[RESOLVED] Tesla Owner Delivery - False Advertisment - Advice?

[JeffS]

The car I purchased was only 9mos old. I wanted to know if it had a drive unit replacement, or had ever been in an accident that was not reported to CarFax. The service person kind of led me to the right question.
SC - "Tesla does not provide repair history on the car"
Me - "All I want to know is - has the car ever been in an accident that doesn't appear on the car fax, and has the DU been replaced yet...?"
SC - "Well...looking through a list of parts - I'd say...'no' "
Me - "So, what parts are you seeing?"
SC - "Looks like all that the car has ever had was a door handle seal and some wiper fluid"
Me - "That's the parts list?"
SC - "Yep"

I think it's also dependent on who's staring at the computer screen and what kind of mood they're in. I may have just gotten lucky. Who knows.

 

[Eclectic]

If Carfax is at fault here, don't expect much if you ask them to make it right. A few years ago my car was damaged and needed to have a dent taken out of a quarterpanel. It was reported to CarFax and when I went to buy a new car I was told that my car's value was about half what it would have been without the CarFax report. The reason? CarFax listed the repair as structural damage, so VW couldn't resell my car as a CPO (it was very low mileage and otherwise a perfect fit for the CPO program). Since they'd have to send it to auction, the car had very little value on trade.

I asked CarFax to explain why they listed structural damage on the car and they gave me a very canned response that they use a certain manual for listing damage type and any time you have repair to this part of the car, it's structural. I sent them pictures of the damage, which showed that the damage was a dent above the rear wheel well, but they insisted that they wouldn't change the report. I went as far as taking it to the Virginia Attorney General but no one would budge.

The only recourse you'll have it to Tesla, and if they were simply passing along what CarFax reported without any independent knowledge that the CarFax report was wrong, they really have no fault here, so a $2k price bump is actually pretty charitable on their part.

 

[BrokerDon]

Whenever I'm looking at a used vehicle purchase (CPO included) I always order vehicle history reports from BOTH CarFax and AutoCheck (by Experian).

I've never had to submit a claim to CarFax or AutoCheck but according to AutoCheck's website BOTH CarFax and AutoCheck have "Buyback Protection for qualified, registered vehicles that helps protect you against unreported title brands". Here's an overview of AutoCheck's protection: Buyback Protection | AutoCheck.com

AutoCheck also searches the vehicles "auction-announced data from the two largest US auctions" which according to AutoCheck CarFax does not: AutoCheck vs. Carfax | AutoCheck.com

Also I have our auto insurance agent run the VIN to see what their records show.

The other step I take is to actually get a printout of the service history... or if it's not available at least have the Service Department let me look at the vehicle history screen.

Good luck!

 

[3mp_kwh]

People miss how often expensive cars get fixed, with the expressed intent to avoid a Carfax. It's common, and not their fault (police and insurance drive it). If Tesla knows a car's history, withholds it and then uses it against you later, pooh, pooh on them. It's the Clean Carfax = No Accidents presumption, that I hate most here.

Bumper dings/paint jobs are pretty common. If that's all it was, your problems are probably fewer than those of the employee who said "its been in an accident".

 

[tga]

Carfax misses a lot and basically their only response is to shrug and say nothing is guaranteed.

Carfax is sh*t. When you place an order, you have to acknowledge "I agree to the Customer Agreement and understand that CARFAX may not have the complete history of every vehicle."

I purchased a CPO (non-Tesla, obviously) in 2008 that had a clean Carfax. A year later, it was in an accident that cost insurance nearly $25k to fix. While repairing it, the bodyshop found evidence of a prior accident repair (which was done poorly, and probably caused the hardware failure that initiated my accident).

I just ran the Carfax. Guess what? It's completely clean, even though there are (at least) 2 accidents that should be on the report.

A clean Carfax report isn't worth the pixels on the screen it's made of.

- - - Updated - - -

You also have to realize that Carfax is not immediate. Sometimes there can be quite a delay in posting to Carfax. That may have been the issue.

6 years isn't enough time for them to get their sh*t together?

 

[asudan]

Seems like a bunch of moving parts:

1) Tesla knows about damage history now - how do they know that? Internal parts or repair information, or pulling a new carfax?
2) If on the carfax, or parts list, they should be able to tell what the damage was. Was it a bumper cover? no issue. frame related... issue.
3) What was the date of the damage - and what was the date of the carfax.

As others have said, Tesla knows everything about our cars - no one can repair them without providing a VIN and getting parts from Tesla. I'd chase this thing, but at the end of the day if it's minor, and you have been happily driving the car for 6 months, none the wiser, then I wouldn't sweat it.

Last question - how could it pass CPO "inspections" if it had been wrecked? Lots of questions - few answers.

 

[Electroman]

IMHO - Title belongs to the mods. No ifs or buts on that.

 

[tls]

From my point of view, it's negligence at best and fraud at worst. If you dug in your heels and insisted on returning the car for money back, I suspect in most states you'd get it. It's not plausible that Tesla had no record the car had been repaired; as others point out, you can't even get parts without supplying a VIN. And if I'm reading correctly a Tesla employee supplied that Carfax (which they knew, or should have known, was incorrect) to back up the claim the car was clean.

To me, the most likely explanation is a single, very-bad-apple Tesla employee. After all, this is one of the few situations where the sales staff do have room to wheel and deal -- I have been in the SC and seen the prices of CPO and inventory cars negotiated (behind the fig leaf of addressing minor complaints or defects not noticed until the car arrived at that particular SC from elsewhere), including my own. But Tesla should want to repair the damage their employee did to their brand by treating you this way. It would be rational on their part to simply eat the six months' depreciation on the car and credit you your money back towards a new one. After all, it's not going to cost them anything on a large scale unless they have situations like this arising all the time -- which as we all know, they don't. You've clearly enjoyed the car and came into your most recent interaction with them with a positive impression, and presumably you'd tell the world about it if they went the extra mile to make things right --which as we all know, they usually do.

Your quarrel, after all, isn't with what you were offered on the trade-in; it's with how you were deceived on the original purchase. They should be highly motivated to fix that, and then some.

Have you escalated at Tesla from that point of view? If so, what did they say?