Going prepared is probably a good idea (and I note that no one has actually pointed out what the process is after you say 'no'), but don't expect to need to reject the car. Being informed of the process you would be signing up for is pretty sensible I'd think, although I can't help you.
Rejection criteria should probably vary depending on lots of factors - how much you expect the car to be a show car, how far you live from an SC that is going to try and fix the problems and how handy you are yourself at just doing stuff to make sure its spot on...
I've just looked back over my email exchanges and TBH I was being pretty harsh to the SC as they tried to to the right things for me. This was all way back in I think the 2nd major quarterly delivery rush, so big stress time and production still ramping up etc. My problems did mean I got to drive an S (lovely) and X (hated it) for a few days each
. I had (I think) 3 problems:
- Wheel alignment was abysmal. SC put it mostly right, but it took a suspension upgrade and independent manual alignment to really sort it.
- I thought the brakes needed bleeding, they wanted to run diagnostics and blah blah blah. After trying a different car I concluded my expectations had been set too high by my previous car. (nothing special, Golf GTI equivalent Leon, but it had really aggressive brakes). Bit of bedding in and use and they are 'OK'. Really should have got me the P+, but then I couldn't have my towball .
- I have a sunken bonnet. They say within tolerance, I say one day, really soon, I'll get around to doing this fix. That I haven't says it all really.
However, in the process of investigating the brakes, they scraped the bumper and tore a small external bit of rubber at the corner of the windscreen. Another visit to fix.
Buuut, its now my perfectly imperfect 3 second 0-60 rocket ship which I wouldn't change for a moment. Luckily I'm only 15 mins from the Edinburgh SC, they got all this straightened out eventually and I've not needed to go back in 18 months (inidial delivery was Manchester, for Reasons). I've done the early adopter thing and now the rest of the family are slowly coming round to the idea of an EV and I have an awesome car in the mean time.
Go through the check list before hand. Have a good idea of what you personally, in your situation, might consider staying a flat out no to, and own that decision if it comes to it. What might a ranger fix, what will need a round trip to an SC and how much hassle will that be for you? Most of the outright rejections I've read were warranted - absolute lemons that even the service delivery people have appologised for at the time, most of the screaming of 'you should have rejected it' is not warranted.
One way to possibly limit it is to think about how many items or potential visits are you willing to make? If you are saying one thing needs fixed, that's fine, but are 5, even minor, problems? What about 2 big problems? And then take the checklist round your current car - if you are going to measure the tesla with a caliper you should probably look at some other cars first to get an idea of what 'normal' is before we start holding them to super perfect.
It sounds like the current cars are in pretty good shape and you won't have any problems tho. Just hope you get one like they delivered to Sandy Munro!