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Sometimes it hard to keep the faith: repeated Supercharging failure and bad service

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He suggested I drop in the new Rocklin service center as 'maybe they have a quick fix or way to fast charge you'. The rep 'called ahead to Rocklin and made sure they were ready for me'. Got to Rocklin, and they were in no hurry to help. They said at best the fix was half a day and it was already 3.30pm.

I ended up driving away to their tow provider in Auburn where I started all over again on the phone with Tesla. New rep this time, insisted I'd have to pay for the tow cause the fix would have only taken 1.5 hours in Rocklin. I argued till blue again, finally doing a con call with the Rocklin service director who confirmed that the BEST CASE part replacement was only 1.5 hours, after an hour or two of diagnostics, then a trip to the Vacaville superchargers to test - half day minimum and it was now 5pm. He also confirmed my plan made sense and agreed to sign off on the extra 15miles of towing that the phone rep couldn't. Thank goodness for him finally stepping up. Their dicking around ended wasting a couple more hours and left me steaming.
The bolded sections contain conflicting messages from Tesla employees and seem to me like real failures of Tesla service and valid areas of complaint.
 
Do you know how much crap I'd get from my wife if she had to drive rushour to work in the Bay Area in a rental Chrysler after being spoiled by her Model S with carpool lane stickers if we had to wait a couple weeks for parts to come in?

Uh oh.

I have been concerned about and sympathetic to your situation and story from the beginning, but this one line of yours not only ended that, full stop, but now I have less than any interest in your plight.

Unless you wrote that in jest, but I see no indication you did.
 
The bolded sections contain conflicting messages from Tesla employees and seem to me like real failures of Tesla service and valid areas of complaint.

+1. Handoff NOT handed off. Accountability not properly baked into process?

He suggested I drop in the new Rocklin service center as 'maybe they have a quick fix or way to fast charge you'
.

Client asked to adjust plan, assured they would be ready for him, and that worst case he could get AC charge to get to his destination.

Since he has almost no need for DC charging, and the car was functioning perfectly otherwise, interfering with his vacation plans to get DC charging fixed is absurd, at least to me. How is this complicated to understand? As a shareholder, the disregard for the unnecessary COST of having this repair done so far from home seems absurd. Any other shareholders here agree with me?

Defending errors turns them into "not errors." Get enough annoying bureaucratic, anti customer service "not errors" and soon people group Tesla in with Verizon and Time Warner when they think about corporate culture. I hope that won't happen to Tesla. I am a HUGE fan of the company and Elon Musk, but blind loyalist attempts to brush small issues under the rug don't help streamline things long term. Small things unattended tend to become big things.

And there is the question of the integrity of such defense. The integrity of being dismissive of client preference to keep driving their perfectly operating car.

These bugs must have lights shined on them so they are fixed BEFORE they cost too much.
 
+1. Handoff NOT handed off. Accountability not properly baked into process?

.

Client asked to adjust plan, assured they would be ready for him, and that worst case he could get AC charge to get to his destination.

Since he has almost no need for DC charging, and the car was functioning perfectly otherwise, interfering with his vacation plans to get DC charging fixed is absurd, at least to me. How is this complicated to understand? As a shareholder, the disregard for the unnecessary COST of having this repair done so far from home seems absurd. Any other shareholders here agree with me?

Defending errors turns them into "not errors." Get enough annoying bureaucratic, anti customer service "not errors" and soon people group Tesla in with Verizon and Time Warner when they think about corporate culture. I hope that won't happen to Tesla. I am a HUGE fan of the company and Elon Musk, but blind loyalist attempts to brush small issues under the rug don't help streamline things long term. Small things unattended tend to become big things.

And there is the question of the integrity of such defense. The integrity of being dismissive of client preference to keep driving their perfectly operating car.

These bugs must have lights shined on them so they are fixed BEFORE they cost too much.

Boy are you assuming a lot. The vehicle had an electrical problem. Tesla has no way of knowing the parameters of how bad it was, or going to get. Driving around with faulty charging equipment could become a cascading problem so it makes perfect sense that tesla doesn't want the car being driven like nothing is wrong. Indeed this form is littered with examples of people who continue to drive known defective vehicles and it did not work out so well for them in the long run getting stuck in the middle of intersections and so forth.

As for "shining a light on problems" I could not agree more, but there is a less public area to do that in on the owners forum. At least that prevents the media trolls from quoting quote Paul the problems" with Tesla and how "owners are unhappy" with their service because anybody can cherry pick a public forum to make such an argument and Lord knows they have tried.
 
"Unfortunately no, not on these posts. People who criticize TM or tell anything other than a good experience are immediately bullied and the validity of their post, and behavior is immediately questioned...sad but true."
- - - Updated - - -


so true...

Maybe there should be a separate forum for "true believers" and they can have a "zero tolerance" policy for criticism of Tesla Motors or the great and powerful Elon Musk!!!
 
"Unfortunately no, not on these posts. People who criticize TM or tell anything other than a good experience are immediately bullied and the validity of their post, and behavior is immediately questioned...sad but true."
- - - Updated - - -


so true...

Maybe there should be a separate forum for "true believers" and they can have a "zero tolerance" policy for criticism of Tesla Motors or the great and powerful Elon Musk!!!
This has NOT been the case for me. My experience has been the opposite. I have taken exception with how Tesla has handled issues and I have not been bullied. Sure there are SOME who will disagree, but for the most part when the criticism is valid it has been accepted. Keep in mind this is a forum consisting of those who, for the most part, love their cars and the company that builds them, BUT we also recognize that the company has made mistakes and will likely make others. Hopefully they will only improve based on the feedback we provide them. Any bullying should be reported to the Moderators post haste!
 
Indeed. Valid criticisms are welcome though there will be some disagreement as to the seriousness of each specific issue. The idea that we are simply blind fanboys who never criticize the company is completely false.

Agreed, there are many examples of valid criticisms. However, if someone joins and then only posts negative items--often ones that have been beaten to death--it's likely they don't actually own the car and are just trolling (Newbie being a recent example). In the end the Model S is a car and there are good and bad things about it. Not everyone has a "perfect" experience or likes every detail--if they did there would be little need for forums. You'll find almost everyone has posted about things they don't like or problems they have had. Almost all have also posted positive items too. On balance the positives of the Model S far outweigh the negatives.

And of course, there are some posts where what's read sounds much stronger than what the author intended.
 
After reading all the snippiness, what I'd like to know is what the resolution was for the OP's problem with supercharging. Did they have to replace something? Is it something other Model S owner's should check on before counting on a 1st supercharge on a long trip?
 
"Unfortunately no, not on these posts. People who criticize TM or tell anything other than a good experience are immediately bullied and the validity of their post, and behavior is immediately questioned...sad but true."
- - - Updated - - -


so true...

Maybe there should be a separate forum for "true believers" and they can have a "zero tolerance" policy for criticism of Tesla Motors or the great and powerful Elon Musk!!!

Please. There are plenty of posts about problems on the Model S and issues with Tesla and people don't get jumped on. Sure, some might be more defensive that others but it's not like your posts are edited or banned.
 
Defending errors turns them into "not errors." Get enough annoying bureaucratic, anti customer service "not errors" and soon people group Tesla in with Verizon and Time Warner when they think about corporate culture. I hope that won't happen to Tesla.
Already happening.

Look, I have previously mentioned some egregious stuff where Tesla has had over a year to get it right and hasn't, and in one case, has blatantly not even tried. I don't think Tesla's corporate culture is like that of Verizon or Time Warner, but it seems to be a broken corporate culture. It's broken in a different way -- namely, total sloppiness, no internal commincations, and problems simply ignored rather than fixed.

It's *bad*, and the bad is particularly at middle-management level. (Never let anyone tell you you don't need good middle managers!) Maybe all this stuff can be fixed by emailing the executives directly, maybe not. I suppose I'll try emailing Elon about his company's rampant copyright violations. But even if that works, having all problems escalated to top-executive level is not a sustainable method of operating a large company.

I am a HUGE fan of the company and Elon Musk, but blind loyalist attempts to brush small issues under the rug don't help streamline things long term. Small things unattended tend to become big things.
Yeah.
 
Already happening.

Look, I have previously mentioned some egregious stuff where Tesla has had over a year to get it right and hasn't, and in one case, has blatantly not even tried. I don't think Tesla's corporate culture is like that of Verizon or Time Warner, but it seems to be a broken corporate culture. It's broken in a different way -- namely, total sloppiness, no internal commincations, and problems simply ignored rather than fixed.

It's *bad*, and the bad is particularly at middle-management level. (Never let anyone tell you you don't need good middle managers!) Maybe all this stuff can be fixed by emailing the executives directly, maybe not. I suppose I'll try emailing Elon about his company's rampant copyright violations. But even if that works, having all problems escalated to top-executive level is not a sustainable method of operating a large company.


Yeah.

I think that the growth of Tesla really contributes to some missed opportunities of producing high quality service. I do believe they are trying and if there are issues, bring it up to Tesla.
 
Tesla took good care of us in the end

OK - we just got our MS back.

The service started out badly: when my wife dropped the car off in Palo Alto she was told there were no loaners of any sort available - despite having been promised a Model S and waiting a week to book the car in so they could get everything arranged. The desk clerk wanted to have her dropped off at work but she hadn't made plans to be picked up and had to get our child from daycare after work - so she insisted. They made her wait for 10 minutes while they called around and finally she demanded to speak with the service manager who made the promises. He came out and was nice and helpful and handed her the keys to the loaner 'he had tucked away for her'. He really did have everything nicely pre-arranged but Tesla service does have some internal communication issues.

Remember our primary issue was with Supercharging. They ran diagnostics and replaced the High Voltage Junction box. By the time it was done and tested it took them a couple days - so there was no quick fix.

The car has also been having intermittent issues with the GPS losing its fix. They ran lots of tests and found nothing so did nothing. It failed almost daily over the summer but hasn't in a couple months so its possible that some intervening software update resolved the issue - or that maybe the GPS antenna connection goes bad when hot or some such. I guess we will find out over time.

Our headliner edges were showing and fraying which made for a rather unsightly entrance to a car of this price. Tesla changed the headliner and they did have to go above and beyond to get this right. The windshield had to come out so the 3M crystalline film on it had to be reapplied. It took them a few more days but Tesla took care of everything, including a few other minor service bulletins (suspension washers, window controller software update (so the rear doors open more easily), etc). They even retested the Supercharging after the roof liner was done.

Tesla had the car for 8 days, which we didn't mind for a quality job and which we felt we got in the end. The best thing about this repair was the service manager was awesome about keeping us informed as the work progressed.
 
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Awesome, glad that worked out. Seems they need a field in their CRM system for special instructions.

Wonder how you'd implement that in a fail safe way. Getting customer service so it's frictionless would be yet another selling point. The only time I've experienced that is when I'd actually worked with my service mgr in a previous life.