P85D with wrong seats, but had to figure it out for myself

[golfski]

golfski, eclectric,

I hear you. What we know is Tesla was all setup to deliver the cars with the new sports seats as planned but then found a last minute problem with them and had to pull all the seats. That's on them and no doubt some heads need to roll, but the question is what would you have them do then? Hold all the cars for weeks, months even more until they have enough of the fixed seats in inventory to put all the cars out with them and make everyone wait?

I think they made the only sane choice given the circumstances, which is make some people wait for the seats and make no one wait for the car.

If that was important to you then you had the option to reorder and wait. You _still_ have the option to do that. Give the car back, reorder, and wait.

There is no magical third option where someone takes a time machine back and catches the seat design error two months ago and avoids the disaster. Likewise, Tesla has got to be getting the fixed seats in as fast as they can from their supplier. Remember, this is the same company that air freighted tires from Europe in December 2012 when Continental screwed up Tesla's order.

If you have any productive solutions to offer or specifics on how Tesla could have done better here other than "never had made the design mistake to begin with" I'm all ears. If I'm reading your statements correctly - that you'd rather have had Tesla made you wait for your car until the revised seats were in - then what's stopping you from doing that now?

Again, I'm seriously interested in seeing what happens when someone takes Tesla up on their happiness guarantee. Why aren't you?

Don't get me wrong, if I had a P85D on order and fell into that group of having to take old seats while still getting the car delivered in '14 (tax credit, wanting to drive it ASAP!) I would have definitely taken delivery. I just don't think we should be making excuses for the company and need to be calling them out on this stuff. The seat thing is certainly understandable - but to some its not acceptable and they have the option as you described to return it or refuse delivery. From a stock-holder standpoint though, think of all the money wasted (parts & labor) by having to deliver seats that will be trashed in a few months. To me the only real option is to refund all the money for NG seats and deliver with old seats. Then when the seats are ready - allow to upgrade to the NG seats at the same price it would have been offered new - and at that time pay for the seats. As it stands, they are booking revenue for 2014 for products they didn't actually deliver.

I have more of a problem with the range debacle and I think it highlights how the company is deceiving consumers (or not revealing all the information) for their own benefit. At the time before the "D" announcement there was already talk of Tesla missing their 2014 numbers by 3,000 units. When the "D" was announced, it was all about how it will be the most efficient variant - there were no qualifications on timing, etc. To me that smells of a company that knew it would be delivering a less-supperior car than promised by EOY 2014 but still wanted the surge of sales that the "D" would deliver to them (performance, AWD, X crowd) in 2014. I think they took advantage of an eager crowd who wanted the performance, AWD, new seats - and also only promising to deliver the most expensive variant of those new things in 2014, which no doubt made the impatient buyers "upgrade" to a P85D instead of an 85D. Given that range is one of the most important aspects about buying an electric car and the constant arguments over why everyone should skip the 60 and go to the 85 because it has the max range - do you think that the P85D would have been as widely accepted if buyers knew before they put deposits down and sold existing cars that the rated range would be between the 60 and 85, though $50,000 more than a 60?

So my suggestion to Tesla is to announce and deliver a product when its ready and meets the promises that they marketed it under. That seems pretty simple. Bugs in software or hardware is one thing - marketing something knowing you won't deliver it but still charging people for it is where I have a problem.

 

[Canuck]

...The level of tolerance fan boys have for Tesla is appalling, blaming the seat supplier and saying its out of Tesla's control is non-sense.... This type of overlooking by fan-boys allows Tesla to keep making these mistakes because they don't feel the pinch...

To suggest that "fan boys" share the blame by overlooking Tesla's mistakes is really stretching it to me. I think it's best to stick to the issue and not name call, or otherwise attack the people on this forum just because they may have a different opinion than you. I'm one of those "fan boys" but at the same time it's clear to me that you have a legitimate concern regarding your seats.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

I can imagine the other post if you hadn't received your car in 2014. "Tesla screwed me out of my $7500 federal tax rebate"..

Not sure why this made the forums - Tesla has bent over backwards for every request I have ever made - sounds like communication with Tesla was an issue - not the DS or making numbers - they are trying to hit a delivery date for the customer. I think you give way to much credence to the stock - this company is in this for the long play - hence the investment in the GigaFactory.

Enjoy your new car - you are driving one of the best values in the market and Tesla will do the right thing. It is rare to have the CEO browsing the forums - I wouldn't be surprised if you got a call from him or his staff to nail this down.

I see other agendas with this post - my experience at 28,000+ miles and one year have been completely amazing! So much so that we are buying another Model S.

 

[Super Snake]

Please forgive my ignorance in advance as I am new. How do I know if I ordered next gen seats? I don't see anything specific in the design studio that says next generation seats. I ordered the upgraded interior with the leather seats for $1500. Are those next gen seats?
Thanks

 

[stevezzzz]

...To me the only real option is to refund all the money for NG seats and deliver with old seats. Then when the seats are ready - allow to upgrade to the NG seats at the same price it would have been offered new - and at that time pay for the seats.

I requested precisely this^^^ when the NG seat shortage first came to light. It seemed like a fair workaround to me--pay for what I would be getting and upgrade later without incurring a penalty--but was told that it was not possible to do it that way. Whether it's a quirk of TM's ordering and mfg inventory software, or a corporate policy that favors Tesla, I don't have a clue. Besides, no one could actually tell me one way or the other whether my car would have NG seats, as ordered. On balance, I believe it's disarray rather than deceit.

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Please forgive my ignorance in advance as I am new. How do I know if I ordered next gen seats? I don't see anything specific in the design studio that says next generation seats. I ordered the upgraded interior with the leather seats for $1500. Are those next gen seats?
Thanks

Next generation seats are a third option only available (at the moment) to those configuring a P85D; in the design studio it's the upper line of buttons to the right of the larger Textile seats option button. Next Gen seats are priced at $3500 over the standard textile seats.

 

[golfski]

To suggest that "fan boys" share the blame by overlooking Tesla's mistakes is really stretching it to me. I think it's best to stick to the issue and not name call, or otherwise attack the people on this forum just because they may have a different opinion than you. I'm one of those "fan boys" but at the same time it's clear to me that you have a legitimate concern regarding your seats.

Please don't confuse me with someone that actually has a P85D issue, I have an S60 that is one of the cheapest models you can buy, and I have loved every mile of it - so much that I can't wait until I can buy an X, even with the list of issues I have had (master charger failure, creaks, seat rocking, panel mis-alignment, sun-roof replaced, frunk not closing). I can live with those type of quality issues because as a manufacturer they are pretty new and building it from the ground up. I don't think that argument applies to how they do business - there is nothing really ground break about their business operations model (I'm not talking about their direct sales model) and how they set consumer expectations, which is why I have less tolerance there.

I am blaming the fanboy (based on definition here Urban Dictionary: fanboy) because, in my opinion, they are overlooking Tesla's mistakes because they are so into what they are producing, for whatever reason (electric, technology, sustainable energy, super-car, etc..) and I think that is going to hurt the company in the long-term. As an investor and a consumer of their products (with a warranty that is loosely tied to the long-term success of the company) I think they should be learning from their mistakes now while the audience is limited. If Tesla treats their mass-market customers this way I don't think they will be delivering 500,000 units a year like they are planning. I have been following Tesla in the more recent years and these forums and it doesn't seem like they are learning from their mistakes and seem to be making more of them in the recent months and actually getting worse at setting consumer expectations.

Again, Tesla has proven they will make it right on an individual basis if asked, but they need to work harder on getting it right up-front so that burden is not on the consumer to get them to make it right. At a point when they have only delivered 60,000 cars or so - you can get ahold of Jerome and other top officials - @ 500,000 units/year thats not sustainable and they need to be getting this stuff right out of the gate.

 

[zzzzdoc]

I received Version 2 and had to get the DS to hand write on my Delivery paperwork that I was missing the Next Gen seats which will be installed when available ( told a couple of months).

+1. What had upset me about it, was that I had spoken to my DS about this a few days before, when I was making payment. He changed the final delivery paperwork to indicate that they needed to install the seats in the future. But when I arrived at the SC, that notation was nowhere to be found. I was told, no problem, just sign the paperwork stating that I had received the car with the Next Gen seats, and they had delivered everything. I refused, and then it was hand written on my contract. Seriously poor business practices. I had no problem with the concept of getting the correct seats in a few months. But trying to have me sign paperwork that they didn't have to replace them was inexcusable.

In the end, all was well (assuming that some day I'll get the seats I paid for), but they clearly grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

[Andyw2100]

Some of the first people posting here that were being told of the issues with the seats were actually being given three options. Their options were the two every one else has been being offered:

1) Take delivery with the older seats; get the Next Gen seats swapped in when available
2) Take delivery with the older seats; keep them and get credited back for the difference

The third option was to delay delivery until the Next Gen seats were available. At the time this was not going to be refusing delivery and re-ordering, but rather just delaying delivery. I did some searching and couldn't find any posts that talked about this, but I definitely remember a couple of people posting that this is what was offered to them.

I'm guessing Tesla realized at some point that perhaps that third option wasn't really something that they could offer to all the P85D buyers whose seats weren't going to be ready when their cars would be, both because they didn't have room to store the cars, and because they needed to deliver the cars, or at least as many cars as possible, in 2014. So Tesla stopped offering that third option.

It sounds like there are definitely some people who might have chosen that option had it been offered. If there were any possible way for Tesla to have done it, they really should have kept offering all three options. Of course in the big picture of the mistakes made with the P85D launch, that would count as one of the smaller ones.

As many others have said before me, let's hope Tesla learns from these mistakes.

 

[Krugerrand]

... marketing something knowing you won't deliver...

There's zero indication (or proof) that Tesla did such a thing.

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Seriously poor business practices.

No, seriously poor decision on the part of the ONE Tesla employee you were dealing with.

 

[NigelM]

No, seriously poor decision on the part of the ONE Tesla employee you were dealing with.

An employee trained and managed by Tesla; a company has to take responsibility sometimes.

(And we don't need to beat down every single complaint.)

 

[EarlyAdopter]

*Edit:
I looked up the terms of the happiness guarantee and it seems to only apply to leases. I didn't lease. And the terms of the guarantee are somewhat opaque. It says that the remaining lease obligations are waived...it doesn't say that you are refunded all of the payments you made. So you could easily be out of pocket quite a bit of money for origination expenses, down payments, etc. I'm not sure how this all works, but since I didn't lease, it clearly isn't an option in any event.

Nine posts back I quoted where they expanded the happiness guarantee to cover buyers, too.

P85D with wrong seats, but had to figure it out for myself - Page 4

 

[Eclectic]

Nine posts back I quoted where they expanded the happiness guarantee to cover buyers, too.

P85D with wrong seats, but had to figure it out for myself - Page 4

I'm sorry, but a blog post doesn't change the terms of a purchase agreement. Nowhere in my purchase agreement/terms and conditions is there mention of a right to return the vehicle if I'm not happy. In fact, there is a provision that says I'm in breach of the agreement if I refuse to accept delivery within 7 days of being informed that the vehicle is ready.

Do you have a more authoritative source for the claim that the happiness guarantee covers purchases as well as leases? I know this...if I were to sue Tesla over the happiness guarantee and walked into court with a printout of a blog post, the judge would look at the actual contract, see no guarantee, and Tesla would say that the blog post had a typo, and it meant only leases.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

I'm sorry, but a blog post doesn't change the terms of a purchase agreement. Nowhere in my purchase agreement/terms and conditions is there mention of a right to return the vehicle if I'm not happy. In fact, there is a provision that says I'm in breach of the agreement if I refuse to accept delivery within 7 days of being informed that the vehicle is ready.

Do you have a more authoritative source for the claim that the happiness guarantee covers purchases as well as leases? I know this...if I were to sue Tesla over the happiness guarantee and walked into court with a printout of a blog post, the judge would look at the actual contract, see no guarantee, and Tesla would say that the blog post had a typo, and it meant only leases.

A quote from a company's CEO on their official blog seems pretty solid to me.

Where did suing Tesla come in to play? Have you simply asked them about it? Let them know you were unhappy, want to return the car and order a new one? Seems like the simplest route to fixing things. Ask for a loaner or if you can keep the current car until the replacement arrives. Let us know what they say!

 

[Krugerrand]

An employee trained and managed by Tesla; a company has to take responsibility sometimes.

(And we don't need to beat down every single complaint.)

I didn't say a company doesn't have to take responsibility. What exactly is a company? A company is a group of 'people'. Therefore, for a 'company' to take responsibility for its actions requires each person, that makes up that company, to be responsible for their own actions on behalf of themselves AND everyone else in that group. Going out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who make up Tesla do not approve of such actions as changing paperwork after signing, therefore blaming the company would be at the very least quite inaccurate.

I have no intention of beating down every single complaint, simply going for some accuracy in this case. I understand it's easier to remain upset and angry if one has embellished the story to bolster one's position. Saying that Tesla never had any intention of delivering the P85Ds with Next Gen Seats is a complete fabrication since we know that several of the first P85Ds off the line had those seats installed, and were held at the factory because of the safety rating of said seats (and why there was a black hole thread in the first place). Saying that Tesla never had any intention of delivering the P85Ds with Normal mode is at best a guess, since no information exists to support it.

 

[4SUPER9]

I just perused this thread and I am a bit confused.
Is everyone upset because some people got the wrong seats, Tesla admitted their mistake, and they are making it right?

 

[Andyw2100]

I just perused this thread and I am a bit confused.
Is everyone upset because some people got the wrong seats, Tesla admitted their mistake, and they are making it right?

Some people aren't upset at all. (I'm not upset.) Some people are upset that they were not informed before going to pick up their cars that they did not have the Next Generation seats they had ordered. Others may be upset for different reasons.

 

[4SUPER9]

Some people aren't upset at all. (I'm not upset.) Some people are upset that they were not informed before going to pick up their cars that they did not have the Next Generation seats they had ordered. Others may be upset for different reasons.

OK then, so I got it right. Tesla made a mistake and are fixing it. For those that are still angry, my recommendation is to let it go. Life is short. It would be one thing if they fought you on this, but they didn't. They did good by you, and did so immediately. Enjoy the awesome customer service they are giving you.

I'll unsubscribe from this thread now.

 

[Eclectic]

A quote from a company's CEO on their official blog seems pretty solid to me.

Where did suing Tesla come in to play? Have you simply asked them about it? Let them know you were unhappy, want to return the car and order a new one? Seems like the simplest route to fixing things. Ask for a loaner or if you can keep the current car until the replacement arrives. Let us know what they say!

Perhaps you missed the part where I noted that none of the purchase documents said anything about a happiness guarantee. You can add a contract term by making a vague comment on a blog, even if it's from the CEO.

What are the terms and conditions of the guarantee? From what I've seen on the lease guarantee, you lose any payments you've already made. That's significant. But more important, the guarantee doesn't exist for people who didn't lease.

And like I said, I already sold my old car and sent my money to Tesla, which they accepted. So the clock can't be turned back. I've complained to my DS and I received a response that the seats will be installed when they're ready. That's the extent of what Tesla is willing to do. It's unacceptable.

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I just perused this thread and I am a bit confused.
Is everyone upset because some people got the wrong seats, Tesla admitted their mistake, and they are making it right?

I can only speak for myself. I am upset because I paid for something that was not delivered. Tesla has my money, I don't have what I paid for. Are they making it right? Not to my mind. They should have deducted the cost of the seats at delivery and then I'd have paid for them when they were installed at a later date. That is not something Tesla is offering. Some people don't care. I do.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

What are the terms and conditions of the guarantee? From what I've seen on the lease guarantee, you lose any payments you've already made. That's significant. But more important, the guarantee doesn't exist for people who didn't lease.

And like I said, I already sold my old car and sent my money to Tesla, which they accepted. So the clock can't be turned back. I've complained to my DS and I received a response that the seats will be installed when they're ready. That's the extent of what Tesla is willing to do. It's unacceptable.

No one here can answer that question. Only Tesla can. They've put that statement out there, but to my knowledge no one has called them on it. You're unhappy, justifyably so. Call them, escalate above your DS. I think you might be surprised at the level Tesla will go to make their customers happy. We can only know if you try.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

I have informed my DS of my problem. There is no such thing as a happiness guarantee other than for people who leased. I didn't lease. So if you're so sure that this guarantee exists, go ahead and find the documentation for it. I've looked. It's not there. If you want to know if there's a guarantee out there that I haven't found, then please, go ahead, and find it. A sentence in a blog post doesn't supersede the terms of the purchase agreement that I've gone through many times. You have a P85D per your signature line. Go look through your purchase agreements. If you find a guarantee, I'd be happy to listen to you.

Perhaps that's because it's a purchase agreement, not a post-purchase agreement.

I cannot help you to help yourself. The offer from Tesla is out there. It's on you to take them up on it.