Screwed by Tesla today... M3 LR

[Soon to be Vet]

Had scheduled delivery today.. 03/25/2019 convinced my boss to give me the day off got my wife the day off as well.

Anyways I'm stationed over here in NC but the nearest Tesla store to me is 2hrs 30 mins away in Raleigh.

Whole day starts off wrong.. woke up drove to enterprise at 0730 because they booked me a one-way reservation to drive up to Raleigh. I get there enterprise reps tell me there was no car reserved great... try to reach out to the Raleigh store but they dont open till 10:00am..

Manage to some how contact a manager of the store who then tells one of his people to book the car for me.. I get an email notification around 1030am (btw my pick up time was 1100am and I told my job I would be back around 1400 to cover for the afternoon to let the other Marines/Sailors go home)

Continuing on.. so I go to pick up the reservation around 1045am but I'm told yes a vehicle has been booked but it was just done a few minutes ago so nothing will be available till around 1430.. I explain to enterprise hey I'm already running behind can you escalate this up a little bit so I could potentially get anything at this point.

They get me in a vehicle around 1100am and then I'm off and hit the road to Raleigh. By the time I get there I'm already a little fed up (called on the way there to explain the situation was told itll be discussed in our meeting this morning) I walk in the whole delivery process actually goes smooth.

We do a little walk around of the car (model 3 LR) everything is looking good Wife is liking it so that's a plus (convincing her for this purchase was a process all on it's own ) rep says she'll need us to sign paperwork then she'll finish the walkthrough/explaining the rest of the features and what not..

At this point I'm thinking okay I can forget the... (headache/lies-not mentioned in this post) that I went through on top of the whole enterprise debacle that went down this morning.. and try to put that pass me.. but as I'm about to pull off out of their garage with my brand new Tesla a notification pops on the screen.. seatbelt/airbag malfunction..

I'm like oh probably nothing I think I mention it to the Tesla rep who then says "I'm sorry we need to take the car down the street to our service center.."

seriously...

I look at my wife who at this point is like I knew this was bad.. but me thinking oh it's just some sensor that they can reset and then I'll be on my way back home (called work they were kind enough to say take the day off we'll just take it out your leave)

Now what should have been pickup at 1100am went to.. 1:50pm.. which ultimately turned into.. 5pm.. "bad news your whole seat has to be replaced because if you were to get into a wreck your wife's air bag would not deploy.."

So, if I didnt alert anyone of this notification and just brushed it off. I could potentially have risked my wife's life..

1. How did this get back their inspection?



2. Now I'm back home, no Tesla, stuck with a rental that I've driven around for 300+ miles today for nothing, to go back to work empty handed and have nothing to show for taking off work.


Tldr - spent 50k on a car, drove 300+ miles to go get it.. came back empty handed.. now sitting back at home wondering what my next move should be.

I still have faith so..

 

[Knightshade]

1. How did this get back their inspection?

Easy- they never inspected it.

I picked mine up in Raleigh too. When I say they didn't inspect mine, I mean they literally didn't do the state inspection before delivering it. Which is actually illegal in NC.

(Window sticker was also incorrect, and not attached to the car- which is also illegal federally).

That's all after a ton of other delivery headaches, folks never getting back to missed delivery dates, etc on the part of the "corporate" delivery folks.


The good news is you appear to have gotten a cosmetically solid car, which seems the biggest risk, so once they replace the seat you'll hopefully have an awesome car and not have to deal with Tesla the company any further, because they make great cars but they're pretty awful at a lot of the "operating a car company" stuff.

 

[MTSN]

Doesn’t sound like you got screwed by Tesla. Sounds like you had some unfortunate circumstances that led to a lot of frustrations (the fact the car rental was messed up and the fact you live so far isn’t Tesla’s fault), and the problem(s) with the car are being proactively taken care of. Getting screwed would be if they let you leave and didn’t want to fix the problem!

 

[Elmexiken]

Thank you for your service, but blaming this on Tesla is pretty unfair. A car has thousands of parts to it, any of which that can go wrong.

 

[OCR1]

Sorry to hear about your experience. I would ask them to put the car on a flatbed and deliver it to your home when it’s ready so that you don’t have to do the long drive again. I would think they would be happy to accommodate to make up for the lost day.

 

[SMAlset]

Some days you would be better off staying in bed or it can feel that way...wow what a lousy day for you and your wife. People should never dismiss alerts on their car and glad you didn’t. The day could have ended worse. At least you know the alert system worked...starting off with a problem isn’t fun and it doesn’t make Tesla look great I’m sure to your shipmates. Hopefully a ride in it will redeem the car.

My Model 3 delivery went well but our Model S had a defective charge port. It got fixed and no problems afterwards. Been very happy with our cars and no regrets buying either one. Hope you’ll be back in your car soon and having a better day. Nice that you got the LR. The drive back should be enjoyable at least next time. Let us know how it goes and welcome to the forum. Think you’ll find a lot of helpful info and a friendly ear when you need it.

 

[Berus]

Tesla had nothing to do with your difficulties prior to arrival at delivery. I do agree with you that the car should NOT have gotten past their inspection process. I wouldn't say you got "screwed", however. I'd say you had a bad time getting to Raleigh, and, when you did, Tesla had dropped the ball by not adequately checking the car before putting it in your hands. They should definitely, as OCR1 said, put the car on a flatbed and deliver it to you clean and perfect. I just hope you did a walkaround and inspected things such as fitment when you were at the delivery center. You don't want any further surprises.

I don't think you should cry wolf about being screwed at this point - things do happen - with ANY car company. If you have the frame of mind that Tesla has screwed you over before you even have your car, that'll probably impact your ability to enjoy and appreciate it, regardless of how perfect it is. I wish you the best of luck in getting a good unit and enjoying a long, safe period of ownership with it.

 

[ivan801]

It's probably too late to ask for home delivery... But you should ask them to ship the car on flatbed to your house. It's not an unreasonable request, you can mention that you are considering returning the car to add pressure.

 

[Troy]

You can return this car for a full refund. See the details here. Be aware that in the next few days Tesla will switch all production to Autopilot Hardware 3.0. They will publish a blog post about HW3 in mid-April. If you order after that blog post, you are guaranteed to get a Model 3 with native-HW3.

 

[OCR1]

You can return this car for a full refund. See the details here. Be aware that in the next few days Tesla will switch all production to Autopilot Hardware 3.0. They will publish a blog post about HW3 in mid-April. If you order after that blog post, you are guaranteed to get a Model 3 with native-HW3.

But if he bought the car prior to last week’s price increase and he returns it and places a new order, it will cost him an additional $1,500. I went through the same thought process but ultimately decided I’d rather save the $1,500 and if I want to upgrade to HW3 down the road I can apply the $1,500 toward whatever the upgrade price is.

OP didn’t mention if he purchased AP so this may not be relevant.

 

[jjrandorin]

From reading the post, it appears to me that OP had an agreement with Tesla that they (tesla) were supposed to provide the 1 way rental car for the car pickup. This would be why the OP is pinning the enterprise mess on tesla if I read it correctly. Bad set of circumstances, but I would see tesla's insistence on replacing the seat as a positive sign, not a negative one. Safety should always come before convenience.

Its also possible that the error message appeared for the first time when OP went to drive off (or, someone could have ignored it but I find that unlikely).

OP, Thank you for your service, we very much appreciate it. It sounds like a stressful day, and it also sounds like there were some other things that happened that you didnt disclose. Couple that with the fact it sounds like you had to do the "full sales job" on your wife to convince her the tesla was a good choice, and starting like this may cause some extra stress for that discussion.

With all that being said, it sounds like some inconvenient stuff, but it doesnt sound like "tesla screwed you" although you may be frustrated. I also think you should ask tesla to flatbed the car to you rather than you going to pick up the car again. Hopefully they would accomodate that.

 

[32x20]

I had a similar delivery problem (ended up being a steering column module fault), though I never got to see the car on the day of. They did end up doing a home delivery so I didn’t have to take another 6hr round trip to get it.

 

[Soon to be Vet]

Thanks for all your replies guys.. I've read every single one of them. Just an update Tesla will be flatbed delivering it to me whenever they get the replacement seat.

Also just for the record I do look at them offering to replace the seat as an act towards safety but reality is my wife would be sitting in that seat and if I had decided to just brush off the alert and something were to happen on the way back home that air bag would NOT have deployed and they admitted that to me.

It's the principle behind that that affects me.

But again I appreciate you guys commenting and offering advice. I'm as humble as they come thanks again.

 

[AviP]

You should have done the right thing and sat in that seat. There's just no chivalry these days.

BTW, Tesla did reduce its QA staff a few months back. There's your answer.

 

[voip-ninja]

From reading the post, it appears to me that OP had an agreement with Tesla that they (tesla) were supposed to provide the 1 way rental car for the car pickup. This would be why the OP is pinning the enterprise mess on tesla if I read it correctly. Bad set of circumstances, but I would see tesla's insistence on replacing the seat as a positive sign, not a negative one. Safety should always come before convenience.

Its also possible that the error message appeared for the first time when OP went to drive off (or, someone could have ignored it but I find that unlikely).

OP, Thank you for your service, we very much appreciate it. It sounds like a stressful day, and it also sounds like there were some other things that happened that you didnt disclose. Couple that with the fact it sounds like you had to do the "full sales job" on your wife to convince her the tesla was a good choice, and starting like this may cause some extra stress for that discussion.

With all that being said, it sounds like some inconvenient stuff, but it doesnt sound like "tesla screwed you" although you may be frustrated. I also think you should ask tesla to flatbed the car to you rather than you going to pick up the car again. Hopefully they would accomodate that.

Whatever faulted the airbag on the passenger side might not have activated until there was a passenger in that seat, so it might have slipped right by when they checked the car out as they probably don't do check rides with someone riding shotgun.

 

[Troy]

I went through the same thought process but ultimately decided I’d rather save the $1,500

Another consideration could be the resale value. Recently here a buyer was asking for help finding a good deal on a used Model S. The cheapest car matching the search criteria I could find was $49K with AP1 and $61K with AP2.0.

 

[AviP]

Whatever faulted the airbag on the passenger side might not have activated until there was a passenger in that seat, so it might have slipped right by when they checked the car out as they probably don't do check rides with someone riding shotgun.

Which is why QA should have identified it as a post-manufacturing system failure, not a pre-delivery dealer checklist.

 

[dsvick]

... reality is my wife would be sitting in that seat and if I had decided to just brush off the alert and something were to happen on the way back home that air bag would NOT have deployed and they admitted that to me.

It's the principle behind that that affects me.

I'm not sure what principle you're referring to. You got an alert, you paid attention to it, and Tesla said they had to correct it before you could take the car with you - that sounds like pretty good principles to me. If you had ignored the alert and driven home that would have been entirely on you.

 

[tiggerlu]

I empathize with you buddy - we're all SUPER excited to get our car, and part of the problem is that we expect to happen like a dream come true. That's just how things are, and I can understand your disappointment.

Just try to look at it from a different perspective - you have a home, job, food, a partner... a brand new car, and not just any car - the most amazing EV available today...coming soon. See? Not so bad right?

 

[gobble]

I've been reading for the last month about how bad this company is and how crappy their cars are built but for some reason I still sort of want one. Why is that?