Ostrichsak
Well-Known Member
So, to summarize, your "success story" of your personal experience with Tesla was them giving you your money back when the car sucked. Most people wouldn't categorize that as a victory but for some reason we grade Tesla on quite the curve.
Also, I noticed you said you had to email about your deposit... most would prefer calling over something so important as backing out of a car deal but I guess if your rep was responsive this wasn't as big of a deal to you. Now try a scenario where you try to refuse delivery and your salesperson isn't "in that day" which is a lie because they're not on-site (more on that later) so you email and don't get a response. Days go by along with several more emails and... nothing. Then he comes back to say that he will "talk to a manager to see if they will allow you to transfer it to another car" making it sound like they're doing you a favor to even allow that much. Then, when you say you'd rather be refunded they make it sound like this isn't a normal occurrence but they'll try to make an exception for you and then.... radio silence. You can't call anyone because they don't answer and all of their voice mail boxes are too full to even leave a damn message. In your case, you lucked out. Be thankful it didn't require more than that or you'd still be cussing them to this day the way most are.
You also lucked out because some of the situations where you actually buy the car and are now FORCED to deal with issues can be worse. I had one car take SIX MONTHS to get title work. Stop and think about that for a second before you brush it off as no big deal. Nobody at Tesla had any clue how to fix it and I talked to literally dozens of people from the Pacific Northwest to where I am in Colorado and all over the country to get a resolution. Nightmare. Believe it or not, that's but one problem in the dozens or so we had on that car alone. I though it was an outlier and the next two used car Tesla purchases proved this was no exception but indeed the rule. We bought all three from different regions and worked with an entirely new team of individuals each time with similar horrific results.
Funny that you talk about calling your sales rep (good luck) and asking tons of specific questions because they've never even seen your car. Ever. There's a dozen "sales experts" that hand hundreds of calls and emails a day and exactly ZERO of them have hands on any of the actual cars. Not one. All of the used cars are housed off-site at various locations and none of the sales experts are located at said sights. Looking at pictures means nothing. In my experience (again, bought three... deposits on several) they do a really good job of taking a 100-mile photo of a panel with "some" damage. Then, when the car arrives weeks later, the damage is far worse than the picture indicated but they will try to tell you "well, that was in the photo so you agreed to that damage.
It's also like pulling teeth to even get to see the car before signing paperwork as is also by design with Tesla. You have to demand to look it over first and, reluctantly, they may let you see it. Don't even bother asking to drive it because they will laugh you out of the building. Shady, shady, SHADY used car tactics worse that used car dealerships to try to sell cars to otherwise unsuspecting buyers.
You then say you'd quibble the "when you have a problem" part and then go on to say how you had a problem in the same breath. ROFL Okay. Not sure how your experience allows you to "quibble" with my saying that you will have a problem. I never said they wouldn't fix it (that would be another conversation entirely but you'll find that warranty denial threads are on uptick lately as well) I said that you'd have a problem. The reason I know this is because the "70-Point Inspection" these used Teslas get is an absolute lie. It's spit out with zero recourse to try to make people feel at ease about buying directly from Tesla. The examples of how this can't possible be true is countless with stuff ranging from french fries to incredibly dangerous safety issues that would have been easily caught if anyone actually looked at the car. Just because you had a rare positive experience with the service center near you doesn't mean this will be the same story for everyone everywhere.
It's not "some" users. Even if it were, the fact that you can't call anyone at Tesla by design should tell you all you need to know about what you can expect for customer service. Sure, for the majority if the known issues that come up due to poor engineering they can correct them in the field easily. For the outlier cases it quickly turns into a nightmare when you have nobody to contact and nobody to old accountable until your issues is resolved. This has absolutely nothing to do with expectations or inability to do repair work on our own which is the next statement you make to try to bolster your incorrect case. This assumes you know a lot more about me than you obviously do so I'd leave the assumptions out of the conversation because you don't know me. Getting a warranty from the very entity that will ignore you when you actually need warranty work isn't fixing anything.
I'm happy that you had a good experience but the planets aligned perfectly for you (and you still had issues) compared to most people who share their experience.
