Per Tesla Customer Service: Request to complete Financing 30 days before Delivery

[sdawg11]

I thought I would share some interesting information that Tesla CS shared with me on the phone yesterday. I called Tesla CS to ask why no one has contacted me 7 days since confirming information on the "updated" order page in my account. It should be noted that I originally intended to pay cash and switched to seek financing through Tesla. My goal was to make sure I could get the ball rolling on financing.

Tesla CS stated, no VIN or delivery specialist assigned yet, but based on how everything looks, the vehicle should be ready in 2-3 weeks. They also gave me the direct number for the finance team to start financing, because a VIN isn't required to get that process started.

I called the direct finance team and I was then told the opposite... a VIN is required before finance can begin. They also said that 30 days before delivery, once a VIN is ready a link will open on the myTesla portal allowing me to complete financing online. But this will only happen 30 days before delivery. I immediately thought this was complete BS since countless people online talk about being called with a VIN, to schedule delivery 1 week later and secure the financing within a couple days. Perhaps this is the goal for Tesla moving forward once the backlog is taken care of? But either way, there is some contradicting information between two Tesla departments and what is actually happening in the real world.

Has anyone else been told something similar by Tesla regarding financing 30 days before delivery and being unable to start financing until a VIN is available?

 

[sdawg11]

FYI:
Current owner
Reserved 6/1/18
Configured 6/27/18
AWD/PearlWhite/PUP/19"/EAP

 

[untilcomplete]

Interesting to see what comes of this. My Finance option came up a few days ago. I didn't receive an email saying to complete financing, I just so happened to check my account. Once approved through Tesla (took about 10 minutes), I still have not received any email or phone call regarding my delivery. No VIN, still RN. White AWD.

 

[P3D_Denver]

Interesting to see what comes of this. My Finance option came up a few days ago. I didn't receive an email saying to complete financing, I just so happened to check my account. Once approved through Tesla (took about 10 minutes), I still have not received any email or phone call regarding my delivery. No VIN, still RN. White AWD.

same here, here is my info:

reserved 3/31/16
configured P3D 6/26/18
credit app and trade-in opened up 7/24/18

I was given a trade in value for my car the next day, credit approval took a few days .

Still no call or email.

 

[ewoodrick]

Financing through Tesla is (more specifically, has been) a 2 step process. The first step is the pre-approval process, which, if chosen, is completed when configuring the vehicle. The second step is the finalization of financing, which can occur in just a few hour, immediately before purchase.

For my delivery, 2 months ago:

Friday noon, get call that car is available and can pick up on Saturday at noon.
Friday afternoon, portal open to show final pricing and what I owed and still needed to pay.
I entered Bank routing number
Picked up car at noon the next day.

 

[xdriv3]

Financing through Tesla is (more specifically, has been) a 2 step process. The first step is the pre-approval process, which, if chosen, is completed when configuring the vehicle. The second step is the finalization of financing, which can occur in just a few hour, immediately before purchase.

For my delivery, 2 months ago:

Friday noon, get call that car is available and can pick up on Saturday at noon.
Friday afternoon, portal open to show final pricing and what I owed and still needed to pay.
I entered Bank routing number
Picked up car at noon the next day.

For "pre-approval" will they run a credit check at that point? Also, if you do it do Tesla, do they run the credit report once and apply to multiple banks?

 

[Wubbles]

For me it went...

Placed Order with full cash payment originally

1-2 weeks ago whenever they rolled out the updated order page to reconfirm my information, I had requested to change my payment method from cash to financing

7/25: ISA emails me (first time ever being contacted by Tesla) requesting I confirm my information once more. I mention to her that I'll be switching to financing vs paying in cash and that I'd like to go through Tesla financing. I had also asked her for my VIN # since my account was still just showing my reservation number. She shortly responded back with my VIN.

7/26: ISA modifies my order page and allows me to apply for Tesla Financing. I enter in my personal information that same day.

7/27: Financing section of the page has updated. Has my interest rate (3.59%, 72 months), amount financed, amount due at delivery, and monthly payments I'll be making. I also got a new insurance policy now that I had my VIN and could shop around. As soon as I sent the updated insurance information over to her, she called me to schedule delivery for 8/6.

I don't know specifics in what Tesla does regarding credit checks and if they apply it to multiple banks. They do require your social security number, and today I got alerts saying there was a new credit inquiry on my credit report. So I imagine they run it as soon as you apply. I was expecting to get financed through Chase since that's where a good # of people seemed to have ended up with, but Tesla got me financed through Wells Fargo. Perhaps it's dependent on your location or maybe they see who you have prior credit history with when running your report. No idea what their methodology is when it comes to selecting the bank.

 

[GoodOmens]

When I had my initial ISA contact (7/10) he said they were anticipating delivery at the Tysons Corner, VA center "closer to the end of next month at this time [August], so please do not proceed with loan applications at this time since they are generally only honored by lenders for 30 days."

I had to decline that car because it would have arrived well after we moved to Memphis. Just got assigned a car in Nashville so will let you guys know if it's a similar scenario. They are running out of "instacars."

 

[Revelate]

For "pre-approval" will they run a credit check at that point? Also, if you do it do Tesla, do they run the credit report once and apply to multiple banks?

Tesla may or may not pull a credit report themselves: since they aren't financing there isn't that much need to do so but they might in order to socialize the app to their various lending partners... there's no captive lender in the Tesla model.

Whoever they farm it out to, will indeed pull their own credit report, and there's no way to really avoid that other than to not use any sort of dealership financing. That's simply how the current market works unfortunately.

That said, it's a non-issue: mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries explicitly are de-duped from a scoring perspective: rack up 1 or rack up 100 in a relatively short time period (14 days is the minimum on any relevant FICO model, Experian Risk Model v2 if you're curious as that's still used on a mortgage tri-merge pull) and it takes hardly any time at all to underwrite an auto loan.

Personally I marked Tesla financing and also applying with a few CU's I have relationships with and then simply take the best deal.