody I personally know has had any issues with the local SC.

 

[PJFW8]

Hey everyone. You all have been great with helping me with my charger install. I just got my Tesla X (used) and I am reading horror stories about customer service. Warranty not being upheld. Service issues. Is it really that bad? I am regretting getting the car at this point. Why is everyone still buying these? If I had I known prior I would’ve stuck with my BMW. Would love to hear others experiences.

thanks for your time and help in advance.

My 20 month ownership experience has been excellent. The one time I was in service was to fix a part that I broke. Tesla comped the repair. The service scheduling was easy. Tesla and other car forums attract those with problems and are thus not a true representation of the typical ownership experience. A forum is a great place for information, but read with skepticism.Enjoy your X! My BMW experience was great but extremely expensive.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

As with any product, it depends. We've bought 10 Teslas over the past 3.5 years and never had any major problems (and very few minor problems). Service has been excellent overall. We did have a couple service appointments that were recently cancelled. We're trying to figure out why but assume it's because the parts aren't at the Service Center yet.

 

[Sandiegodoug]

Had x 2 1/2 years, great car, very few issues.

 

[ChadS]

6 cars over the last 10 years, mostly things have been awesome although communication is not great lately (although once I get in the people and work are great).

As noted above, this is kind of the nature of forums. There are a ton of problems dissected here, but I have encountered very few of them. Try meeting up with some local owners in real life and you will get a very different perspective.

 

[glide]

Hey everyone. You all have been great with helping me with my charger install. I just got my Tesla X (used) and I am reading horror stories about customer service. Warranty not being upheld. Service issues. Is it really that bad? I am regretting getting the car at this point. Why is everyone still buying these? If I had I known prior I would’ve stuck with my BMW. Would love to hear others experiences.

thanks for your time and help in advance.

I also came from BMW and wish I never purchased a vehicle from Tesla. I could go on a longer rant about Service and the company as a whole, but that pretty much sums it up.

If you are lucky enough to have a vehicle without any issues that require interaction with Service or warranty you should be fine. The cars *can* be great.

 

[Rockster]

People come to online forums to complain. Most Tesla owners are out there happily tooling around, unaware that this forum even exists.

 

[ckoval7]

I bought used a year ago, and have had a mostly positive experience so far. It took a while for the registration to go through because the SvC I picked the car up at missed some paperwork. I got the battery swapped out at my local SvC, which was positive.

 

[Bridor]

I have owned three Teslas so far and I will never go back to another manufacturer. I tried the Jaguar I-Pace and it is great for around town, but awful at road trips. Tesla Service has always been awesome for me.

Brent

 

[JohnSnowNW]

Our Model X hasn't been trouble free, but the issues have been few and minor...and service has always been excellent.

I can say, unequivocally, that our Model X ownership experience has been excellent. We've ordered two more Tesals, I think that speaks for itself.

 

[Uncle Paul]

While no car is perfect, those customers that do have problems tend to get very LOUD. Make it seem like everybody has problems and that service is lousy.
Reality is that most owners are very happy with their ownership experience, but those with problems tend to be "squeeky wheels". Amplify the problems.

 

[jerry33]

At almost seven years and 129K miles, service--even recent service--has been just fine. The worst thing I can say about it is that a couple of months ago they messed up the phone tree pretty badly. This has mostly been fixed now.

 

[Obsoletion]

I see a couple of sides of the issue. From my experience with purchasing and owning several Model S's and experience with my employees and their S's and 3's, which I recommended they buy, Tesla service in 2013-2016 was exceptional compared to my BMW and other high-end dealership experiences. With the introduction of the Model 3, I think Tesla has found itself behind the curve with the sheer number of customers and vehicles they are dealing with. I believe it is growing pains and that they will overcome them. As it was said earlier, once you get in and talk to a human in a service or sales center, my experience has been 100% positive. They are courteous and helpful and I feel they do everything they can to get whatever is going on resolved. I never feel like Tesla is trying to sell me anything or make money from a service, which I can't say for a traditional car dealership.

On a related note, I also think that Tesla provided a much higher-end service experience to us X and S owners prior to the Model 3 launch, such as Tesla Loaners, and I think they should continue that as the X and S are their high-end vehicles and we pay quite a bit more for them. Again, I think a lot of this is growing pains and if you think about the monumental success they have had, it is understandable.

I'm all in with Tesla because I believe in the brand and its leadership. This is a company that has stood up against pressure and attacks from the giant automakers, oil company, government, and all crazed hyped media reports like the selective car fire reports and imminent bankruptcy.... and yet here they are making more cars every quarter, and still can't keep up with demand, expanding their charging network, putting in lots more service centers, building more factories.... other EV makers can claim how many of those?

 

[ChadS]

Another way to look at it is to look at owner satisfaction surveys. Tesla is #1.

I am sure, with hundreds of thousands of cars sold*, that there are some really unhappy owners. But there can only be so many like that for them to have such a high customer satisfaction rating.

*Extremely rough numbers just to set expectations: It looks like Tesla has sold over 800k cars. Typical new-car problems rates are generally in the 1-5% range. Say 5% of Teslas have a problem. That's 40,000. So, yeah, even with "normal" problem rates you'd expect to see a lot of complaints on online forums. But most Tesla owners (just like most owners of ANY brand) are happy with their cars.

 

[jeffro01]

Hey everyone. You all have been great with helping me with my charger install. I just got my Tesla X (used) and I am reading horror stories about customer service. Warranty not being upheld. Service issues. Is it really that bad? I am regretting getting the car at this point. Why is everyone still buying these? If I had I known prior I would’ve stuck with my BMW. Would love to hear others experiences.

thanks for your time and help in advance.

Yes it's really that bad but it's also not bad for everyone either... Since you already have your X why worry about it? If you have a problem then you'll figure out what your experience is going to be like. If you haven't run into anything then why would you regret your purchase?

Most regulars here know that I'm not a fan of Tesla these days but I'd still buy another one... Why? Their driver assistance technology, and powertrain, are unparalleled. Once you get used to an EV and then get used to having Autopilot, you simply can't go back... At least I can't...

Jeff

 

[jjrandorin]

Hey everyone. You all have been great with helping me with my charger install. I just got my Tesla X (used) and I am reading horror stories about customer service. Warranty not being upheld. Service issues. Is it really that bad? I am regretting getting the car at this point. Why is everyone still buying these? If I had I known prior I would’ve stuck with my BMW. Would love to hear others experiences.

thanks for your time and help in advance.

This is the way the internet works now. Not just cars in general. For example, if you have a "funny cough" and start researching it online, its very likely for you to end up thinking you have some fatal disease and rush to your doctor saying "the internet says.....", Or "I read online....."

For car forums specifically, many times, people make their first foray into them because they have "some issue" and google the issue, and it leads them to some car forum. They then post their problem (most times without looking to see if anyone else had posted said problem), and say "has anyone seen this?"

This leads to several of the same things being repeated over and over, so also shows up more and more in internet searches.

Couple this with the fact that people dont "tend" to come online and say "yep everything is fine with my car!!", and you end up with many car forums sounding like an echo chamber. Tesla is no different in this regard. In fact, during 10 months ish I have been on this particular site, most of the problems are either somewhat minor, or if investigated could be traced to "something else", or "human interaction"

Tesla has a service staffing problem as a new company that is understaffed for how popular they are. The service people are treated by some like service people the world over are treated (poorly, by some) and get jaded. If one is polite, and reasonable, they are very accomodating.

Teslas internal systems tend to not know what one hand is doing over the other, but this is not the fault of the people most times, but the systems they operate in. it takes some patience to deal with them, but for the most part, they are humans who want to do right by people, as long as said people are not "$%%$#^#%^#" to them .

TL ; DR version

The internet is just like that, stop reading so many threads about issues and worry about it if it happens to you. Tesla is no different than any other company, with the exception that they have grown faster than they can support, so one needs to understand that and plan accordingly.

 

[rjdoc74]

It's really pretty simple actually. Take a few minutes and look at the actual places where above posters live (click on their profiles). You will see Colorado, Washington State, Texas, North Carolina, etc. You know, places where average person actually turns around and takes a picture when they see a Tesla car. Service centers in these locations (vast majority of course!) CURRENTLY don't have lines of drivers with appointments around the block trying to get in for service. They don't get a dozen tow ins per day. They can and are able to provide good service.

In LA and SF (see post #16) it IS really that bad. S**ty unprofessional service, unreturned emails or messages, broken promises, ignoring issues, frankly lying to customers is pretty much the norm.

Unless Tesla spends $$$ on service expansion as they keep flooding the whole country with their cars it WILL get this bad everywhere eventually.

 

[jjrandorin]

It's really pretty simple actually. Take a few minutes and look at the actual places where above posters live (click on their profiles). You will see Colorado, Washington State, Texas, North Carolina, etc. You know, places where average person actually turns around and takes a picture when they see a Tesla car. Service centers in these locations (vast majority of course!) CURRENTLY don't have lines of drivers with appointments around the block trying to get in for service. They don't get a dozen tow ins per day. They can and are able to provide good service.

In LA and SF (see post #16) it IS really that bad. S**ty unprofessional service, unreturned emails or messages, broken promises, ignoring issues, frankly lying to customers is pretty much the norm.

Unless Tesla spends $$$ on service expansion as they keep flooding the whole country with their cars it WILL get this bad everywhere eventually.

Again, YMMV. My local service center in carlsbad is fantastic. I also had an awesome experience with the costa mesa service center, which I believe is the busiest one in the COMPANY, taking in over 100 cars a day. No, its "not that bad" for everyone, even in busy locations.

 

[rjdoc74]

Again, YMMV. My local service center in carlsbad is fantastic. I also had an awesome experience with the costa mesa service center, which I believe is the busiest one in the COMPANY, taking in over 100 cars a day. No, its "not that bad" for everyone, even in busy locations.

Congratulations on winning Tesla service lottery. Again, your "excellent" Costa Mesa experience doesn't make this guy feel any better:

Bad service appointment, seeking recommendations

They didn't even make sure he had Uber credits for over 10 days while they were doing nothing on his car.