Outrageous $5000 repair bill after warranty expire!

[jeffro01]

Components fail, sure but for a $100K car you expect that components don't fail that quickly. Even a compressor you expect to last longer than that on such a car. It is not like the car is twenty years old or something. Like I said, perhaps there is some kind of legal warranty like they have in Europe. This legal warranty is specially for these things, buying an expensive product a consumer has a reasonable expectation of lasting it longer than this.

What does the price of the car have to do with anything? It's not like auto makers go out and buy special more expensive components for their more expensive cars (not counting special performance parts that factor into the price of the car). Even still, those components could still fail at any time for any reason. I've had a couple of cars where the a/c compressor failed, I even had one that failed twice... The first was the original factory compressor and the second was the new replacement compressor and it failed within a month for unknown reasons. All covered by the factory warranty but nevertheless...

In this case, the part lasted at least the length of the warranty terms so beyond that you're on your own.

Jeff

 

[Krazaak]

Extended warranties (service agreements) are essentially insurance, regulated from state to state. They wouldn't be available if they weren't profitable for the people selling them. If you can absorb out of warranty repair costs, then you can roll the dice and try your luck. The average person will spend less on repairs than an extended service agreement would cost. If you can't afford the high cost of unexpected repairs, then an ESA provides valuable insurance.

Under most circumstances, the warranty is the extent of Tesla's liability to fix things. They obviously didn't design the AC to break at 51k miles, it's just bad luck. In a traditional dealership model, the dealer has a certain flexibility to cover non-warranty work either fully or partially under goodwill, usually splitting the cost of that goodwill with the manufacturer. Goodwill isn't warranty, it's meant to bolster dealership or brand loyalty.

Things work a little differently where Tesla is both the manufacturer and the dealer, but you can try to get some or all of it covered under goodwill since it was so soon after warranty expiration. I'll warn that in my experience that happy, not angry customers are more likely to get goodwill coverage. Start with seeing if they'll cover the repair, then move to splitting the cost or perhaps they cover parts and you labor. Unfortunately, with Tesla controlling costs so closely now, it might be a harder sell.

 

[Chickenlittle]

I got my model x in late summer 2016 for $110k. During the 3 years of ownership. I had several problems, they all covered under warranty. The most recent problem was this March, right before before my warranty expires. It was the Shock Spring on the suspension at the passenger front tire broke. I heard a very load "pop" when I was driving 10 miles a hour in my neighborhood. The car comes with 5 years warranty or 50k miles whichever comes first.

Unfortunately my car now just past 50k mile, I went to supercharger last week. While it is supercharging, I felt my whole car was shacking and making a big engine noise under the front hood. I could not figure out why and tried to unplug the super charger. It took me like 5-8 minutes to figure out after I turned of the A/C, then the shaking stopped. The AC after that completely quite working.

Same day evening the screen shows
Air conditioning reduced
DC Fast Charging / Supercharging rate maybe reduce.

I bought to the service center, it took them 2 business days to email me a quote. They said "the air conditioner compressor had an internal failure and sent aluminum shaving throughout the system and all needs to be replaced."

I only used the A/C for 2.5 summers... now I have to pay $5k+ to fix it.... I am very upset with it. I don't know if I can or how to get hold of their higher tier manager to see if I can try to ask them to make an exception to fix my car. It is apparently a quality issue. I have had bmw, mercedes, toyota, corvette, dodge, mazda in the past. Non of them had a problem like this. And tesla is the only NEW car I purchased....

I am a big fan of tesla and Elon, that is why I spend so much money on this car even tesla keeps dropping the price after I bought it. I still love it so much. However the $5147 A/C failure in 3 years is NOT acceptable.

Before my warranty expire couple of month ago. I did consider to purchase extended warranty. I read peoples opinion on the forum, agreed not to pay the $4000 ahead of the time, can't believe this.

You mentioned bmw, I got rid of a new bmw 5 series car about 15 yrs ago when they charged me 600 dollars to replace a plastic front license plate holder. Good luck on those repairs to bmw owners

 

[Pilot Steve]

The same thing happened to me the AC was making a loud noise so I took it in to SC. They heard the noise and said just the AC fan unit was bad. One day later they texted back and said the whole unit and condensor and hoses need to be replaced, had bearing grinding inside, metal shards through out whole system need to replace everything. Did some online research on the matter and found out 2016 models are having the same AC issues....take that with a grain of salt (I know not everything you read online is true). I was fortunate in the fact my current mileage is 49,561 miles covered under warranty (thank God). Now rethinking the esa. The only bad thing about the extended warranty is that it was not offered at the sale of my tesla in fact the extended warranty must be purchased separately from the purchase price of the car. I believe that needs to change. I bought a honda odyssey with an extended warranty and rolled the warranty into the loan. With Tesla you are not able to roll the extended warranty into the loan or everyone who is smart would be doing so. I think they said it was a state law or something. Does anyone know why extended warranties are not offered at time of purchase or able to roll the extended warranty into the loan? Just my 2 cents...thoughts?

 

[davewill]

Note to self...buy ESA as soon as they are available for Model 3.

 

[shinytop]

Extended automotive warranties are a sore subject with me. In Florida one cannot buy an extended range warranty except from a dealer in Florida. When I owned a Honda the extended range warranty was $2k cheaper bought from a dealership in Mass but they could not sell to me because I had a Florida address. With Tesla's lack of dealership model the various state laws may be problematic to deal with.

 

[TeeEmCee]

I can go on here about how the "Weak Law of Large Numbers" means that the company selling extended warranties will win and the buyer thereof will lose which is why they sell these warranties. And I have given that lecture to many a car salesman (and refrigerator salesman and washing machine salesman...) over the years. I explain that the money I don't spend on extended warranties goes into a "self insurance" fund to cover huge auto repair bills which do come up if you drive luxury cars. You can make the same argument for home insurance, of course, but I do have that. And I am considering the extended warranty on the Tesla largely because I keep seeing posts like this one. IOW I feel (and feel is a key word here as opposed to think) that there is a good chance I may regret not having it some day.

Another option is to trade the Tesla away when the warranty expires and I'm thinking of doing that.

The insurance company will come ahead on average, so, on average, you can argue that it's better to roll the dice and not buy the extended insurance. That's all true if you can afford the repairs (and let's assume that you can, since you can afford the vehicle), PROVIDED THAT you know that you'll pay the same repair/parts costs as the insurance company. In real life, the insurance companies' purchasing power means they pay a much lower rate than what you'd pay when you walk into a shop. That and they have qualified staff who are way better at sniffing out bogus charges and actually verify things before they approve most charges. These differences alone may make the warranty worth it.

Think about those service invoices you receive for warranty items. Here's a hypothetical example: X part, 0.5 shop hours ... $85 total. The same thing would magically balloon to $850 outside of a warranty contract. With an extended warranty, the transaction would be "here's my deductible, now go fix it" ... at least in theory.

 

[OrbiterTI4]

The math is the same. The insurance company is not in business for my benefit.

Hate being the guy to point out the exception (and drag even more off topic), but the National Flood Insurance Program is the exception to this - it loses money explicitly because the US Congress has directed it to exist for homeowner benefit (and which I have - flooded from Harvey, so my two years of premiums costing $900 netted $65k...still not enough to repair though). So state legislation dictating what ESAs could or could not do is plausible.

 

[Dutchie]

What does the price of the car have to do with anything? It's not like auto makers go out and buy special more expensive components for their more expensive cars (not counting special performance parts that factor into the price of the car). Even still, those components could still fail at any time for any reason. I've had a couple of cars where the a/c compressor failed, I even had one that failed twice... The first was the original factory compressor and the second was the new replacement compressor and it failed within a month for unknown reasons. All covered by the factory warranty but nevertheless...

In this case, the part lasted at least the length of the warranty terms so beyond that you're on your own.

Jeff

Of course the price has to do with everything! If you pay more you expect better. Of course, in a Mercedes Benz engine there are better - more expensive - components than a Yugo engine.

 

[Krazaak]

Of course the price has to do with everything! If you pay more you expect better. Of course, in a Mercedes Benz engine there are better - more expensive - components than a Yugo engine.

I expect more expensive products to have more expensive repairs. It's not like the warranty duration is a secret when you buy the car.

 

[Lloyd]

The problem is, tesla depreciate so fast. My 2016 tesla now only worth $60k in 3 years, from $110k

If you had bought a Mercedes it would be worth even less!! Any new vehicle will be worth less in 3 years. Compare the book with your tesla to others. I think you will be surprised!

Example: 2016 Mercedes E-400 4Matic Cost $68,000 new. I can buy that car today for $23,000! with 25K miles.

 

[dhallgagandeep]

I

If you had bought a Mercedes it would be worth even less!! Any new vehicle will be worth less in 3 years. Compare the book with your tesla to others. I think you will be surprised!

Example: 2016 Mercedes E-400 4Matic Cost $68,000 new. I can buy that car today for $23,000! with 25K miles.

Agree. But I have seen people charging exorbitant amounts for their used Teslas even now.
A 2017 75D @ 98k CAD.
I dont know who sells at the prices we talk at this forum. Lol

 

[cpa]

The sign at our local Tesla Service Center announces their shop rate to be $195/hour. I do not know if this is a company-wide rate or not.

The time it took a mobile tech to replace a door handle a couple years ago was close to one hour. The time it took to repair a faulty window motor was over an hour. The 12V battery replacement was about 20 minutes. (These were under warranty.)

We had to have the battery cooling system replaced under warranty three years ago. I recall that the time to do all the work was 4-5 hours. So, the $4,250 extended warranty that I paid will cover 21.8 hours of labor to break even. Put another way, fifteen hours of labor plus $1,325 in parts. We know Tesla parts ain't cheap, either!

 

[BulldogsRus]

Components fail, sure but for a $100K car you expect that components don't fail that quickly. Even a compressor you expect to last longer than that on such a car. It is not like the car is twenty years old or something. Like I said, perhaps there is some kind of legal warranty like they have in Europe. This legal warranty is specially for these things, buying an expensive product a consumer has a reasonable expectation of lasting it longer than this.

I'm not sure what the selling price of the vehicle has to do with component quality as most are shared across the entire platform. The A/C unit on a Benz S-class is not that much different than one on a C-class, parts sharing across models is very common.

 

[BulldogsRus]

Of course the price has to do with everything! If you pay more you expect better. Of course, in a Mercedes Benz engine there are better - more expensive - components than a Yugo engine.

Wait, so you think the A/C system in a Ferrari would be better built than one in a Corolla why exactly? You do realize the one constant criticism of Teslas in general is overall quality not being up to par, right? That the interiors of the S and X are not representative of vehicles costing on avg. $100k?

 

[XCare EV]

For reasons of exactly this, was the reason why we created an extended warranty for any Model X, S, or 3 owner out there. Although these components are not meant to go out, doesn't mean they cannot.

X-Care is an ESA that mirrors Tesla's extended service agreement, cheaper up front cost, half the deductible, claims process works around Tesla's automated service process, and it was created by Tesla veterans/experts.

 

[jboy210]

Components fail, sure but for a $100K car you expect that components don't fail that quickly. Even a compressor you expect to last longer than that on such a car. It is not like the car is twenty years old or something. Like I said, perhaps there is some kind of legal warranty like they have in Europe. This legal warranty is specially for these things, buying an expensive product a consumer has a reasonable expectation of lasting it longer than this.

I am not sure why one would expect a compressor on a more expensive car to last longer. Tesla likely buys it from the 2 or 3 manufactures that everyone else does . My airplane had a compressor that was the same one used in a Chevy, down to the part number. Lasted about as long as it does in a Chevy, just costs 5 times as much as because of the FAA certification, i.e. paperwork.

 

[jboy210]

You mentioned bmw, I got rid of a new bmw 5 series car about 15 yrs ago when they charged me 600 dollars to replace a plastic front license plate holder. Good luck on those repairs to bmw owners

$7500 to replace turbo and wastegate on BMW 1 year out of warranty.

 

[Krazaak]

$7500 to replace turbo and wastegate on BMW 1 year out of warranty.

I just bought a 2015 BMW i8 as a fun car. I'm ready to ride those OOW expenses like a rocket once the factory and CPO warranty expire in 14 months.

On the plus side, with a 2nd car to split mileage my Model X warranty will last the full 4 years instead of me burning through it in under 3 years due to mileage.

I'm still not planning to buy the ESA for the Model X, since the odds are in my favor to just bank the cash instead.

Who knows, maybe if the i8 powertrain blows up and the FWDs fall of the Model X, I can find somebody to shoehorn the Tesla batteries and motors into the i8 body and have my dream car.

 

[Dutchie]

I am not sure why one would expect a compressor on a more expensive car to last longer. Tesla likely buys it from the 2 or 3 manufactures that everyone else does . My airplane had a compressor that was the same one used in a Chevy, down to the part number. Lasted about as long as it does in a Chevy, just costs 5 times as much as because of the FAA certification, i.e. paperwork.

Wait, so you think the A/C system in a Ferrari would be better built than one in a Corolla why exactly? You do realize the one constant criticism of Teslas in general is overall quality not being up to par, right? That the interiors of the S and X are not representative of vehicles costing on avg. $100k?

Yes I do. That is why you pay a premium. Look at the interior of the car. The knobs, used materials, seats are of much higher quality than a Yugo. Just like you expect it to be. You pay a price you expect a premium product, not only on the outside but on the inside as well. If they put in a part that is inferior to what you expect for such an expensive car than that is on Tesla. Hack, when I bought the car the sales person even said that they expect the car to last 25 years.

In the EU they have legislation on this. There, Tesla would be on the hook for repairing the compressor. Sadly the OP does not live in Europe but it would be a good thing to have these kind of consumer protection laws on this side of the pond as well.