They should have called me, plain and simple. I maybe confused as to what customer service is and most people tend to think that it is getting free stuff for your trouble. That's not customer service, that is called buying your way out of a problem. I need to reiterate that I am not looking for anything for free. Customer service would have been just calling me on Friday morning or Thursday anytime and telling me that the tire is coming in later next week. I would have dealt with it, no problem. Waiting for me to call near close on the day they said I should be there to pick up the car and then making up a story as to why it's not really their fault is just bad customer service. At that point, I just wanted to hear "I'm sorry, we forgot to order your tire and to call you, we screwed up" that's all.
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It's probably a good practice to call yourself the day before if you haven't gotten a 'your car is ready' message. That applies to any service center (Tesla or anyone). That way you don't make plans without confirmation your car is ready. If they had called you telling you your car was ready and it wasn't when you got there, then yes that would be a much bigger deal.
ZestyChicken
Member
Yes, calling them would have been me doing their job for them, but I didn't since they ASSURED me about Friday. It is hard to rehash the conversation we had at the station word for word but the reason this was confirmed to be done on Friday is because they said that they already had a guy scheduled coming in to install paint armor on a few cars (including mine, since the car was delivered without it.) They essentially confirmed it on Wednesday since I made it very clear that I will plan my Friday around it. There was more than one person there and they all assured me it would be completed. It sucked to have all my business and social arrangements made around that assumption but they did confirm it. Is there an acceptable window or timeframe from confirmation to reconfirmation that I need to be aware of? Is it 24hrs, 48hrs? Is there an official social etiquette hour number that I need to follow? Then I will know if everything is confirmed 24hrs prior to date, no need to call back, however if it is confirmed 48hrs before the pickup date, I need to call... All the crap aside, who has time for this during the work week? They are still the service center, they should do what their name says and call me, I don't think it's fair to blame me for not calling them to reconfirm their confirmation.
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no, it's just their rate, Tesla has to make money, I'm ok with this, that's why I bought the car. I was a bit surprised that the tire cost that much but it is what it is. I love Tesla as company and the product itself, I think I got 2 other people besides me to get reservations in and one of them is receiving his car next week. But on this instance, it's service people didn't do their job and made up a story instead of owning up to it.
Al Sherman
It's about THIS car.
LOL. It NEVER hurts Dave!
You young guys stay up too late for me. There's a lot going on here but boiled down it seems as thought the OP's main gripe is that nobody told him his car wouldn't be ready when promised. The other stuff: price, availability, local tire shop, etc.. Is all tangential. Not that anyone cares but I think it's reasonable to expect a call in this situation. As mentioned before, the Service Centers appear to be swamped. The guy in Columbus is literally doing everything. He's even the Ranger! He's also interviewing guys to hire. I don't see any lying, or malicious cover up. I think they're just buried in work right now and the phone call slipped through the cracks. Not good but Tesla seems to be hiring motivated people who really want to provide a good customer service experience. When they catch up I believe they will.
On a somewhat similar note. It does make me think about buying a spare Michelin PS2 and just leaving it at my local tire guys shop for whenever. Seems as though I'd have the car back that day if/when it ever happens to me.
Electric Machete
P#3820
I'm never surprised at how dealerships can screw up the simplest things. If they promise a car on a specific day, they should call if the vehicle is not ready - preferably as soon as they know. In my experience this almost never happens. It is a rare instance when I am contacted by a repair shop/dealer to inform me of any delays. A simple phone call to the OP informing him of a delay seems like it would have prevented a mishap with his plans. I would hope Tesla aspires to better than mediocre service. A thirty second phone call doesn't wreck the mechanics day, and potentially saves a customer a massive amount of hassle. Especially when the customer picked up his long awaited ($100k +) vehicle the previous day. This is an extreme circumstance and deserved more attention than it was given.
This model is pretty much universal to any repair operation. A Marantz service center repairing my monoblock amplifiers started working on them, and had 3-4 different parts orders that delayed the readiness / repairs by 4 weeks. When I worked in a welding/blacksmith/fabrication shop, it was very clear that when I said "it *should* be fixed on Friday", that it meant "in the absence of any other problems" or availability. If I had to manufacture a new part that depended upon new tooling, or I broke my tooling, it meant delay. In the customer's shoes, it sucks, but it's more the norm than the exception. You find the situation isn't exactly what it seemed as you dig into a repair, or you find other parts that are broken, etc.
Bottom line: in the repair segment, regardless of industry, the common expectation is that if the customer has the urgency, the customer calls.
FlasherZ, I'd typically not even make a fuss over this kind of thing since all kind of unpredictable things can come up during repair as you described. But this is hardly the same thing is this situation. It was a simple tire, they know how long it takes them to get these, they told me Wednesday that it will be here Friday since it is not in stock, and they will throw it on in no time. It was handled in such a nonchalant manner and with such confidence that I didn't know I needed to reconfirm with them the next day on the tire, especially since they already had me scheduled to be there Friday anyway for paint armor. Plus, who wants to be "that guy" that calls every day to check on his car and annoys rather busy people at Tesla service I actually thought they'd be better off with me leaving them alone. It's their responsibility to call and say sorry, no tire yet, don't come today. I would have been fine. Otherwise, it screwed things up for me pretty badly on Friday.
They likely did expect and were confident that they would have the tire Friday so at the time so they weren't lying. Whatever happened, the tire didn't arrive. Yes, they should have called but they didn't. Since your day would be totally thrown out if whack if they didn't have it, calling Thursday or sending an email asking then if it was ready wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world. My nearest service center is 80 miles so if I was arranging transportation with no way to get back other than my car, I'd probably check myself to make sure.
21" tires aren't exactly common sizes. They are a new company with many new service people but it's been the best service I've ever seen from a car company. They are undoubtedly learning and refining their processes so situations like yours will hopefully help them.
21" tires aren't exactly common sizes. They are a new company with many new service people but it's been the best service I've ever seen from a car company. They are undoubtedly learning and refining their processes so situations like yours will hopefully help them.
You aren't kidding. I called every Continental dealer within a 50 mile radius of me and NONE of them stocked the 21" tires. Only Tirerack had them.
Granted. I've never owned a Lexus or other premium brand before. I'd rather have enthusiastic service people who don't try and rip you off than a fancy waiting area though. Anyway, hope your car gets fixed soon.
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About 5 years ago, I worked at a chain shop (Sears Auto) that sold and repaired tires all day long. I pretty much just did sales, and while the mechanics I worked with certainly weren't top of the line by any means, we routinely plugged and repaired Z rated tires with no problems. I had never heard that it was "forbidden" until just now. After a little bit of searching I found this article, which makes it seem dependent on manufacturer, and only then it would just affect the warranty later (way better than buying a new tire imo). For Michelins, Z rated tires can be repaired with no warranty changes, and no change to the speed rating either!
Tire Tech Information - Flat Tire Repairs’ Effect on Speed Rating
Of course this is irrelevant to the OP, who had damage too close to the sidewall, but if you are told that your Z rated tire can't be repaired, I would take it somewhere else. Even if you don't trust a place like Sears to lift your car, I am sure you could get the loose tire, take it to a third party for repair and rebalancing, and then take it back to Tesla and pay a small mounting fee to have it put back on.
ddenboer
MODEL X #1770
Just a thought about service expectations...
I fully agree with @akula; he should have received a phone call informing him of the delay. What Tesla needs is experienced service writers and administrators at each service depot to handle this sort of thing. Even Honda offered me better service on my civic because of the excellent level of service my local honda dealer had with their service writers.
I fully agree with @akula; he should have received a phone call informing him of the delay. What Tesla needs is experienced service writers and administrators at each service depot to handle this sort of thing. Even Honda offered me better service on my civic because of the excellent level of service my local honda dealer had with their service writers.
This is basically all I was saying, all the other stuff was meant to emphasize that it's not like I'm getting a used tire at a local garage for 40 bux, I'm getting an $800 part put on a car that yesterday cost me 100+k, I'd just expect a slightly more caring attitude.
On a side note, my car was delivered without paint armor exactly a week ago, and they said to bring it back in two days so they can put it on. Unfortunately they didn't tell me about it before I went to pick up the car and had to bring the car back anyway Friday to get this done. I would have loved to just pick it up a few days later with everything already installed on it and save an extra trip to downtown. Again, not a real issue but little things that add up to large annoyances that I feel can easily be avoided with better communication.
Alfafoxtrot1
Member
Akula - its Tuesday. What's the scoop? I keep looking for your post that you have your new tire and the armour and all is good. I'll be looking for your MS!
For what it's worth, this is the nature of the repair business (as I mentioned), whether it's a $200 boom box, $5000 set of amplifiers, $100k car, a $350-500k combine, or even equipment that costs millions. Schedules have to be elastic, as trained repair labor availability is not; some cars before yours may have taken a delay and therefore impacted the schedule of your car.
Anything more just increases the cost of the car or cost of the service. Would you pay $5,000 more for the car to have received a daily status call on your car's repair progress? Would you pay $500 more on the yearly service contract to have received a daily status call on your car?
This is not a Tesla issue, it's an industry segment problem that has been present for decades. Repair shops have supplemented with IT capabilities so that someone answering the phone doesn't have to find a specific tech to ask in the back room, but it still consists of repair notes in a very elastic environment.
It's frustrating, I know -- that amp repair scenario I spoke of above required me to re-tool for my neighborhood movie night because they weren't ready. I had to borrow someone's old receiver and make a couple of cables to make it work. It's just the nature of the business.
Nothing yet... no one called me to tell me that the car is ready... or not ready
I'll give them unit 4pm, then I'll call and get the scoop.- - - Updated - - -
What I have are PS2 from Michelin, I only found them on TireRack, 533 /tire.
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