I’ve never been a Tesla fanboy, but I have been an admirer of Musk’s enterprises and an EV proponent for a while. I managed to convince the boss (wife) that we need to make the switch to an EV, and after some research and looking around, we bought our first EV. A nice Nissan Leaf. The car has been pretty great, so much so, that we decided to replace the wife’s ‘winter car’, a Dodge Durango Citadel, and get a Model X.
After some searching over a week or so, we found a car that we thought could work for us. A nice looking Model X in black, nice options, no damage in the pics, but slightly higher mileage, over 60K miles. We liked the car though, and it was a good price, so we took the plunge. A big part of this decision was the pretty good trade in we were offered by Tesla on the Durango; $16K.
Dang it, the next day there was an even better car available. Based in CA, 22K miles, 4 year, 50K warranty, 7 seats and options we liked more. We poured over the photos, trying to make sure there were no damage or dents, but the car was so highly polished with strong overhead lights/ reflections, with some pics were kinda out of focus. Notably the rear hatch picture. It looked fine, but you couldn’t zoom in, then it started to pixelate and you could not make out any detail. Anyway, having looked at several cars, and noting that any damage was usually taken pictures of and listed for you to look at and review, we felt confident that there was no hidden damage.
So after some soul searching and doing out math, we decided we would eat the $1,000 delivery fee which they wouldn’t return, and get the red car instead. So we made the switch.
We knew Tesla did things little differently, but we struggled with the fact that Tesla would not let you know what you qualify for in regards a loan through them, until AFTER you buy a car. As you folks know, the $100 order and $X delivery fee ($1,000- $2,500 depending on distance) is not returnable. They also don’t confirm you trade in up front, it is also done AFTER you buy a car. So things are a little ass-backwards. This makes it hard to budget properly and figure what you should put down vs get a loan for and what your trade in would be.
What added frustration during this process was the inability to reach any human being to speak with. We had lots of questions during this process, but you can’t get anybody to speak with. We emailed and called several dealerships with questions (before our advisor was appointed), and to this day, nearly a month later, we still haven’t had anybody return our emails or voicemails from those initial attempts.
Surprise one; they get back to us with a trade in offer of only $8k. 50% less than they initially indicated. Needless to say, we were not happy. It felt like a bait and switch, especially since they now had another $1,000 from us already, and to cancel the purchase would mean we loose $2,100. Luckily we managed to sell the car to a thrird party for a good price. So we pushed ahead.
Surprise 2; Carfax comes back indicating the car had 37,000 miles, and not 22,000 as listed. We were freaked out, but our rep managed to get the correct info and confirmed the car had 22K miles only.
Not feeling very good about hte process by this point.
Finally we got everything worked out, financing arranged, our funds sorted to put down our part of the payment. The new get a call from a Tesla ‘rep’ ? “Associate’? I’m not sure what to call the guy, but he was pretty rude and unhelpful. This was the July 4th weekend, on a Friday and we were heading out of town to go camping. He said the car would be delivered Monday. Great, we’re out of town, so that’s not going to work for us. He didn’t care and made what should have been a simple thing to arrange over the phone, a huge argument. Finally we got in touch with our appointed guy and he changed the date to later the week.
Big day arrive, and we show up to the Tesla dealership to get the car. The rep who met us, made it known he was a ‘New’ car salesman, and didn’t usually work with the used cars. Like he was doing us a favor. Then he asked us for all manner of documents; documents we had already submitted through the Tesla website, but he said he didn’t have access too. How does that work? After much back and forth, he finally sorts himself out and takes us to the car.
To make a long story longer; there was damage on every corner of the car, plus on the mirrors, plus three very deep dents on the hatch (on the sharp crease of the hatch and below the Model X logo), plus three holes in the middle row later seat, one of which was a thee inch rip, plus a huge white outlines stain on the rear seats (probably why there weren’t pics of the rear seat in the listing). The tow hitch was missing, and the sales guy didn’t know how to get the plastic cover off to check if the hitch was actually fitted. Charger was also missing.
We were gutted.
To add insult to injury, the salesman only showed my wife briefly how the autopilot works, and said;”its like an iPhone, play with it and you’ll figure it out”. And then asked us if we were taking the car!?! Are you kidding me? A new Tesla owner, never driven one before and he is ok with letting her drive off in a 6,0000 lb missile my whole family is going to ride in, with virtually zero education on the product!?! Not even how the doors open, how to work the remote, charge the vehicle, navigation or even how to ‘turn it on’. Worst car salesman product demo / education Have ever witnessed.
No,. We did not accept delivery of the car.
Weeks later, still waiting for all our money back, and since Tesla wants the sale funded before delivery, we are now accruing interest on a car loan for a vehicle we never took delivery off. Tesla did agree that ’some’ of the damage was not visible I the pictures and would buff the one mirror and about 1/4 of the scratches. They refused to fix the ripped leather or the stain or the back seats though.
At this point we are very much disillusioned with the whole Tesla buying experience and rather disappointed. We are hoping this was a fluke and once off, but reading others' experiences, I think Tesla has a long way to go to provide a decent buying and customer service experience.
