Service and communication (out of main)

[JRP3]

One of the main problems with service seems to be communication, between Tesla and the customer, and within Tesla. My only "service" experience has been trying to purchase solar panels and a powerwall. After receiving the standard "we will contact you when available" reply my other questions went unanswered for weeks until I finally got a reply from someone who only said they could not answer any of my questions, and didn't provide any other contacts who could help me out. I think Elon "cost engineered" away too many people in sales and service.

 

[Boomer19]

One of the main problems with service seems to be communication, between Tesla and the customer, and within Tesla. My only "service" experience has been trying to purchase solar panels and a powerwall. After receiving the standard "we will contact you when available" reply my other questions went unanswered for weeks until I finally got a reply from someone who only said they could not answer any of my questions, and didn't provide any other contacts who could help me out. I think Elon "cost engineered" away too many people in sales and service.

that could be very true..
now that it’s been a couple quarters and they seem to be cash flow positive, maybe they can afford to bring back key people in key areas to be able to alleviate some of the ‘first responder’ type comms that are needed from service people. at least to bridge the gap until you can finally get the actual work done. give an idea.

being in a pinch and being in the dark is not a good combo when it comes time for that customer to become a repeat customer.

 

[Nocturnal]

a thought about being rude. yes.
neroden even admitted to being ‘on the spectrum’. so while rude, he doesn’t see it that way. he doesn’t have the eq that normal person has. it wasn’t premeditated or intentional. if he was telling the truth. i believe him, considering his style, tact, in comparison to the people that i spend a lot of time around. annoyingly beating a topic to death is another trait i see weekly.

not an excuse, just an explanation.

so it’s unfortunate the service nightmare drove him to get banned for whatever envelope he ended up pushing too far (we seemingly won’t find out), and possibly dumping tesla, and continuing to rip service on disqus. however, i valued him,
his POV and his entertainment value.

I'd rather not being around people like that. Being on the spectrum doesn't mean you are a D$ck. I was being polite by calling him rude. My honest thoughts are that he is one of those people who thinks he is so smart and anyone who thinks differently is stupid, despite the fact that in this particular occasion he was completely unable to form a counter argument and just kept repeating the same vague complain and personal attack. His ideas on how markets operate were laughable.

 

[abasile]

I think Elon "cost engineered" away too many people in sales and service.

My impression is that the service centers themselves are staffed at reasonable levels. We've been very pleased with our interactions with on-the-ground service personnel, on the vehicle side and on the energy side.

Where I think Tesla has skimped is in the national-level call centers. As a result, there are long hold times when customers attempt to call for sales support and about vehicle issues, and no, the app and a bunch of FAQs can't possibly address every concern that people call about. Tesla Energy suffers from the same problem, whether you're calling for sales or service. Also, Tesla does everything possible to make their phone number hard to find; they really don't seem to want anyone to call.

The good news is that this should be relatively easy for Tesla to fix. Staffing up national call centers should be much easier than, say, correcting systematic issues across all of the service centers. I think Tesla's sales will continue to grow regardless, but there will be less pain along the way with improved customer communication.

Regarding @neroden, I do miss many of the insights he shared, but he was over-generalizing from his own sub-par service experiences and he stopped adding value here when he incessantly harped on this. He always had a tendency to harp on "pet" issues that were of little importance in the grand scheme of things, like bugs in USB music playback and the then-lack of Superchargers in North Dakota, but he just couldn't see past the service issues.

 

[Boomer19]

I'd rather not being around people like that. Being on the spectrum doesn't mean you are a D$ck. I was being polite by calling him rude. My honest thoughts are that he is one of those people who thinks he is so smart and anyone who thinks differently is stupid, despite the fact that in this particular occasion he was completely unable to form a counter argument and just kept repeating the same vague complain and personal attack. His ideas on how markets operate were laughable.

understood - like i said, not an excuse, just an explanation. he basically called me stupid at least once, but also agreed with a lot of my rants. just normal interactions to me, but i could see how he rubbed some people the wrong way. and btw, my reply to your comment out of many was not implying you did anything at all, to be clear.

but some others took shots that were unfair. and, two wrongs dont make a right! all it does is fuel the arguing.
thx nocturnal

 

[Boomer19]

My impression is that the service centers themselves are staffed at reasonable levels. We've been very pleased with our interactions with on-the-ground service personnel, on the vehicle side and on the energy side.

Where I think Tesla has skimped is in the national-level call centers. As a result, there are long hold times when customers attempt to call for sales support and about vehicle issues, and no, the app and a bunch of FAQs can't possibly address every concern that people call about. Tesla Energy suffers from the same problem, whether you're calling for sales or service. Also, Tesla does everything possible to make their phone number hard to find; they really don't seem to want anyone to call.

The good news is that this should be relatively easy for Tesla to fix. Staffing up national call centers should be much easier than, say, correcting systematic issues across all of the service centers. I think Tesla's sales will continue to grow regardless, but there will be less pain along the way with improved customer communication.

Regarding @neroden, I do miss many of the insights he shared, but he was over-generalizing from his own sub-par service experiences and he stopped adding value here when he incessantly harped on this. He always had a tendency to harp on "pet" issues that were of little importance in the grand scheme of things, like bugs in USB music playback and the then-lack of Superchargers in North Dakota, but he just couldn't see past the service issues.

he definitely had his hang ups, and he did have some insightful points across a variety of topics, but i generally loved his entertainment value, even though i was on the receiving end 1 or 2 times

 

[user212_nr]

Everyone who owns a Tesla or has at least read a bit on the forums knows that Tesla has some serious issues with its service. I don't want to make a list here, but its definitely such an extreme and pervasive problem that it is a kind of a self-inflicted wound by Tesla.

Imagine that any other company, whether it is a car company or a supermarket, etc, just downsized their customer service and sales department to the point where people could not even easily complete a sale, let alone get a refund, etc. It wouldn't work for them and its going to be bad for Tesla at some point down the road when they start getting some competition, or when they've sold out all the "true believers" and need to start attracting customers.

This is especially true when you think about the higher-priced, higher margin vehicles like the Model X. They receive the same poor service, sales, and support as everyone else, despite having paid 100k+ for their cars.

They say that they need to avoid the "dealership" model, and yet despite their "efficiency" they can't manage to provide 1% of dealer's level of service. They can barely even sell a car if the buyer is not begging them for a Tesla.

I think maybe Tesla needs an investor resolution to censor them for their poor service. I don't want to get rid of Elon Musk by any means, but he sure looks like he is worn out an inattentive, totally unaware of what is going on at Tesla besides the factory floor.

 

[ewoodrick]

I just had awesome service last week.
Are you reading forums and bitching or do you have a real experience?

 

[user212_nr]

I just had awesome service last week.
Are you reading forums and bitching or do you have a real experience?

Both. Personally, I can take the poor service and not get too offended as it is a good car, but it definitely worries me.

I can definitely say that I was 10% ready to request my deposit back when they refused to answer my phone calls, return emails, and that their voicemail box was full. Like I said, I don't want to go listing gripes, but the issues that people have listed on this forum are very serious and pervasive.

You do raise an excellent point, however, is how to quantify the degree of their poor service, if in some areas or at some times of the year their service is better. Some of the issues are the fault of individual employees as they don't step up to handle the work they are given professionally - I saw over one of their shoulders and entire inbox of unread messages ("no kidding you didn't see my message"), but they obviously don't have a customer-service mindset at Tesla. If Amazon has a dedicated employee to chat with me about my $5 dog whistle order, if Shop Rite has a dedicated employee to handle my $2 milk refund, what is wrong with Tesla?

 

[user212_nr]

Tesla is starting to ditch Salesforce and replace it with its own software for company salespeople

Maybe their new software will help them answer emails.

 

[ewoodrick]

Both. Personally, I can take the poor service and not get too offended as it is a good car, but it definitely worries me.

I can definitely say that I was 10% ready to request my deposit back when they refused to answer my phone calls, return emails, and that their voicemail box was full. Like I said, I don't want to go listing gripes, but the issues that people have listed on this forum are very serious and pervasive.

You do raise an excellent point, however, is how to quantify the degree of their poor service, if in some areas or at some times of the year their service is better. Some of the issues are the fault of individual employees as they don't step up to handle the work they are given professionally - I saw over one of their shoulders and entire inbox of unread messages ("no kidding you didn't see my message"), but they obviously don't have a customer-service mindset at Tesla. If Amazon has a dedicated employee to chat with me about my $5 dog whistle order, if Shop Rite has a dedicated employee to handle my $2 milk refund, what is wrong with Tesla?

And if you ever have followed any forums, you would understand that 90% bitching means that it is probably an awesome product. People come to a forum to bitch, not to compliement.

 

[user212_nr]

And if you ever have followed any forums, you would understand that 90% bitching means that it is probably an awesome product. People come to a forum to bitch, not to compliement.

There's no excuse for a car company that cannot answer emails or phone calls, when your grocery store can answer the phone. Making a great product does not have anything to do with this.

There's no way that all their lost sales do not impact their margins negatively. They've had to lower their prices on all of their models because they turned away customers who would have paid more. All this to fire (or neglect to hire) someone who makes $10 /hour selling a 40-100k product.

 

[ewoodrick]

There's no excuse for a car company that cannot answer emails or phone calls, when your grocery store can answer the phone. Making a great product does not have anything to do with this.

There's no way that all their lost sales do not impact their margins negatively. They've had to lower their prices on all of their models because they turned away customers who would have paid more. All this to fire (or neglect to hire) someone who makes $10 /hour selling a 40-100k product.

Your grocery store is also sucking wind on sells. They are working hard to provide solutions to offset decreased sells and competition from many other services, like Amazon.

 

[RobStark]

I can't help but think of a former TMC member with a very large position who dumped everything back in August

Lack of a service center in Syracuse NY and "communications" are going to kill Tesla.


BTW I am starting to crave a lesson in Railroad Economics 103 for Advanced Students.

 

[AlMc]

@neroden did well with TSLA.......he obviously could have done better IF he stayed in the stock for this run up. If you manage your own money for any length of time you realize you make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. While he was long winded at times I did enjoy (and did learn) from some (not all) of his long diatribes

 

[StealthP3D]

Lack of a service center in Syracuse NY and "communications" are going to kill Tesla.

I think he was right. Tesla is already dead, the only reason we don't know it yet is that their communication is so poor! /s

 

[S3XY]

Yeah. Like WTH was he thinking after all this time. When smart people do dumb things...

Didn't he get margin called?

 

[Fact Checking]

I recall it was essentially something like... his investment thesis in Tesla changed due to his perception that service/communications issues would kill the company, therefore he needed to exit.

While I think he's wrong about that (and his comparison to VW service outside of this forum is laughable - VW service in the US market is legendarily bad), if your investment thesis changes to that degree, looking for an exit is prudent.

...although, if you think the SP will go up despite your thesis, it may be prudent to hold for a while instead of exit near a 52 week low - that is, look for an exit, don't necessarily exit right away, especially when the new thesis is a slow one to take effect - and he didn't...

I believe Neroden became a single-issue investor due to bad local service experience - which special type of anecdotal evidence I believe clouded his judgment.

Too bad he missed this run, his posts on TMC were valuable, and he helped investors see the forest from the trees in darker times.

What are the Q1 headwinds?

As I see them:

• Q1 auto sales are seasonally weaker in the northern hemisphere.
• Netherlands pulled a lot of Q1 demand to Q4 - possibly several months worth of.
• German EV sales are still depressed due to VW and German government shenanigans, and it's unclear exactly when they'd announce the new incentives.
• China Model 3 sales will be GF3 heavy, which might depress demand for Fremont made units.
• UK's corporate car incentives might be fully recognized starting in April - not Q1.
• California state incentives were cut in December.
• End of U.S. tax credit of $1,875 probably pulled 4-5 weeks of Q1 U.S. demand for SR+ to Q4. Effect on AWD/P should be 3-4 weeks, on S/X, ~2 weeks.

Maybe Korea will make up for it, and maybe Model Y will be accelerated, but right now it looks probable that Fremont will be under-utilized in Q1, which drop even ramping GF3 production might not keep up with.

On the plus side GF3 ramp-up might be a glorious highlight of Q1, year-over-year comparisons might still be favorable, and if Tesla can post marginal profits in Q1 then they'll probably meet the 12 months profitability S&P 500 inclusion criterion.

 

[Krugerrand]

Didn't he get margin called?

He was on margin?!

 

[JRP3]

Didn't he get margin called?

We're talking about Neroden, so no.

I believe Neroden became a single-issue investor due to bad local service experience - which special type of anecdotal evidence I believe clouded his judgment.

He became emotional at the wrong time.