Questionable Bodyshop treatment of battery!!??

[ginger biker]

Evening all,
So I had a little incident with my month old model 3 and a dog off it’s lead. Dog came off much worse than the car, but still the insurance provided repair agents still quoted over £3000 to do the repairs.
They finally collected the car a month to the day after the incident, having waited for parts and arranging to transport the car 270 miles to their facility (on quite possibly the shonkiest transporter I’ve ever seen). I’ve since been told they’ll call me next Friday 5th March) to let me know when the rest of the parts that they’ve now ordered will arrive - assuming they arrive by 12th and I get the car back by 19th it will have been off the road for over 2 of the 3 months I’ve owed it!
I’ve been made to sign out of the tesla app, but still have my teslamate running so I can keep tabs on the car - besides the full throttle runs in their car park, they also haven’t locked the car once since it’s been in their possession - since Thursday they haven’t moved the car, but it’s been left outside, unlocked, online and with a frunk open notification active. The battery finally hit 0% this afternoon.
So the question:
a) has anyone had a similar experience with this or another bodyshop being so reckless with customer vehicles?
b) will the draining of the battery cause any significant degradation?

 

[NewbieT]

Can’t answer for a).

b). Is definitely not good but could be quite hard to quantify. Depends how long they leave it like that. The car does have a in-built reserve but no idea how big.

Repair agents like to make money on hire cars. In my experience they’re in no rush to fix your car. Worse still parts availability for Tesla is not quite like a call to the local motor factors. There are horror stories in the USA for repair times waiting on parts - don’t read the forums if your not ready to be scared!

Please do let us know how you get on. Is a Tesla ‘approved’ body shop?

 

[ginger biker]

I refused the car they offered (1l manual corsa, my commute when I do need to go to the office is 190miles each way so that’s out of the question! ) so they’ve no incentive to string out the repair on that front.
They don’t seem to be in a rush full stop - took them a few days to contact me after insurance instructed them, then over a week to do the estimate, initial parts seemed to arrive reasonably quick, but then 2 weeks to come and collect the car.
They are Tesla approved (at least according to their website) but not listed on the Tesla website as an approved repairer.
I’m just shocked at how they have treated the car, between the joyride and the battery drain I’ve not been particularly impressed!

 

[Billbrown1982]

Why have you been forced to log out of the Tesla app out of curiousity?

I'm not overly surprised by the little joy ride, and while I would be unimpressed, as long as it was short and undamaged, and the rest of the service was good, I'd probably let them get away with that.

But the battery thing would be a major concern for me. Especially as its liable to be sitting there at 0 for a while longer now...

 

[nightowl]

That doesn't sound good. What reason did they give for making you sign out of the Tesla app?
I'm guessing they probably turned off dashcam and sentry mode too (if you had those on & they didn't disconnect storage.)
I know Tesla themselves do this presumably for their own security reasons.

The impression I get is that they rarely deal with Tesla cars or one of the staff hasn't had a go in one before so they thought they'd have a little bit of fun with it. You hear stories of cowboys in garages taking cars out for joyrides and then the owner getting speeding tickets so in one way it's at least nice that you can see the location and speed so you know what they are doing with it & that they only did it in their car park. I'd probably not yet reveal to them that you have TeslaMate running in case there are further developments and/or you need to take some form of action against them.

 

[Durzel]

I would be spitting feathers.

I too want to know why they asked you to log out of the app. That would raise massive alarm bells with me. The cynic in me thinks it’s because of exactly how they’ve been treating the car.

Also why on Earth did it have to go 270 miles for a repair? Whereabouts do you live?

(Tesla put the car in service mode, which disables dashcam etc and essentially makes the app useless)

 

[ACarneiro]

I also think making you sign out of the app is dodgy.
The joy ride makes them seem unprofessional and the battery left at 0% would worry me.
I suspect you may well need to make a phone call, I’m afraid.

 

[Palros]

I might also be worth raising this with your insurer as well. In effect, they are potentially damaging your car.
I know with Companies like Honda, they will deal with your insurer and make sure they use Office repairers. Dont know about Tesla
Finally, The App thing sounds dodgy. If they were a "official" repairer they surely would have access to the right modes.

 

[UrbanSplash]

Call your insurance company. Request a different repairer of your choice comes to collect the car.

‘Tesla approved’ means nothing in my view. Perfectly good repairers around that will do an ace job.

Use of your car for joyriding is unacceptable, even if they claim ‘it’s part of the repair process’. I would actually be mentioning the police while talking to your insurer for unauthorised use of your car. You’ve all the data available. Not sure the garage would want to be explaining why their staff were doing this.

 

[UrbanSplash]

By the way, apologies I didn’t reply to your questions! But yes I would be extremely concerned regarding the state of the battery. Is this how an ‘approved’ agent has been trained to deal with a Tesla ?!

Your car is still yours! Don’t let them mess around with it, you’ve got years of use ahead!

sounds like an awful situation

 

[ginger biker]

Thanks for all the responses so far. I wasn’t particularly happy with the app thing, the repairer claimed it was “for the technicians safety” but as you guys rightly point out, service mode would be enough, besides, I have the USB from the dashcam here with me (I pulled it in case the insurance wanted the footage as part of any investigation as while they’re covering the repairs it’s actually the dog owners liability and he can’t pay)

im in two minds as to whether to call them today, or keep collecting evidence to present back to the insurance company. Either way, I’m going to sign back in to the app, will be an interesting few days/weeks ahead......

as to the 270 miles - no idea, I did point out to the form filler when I initially raised the claim that there are much more local, fully approved, Tesla repair centres but they’ve insisted on taking the car from Lancashire to Hampshire to repair (backhander maybe?)

 

[Jason71]

Thanks for all the responses so far. I wasn’t particularly happy with the app thing, the repairer claimed it was “for the technicians safety” but as you guys rightly point out, service mode would be enough, besides, I have the USB from the dashcam here with me (I pulled it in case the insurance wanted the footage as part of any investigation as while they’re covering the repairs it’s actually the dog owners liability and he can’t pay)

i'm in two minds as to whether to call them today, or keep collecting evidence to present back to the insurance company. Either way, I’m going to sign back in to the app, will be an interesting few days/weeks ahead......

as to the 270 miles - no idea, I did point out to the form filler when I initially raised the claim that there are much more local, fully approved, Tesla repair centres but they’ve insisted on taking the car from Lancashire to Hampshire to repair (backhander maybe?)

I would at least call the repairer and demand they put the car on charge. TBH I would have done it before it hit zero.
I would also mention that you have data logging and have recorded full throttle events. Maybe you can scare them into treating it better.

 

[Cardo]

Out of curiosity, as I’m picking up my M3 tomorrow, would you not consider putting the car into valet mode to stop technicians from having their joyrides?

Also, if you can sign back into the Tesla app at any time, what’s the point of making you sign out? What an utterly pointless exercise.

 

[MrBadger]

Out of curiosity, as I’m picking up my M3 tomorrow, would you not consider putting the car into valet mode to stop technicians from having their joyrides?

Unfortunately valet mode has a number of limitations that may prevent a body shop from doing their job - no access to front boot/12v battery area being one.

 

[Cardo]

Unfortunately valet mode has a number of limitations that may prevent a body shop from doing their job - no access to front boot/12v battery area being one.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks. We need a “Dodgy, untrustworthy workshop” mode.

 

[26ct2143]

It will get a bit interesting for them as the 12v battery won't charge when the main battery is 0%.
When the 12v goes flat, they will have some headaches getting it moving again.
If I was looking after the car, I'd definitely want to avoid that situation.

 

[GRiLLA]

What makes you think they are 'full throttle' in the car park? Seen people here before that see large consumption figures are assume it's due to speed, whereas really simply moving cold cars around creates huge consumption figures.

0% seems unacceptable to me, I would be straight on the phone to them and my insurer. Your 12V battery is likely to be toast if they are going to leave it without charging and there will be damage to the main battery, Tesla are clear that if you gt under 10% the car need to be charged immediately.

 

[Durzel]

You can (and should) turn Speed Limit Mode on and set it as low as possible.

As said above 0% battery is going to cause problems in the short term and possibly even longer term.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

If I had to guess, then I'd say they asked you to sign out in the mistaken belief that this would prevent accidental remote operation of the windows, boot, frunk, doors etc whilst they are working on the car. They probably don't realise that you could just sign in again.

The tactful way to deal with them might be to call them and tell them you've received both a high power usage alert and also a low battery alert warning from the car, and that it may die on them unless they charge it very quickly. The chances are they don't know what the car can do, so there's no need to admit to using Teslafi, Teslamate, etc.

 

[ginger biker]

So I called the repairer, to ask them to charge the car - their first response was a fairly aggressive "You're in your app then" - I said no, I can see everything on Teslamate, to which the response was an incredulous "What?" - I explained that the car constantly sends all its data to Tesla, and I was watching that - she went all sheepish and tried to say they had disconnected the battery (to replace the front bumper, I think not!), but then said they were working on the car - I informed her that the battery had depleted since the car has not actually been turned off since they took it, it wasn't a cliff edge disconnection, and was simply poor management of the car. "Oh I'll go and speak to them" was the response.

@GRiLLA using 300kW of power in the car park, compared to the fractions of that when moving it around every other time, that's what makes me think it was full throttle - as that's the only time I've ever seen the car use that amount of power.

I haven't mentioned this to them yet, but I imagine they'll be doing some frantic googling of Teslamate to see what information you can see on it right about now.