Oh boy... Where to start. The original sales rep was fine. After him it all fell apart really quickly. I didn't get numbers for a few days so I put a deposit down just to lock in a car without knowing exactly what I was paying. Finally I was able to access the car under the online portal and I applied for a lease but didn't get an approval. I just got a message stating I'd hear back in a few days. Never heard back.
So I called my delivery specialist and she said there was an issue with financing but also said that I was auto-approved by their system. Well the website didn't tell me that and nobody from their financing/ leasing office got to me with numbers so I was just left hanging in the wind with no communication as to what the next step was. During that call she also asked about me trading in my Model S. I told her I'd be interested in an offer. She was going to call me back with info on the trade and the financing snafu. Never happened.
A week later she called to tell me the car would be here much earlier than anticipated. At this point nobody has told me what's going on with the financing issue, I still don't know what my lease numbers are and I don't have an offer on my trade. She remembers the financing issue and the trade when she calls me to tell me the car is early and again says she'll get resolution on them within the hour. No call back that day.
Next day I call in the morning, this part chaps my ass, and I ask for her. The gentleman who took the call forgot to put it on hold right away and I heard him tell her I was on the phone for her. Then suddenly I'm on hold. 10 seconds later he's back on the line and she's "stepped out of the office". That pissed me off. No return call that day and they just flat out lied to me.
Next morning I call and she's not in yet. The guy on the phone asks me if I want to leave a message and I just flat out told him no, because I had no confidence I'd get a call back. He assured me I would because he was the sales manager. She was apparently sick but to that guy's credit, someone did call me back and gave me a lowball offer ($42,000) for my S85 and he reiterates that there's an issue with financing and he'll have her reach out to me.
The next morning (last Friday) I call her and tell her that I might be going out of town for a week and if the car has arrived as she suggested it would, I'd be open to picking it up then but no pressure. Well, STILL no final lease numbers and it wasn't until then, probably 3 weeks after starting the process, that I found out the issue was from me registering the car at my Illinois address and having it delivered to my Los Angeles address.
So that day, the day of delivery, is the first time I found out what my final numbers were and then to add insult to injury: they were wrong. They charged me $2500 for delivery instead of $1500. So I have an appointment for 6:00 to pick the car up and I'm on the phone with Fremont at 5:30 trying to get the lease corrected. I get to the showroom and it's still wrong but now for different reasons. They were charging me tax for Illinois AND California. They didn't seem to think there was any way around this but at that point it was a difference of $600, I was at the showroom looking at the car and I was fed up. I just did it.
The things that ticked me off the most were the blatant lie about her not being there when she was and the offer for my car rubbed me wrong too. I've bought and sold enough cars to know what margins most dealers work on and most dealers don't have the benefit that Tesla does in that they basically set the price of the entire used car market for their cars. My car is a $52,000 car for Tesla every day of the week and they offered me $42,000 for it. That's a 21% markup. That is silly especially when other dealers were offering me $47,000 left and right and they didn't have the benefit of actually being Tesla. You may as well bow out of the CPO business if you're just going to slap people around like that. And the crazy thing is I knew they offered low so I never sought the offer out. They kept pushing it on me though and I finally said, sure, let me know what you'd pay.
At the end, I could see that the girl helping me was hopelessly busy and they did get it all tied up, albeit with a lot of needless stress. She was apologetic and never made any excuses when I expressed my frustration. She just apologized and said it was unacceptable. I have respect for that response because as someone who owns a business I know how hard it is to sometimes sit and eat some humble pie. It's not easy to say "Yeah, I screwed up really bad, sorry".
All in all, I can't fault her too much. The showrooms appear to be poorly managed from a corporate level. I am a huge Tesla fan. I've been talking about these cars for years and this is my third in 11 months. Yet it seemed as if they were actively working on turning me back to BMW. They need a lot of work in terms of improving the customer experience because they were sub-par throughout the entire process. The only saving grace was that they were nice.
Aren't you sorry you asked!? :-D
So I called my delivery specialist and she said there was an issue with financing but also said that I was auto-approved by their system. Well the website didn't tell me that and nobody from their financing/ leasing office got to me with numbers so I was just left hanging in the wind with no communication as to what the next step was. During that call she also asked about me trading in my Model S. I told her I'd be interested in an offer. She was going to call me back with info on the trade and the financing snafu. Never happened.
A week later she called to tell me the car would be here much earlier than anticipated. At this point nobody has told me what's going on with the financing issue, I still don't know what my lease numbers are and I don't have an offer on my trade. She remembers the financing issue and the trade when she calls me to tell me the car is early and again says she'll get resolution on them within the hour. No call back that day.
Next day I call in the morning, this part chaps my ass, and I ask for her. The gentleman who took the call forgot to put it on hold right away and I heard him tell her I was on the phone for her. Then suddenly I'm on hold. 10 seconds later he's back on the line and she's "stepped out of the office". That pissed me off. No return call that day and they just flat out lied to me.
Next morning I call and she's not in yet. The guy on the phone asks me if I want to leave a message and I just flat out told him no, because I had no confidence I'd get a call back. He assured me I would because he was the sales manager. She was apparently sick but to that guy's credit, someone did call me back and gave me a lowball offer ($42,000) for my S85 and he reiterates that there's an issue with financing and he'll have her reach out to me.
The next morning (last Friday) I call her and tell her that I might be going out of town for a week and if the car has arrived as she suggested it would, I'd be open to picking it up then but no pressure. Well, STILL no final lease numbers and it wasn't until then, probably 3 weeks after starting the process, that I found out the issue was from me registering the car at my Illinois address and having it delivered to my Los Angeles address.
So that day, the day of delivery, is the first time I found out what my final numbers were and then to add insult to injury: they were wrong. They charged me $2500 for delivery instead of $1500. So I have an appointment for 6:00 to pick the car up and I'm on the phone with Fremont at 5:30 trying to get the lease corrected. I get to the showroom and it's still wrong but now for different reasons. They were charging me tax for Illinois AND California. They didn't seem to think there was any way around this but at that point it was a difference of $600, I was at the showroom looking at the car and I was fed up. I just did it.
The things that ticked me off the most were the blatant lie about her not being there when she was and the offer for my car rubbed me wrong too. I've bought and sold enough cars to know what margins most dealers work on and most dealers don't have the benefit that Tesla does in that they basically set the price of the entire used car market for their cars. My car is a $52,000 car for Tesla every day of the week and they offered me $42,000 for it. That's a 21% markup. That is silly especially when other dealers were offering me $47,000 left and right and they didn't have the benefit of actually being Tesla. You may as well bow out of the CPO business if you're just going to slap people around like that. And the crazy thing is I knew they offered low so I never sought the offer out. They kept pushing it on me though and I finally said, sure, let me know what you'd pay.
At the end, I could see that the girl helping me was hopelessly busy and they did get it all tied up, albeit with a lot of needless stress. She was apologetic and never made any excuses when I expressed my frustration. She just apologized and said it was unacceptable. I have respect for that response because as someone who owns a business I know how hard it is to sometimes sit and eat some humble pie. It's not easy to say "Yeah, I screwed up really bad, sorry".
All in all, I can't fault her too much. The showrooms appear to be poorly managed from a corporate level. I am a huge Tesla fan. I've been talking about these cars for years and this is my third in 11 months. Yet it seemed as if they were actively working on turning me back to BMW. They need a lot of work in terms of improving the customer experience because they were sub-par throughout the entire process. The only saving grace was that they were nice.
Aren't you sorry you asked!? :-D
