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Terrible Buying Experience - Should I be as turned off as I am?

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#21
csalvato said:
Your account post-purchase, you mean? I am starting to think I will get much better service if I put my $2500 down...then I'm a customer, not a lead - something they seem to value more highly...at least I think..?
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Well it's literally 50/50 chance you'll have a terrible experience or the most amazing. I was unlucky and got the latter. It was the worst buying experience of my life. The silver lining is instead of getting a 75D...I was able snag a new 90D for about the same price. So that made up for the bad experience.

Still even post purchase and even with a new OA, there is a decent amount of "I'll look into it for you" or "I'll get it done for you" and nothing actually happening. Me personally every time I tell someone I'm going to get something done or do something for them, I always do it and follow through. But that's just me.

At the end of the day, owning the Tesla is something I have no regrets on at all, it's the most amazing vehicle ever. Buy the car and hopefully things get better for you during the purchase process.
 
#22
csalvato said:
Your account post-purchase, you mean? I am starting to think I will get much better service if I put my $2500 down...then I'm a customer, not a lead - something they seem to value more highly...at least I think..?
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Not really, my experience with the OAs was already with the $2500 down and that didn’t help until I complained and got s hold of a manager. I tried 4 different OA with no luck.
IF you do put $2500 down then do it on a custom order, you have 3 days to get your $ back. If you do it on an inventory car Tesla does not have to refund your deposit if they don’t want to.
 
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#24
Maybe you got a blessing in disguise. If past is any indication...there should be some major discounts on inventory cars by the second or third week of December. Will save you much more than the missed $1,000 on the referral code.

As far as customer service. I have heard a lot on both extremes.

Also hopefully you are leveraging one of these pages for searching for inventory cars. Much more complete than Tesla.Com

www.teslainventory.com
www.ev-cpo.com
 
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#25
Quick2Judge said:
Maybe you got a blessing in disguise. If past is any indication...there should be some major discounts on inventory cars by the second or third week of December. Will save you much more than the missed $1,000 on the referral code.

As far as customer service. I have heard a lot on both extremes.
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Interesting take. The problem with that approach is that it cuts it really close to getting delivery by end of year. If I get delivery by end of year, I get $12.5k incentives in mid-February when I file my taxes. If it gets delivered on Jan 1, then I have to wait 15 months to get my $12.5k in tax incentives, assuming they don't kill any incentives in 2018.
 
#26
@csalvato If you want to talk to an OA who is super helpful and would be willing to do some inventory digging, PM me. My experience wasn't perfect, and sometimes it felt like I knew more than them, but overall the OA I worked with was willing to put the time in and make sure I got exactly what I wanted. He's based in San Diego, but I think he can still help you out.
 
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#27
csalvato said:
Interesting take. The problem with that approach is that it cuts it really close to getting delivery by end of year. If I get delivery by end of year, I get $12.5k incentives in mid-February when I file my taxes. If it gets delivered on Jan 1, then I have to wait 15 months to get my $12.5k in tax incentives, assuming they don't kill any incentives in 2018.
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Oh....it will cut it close - but Tesla goes crazy trying to squeak out every sale possible by the end of the quarter. In fact that is why they will offer the discount. You will get a 2017 delivery.

That said although you will definitely get a better deal so they can get their end of quarter sales numbers this is also the busiest time for the delivery specialist so from a customer service perspective it is not a great time to order.

Also you cannot negotiate....you have to wait and be patient for them to offer the mass market deals...or in my case they offer them at an individual level.
 
#28
Quick2Judge said:
Oh....it will cut it close - but Tesla goes crazy trying to squeak out every sale possible by the end of the quarter. In fact that is why they will offer the discount. You will get a 2017 delivery.

That said although you will definitely get a better deal so they can get their end of quarter sales numbers this is also the busiest time for the delivery specialist so from a customer service perspective it is not a great time to order.

Also you cannot negotiate....you have to wait and be patient for them to offer the mass market deals...or in my case they offer them at an individual level.
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Are you advising to not put down a deposit then, to keep the pressure? Or put down the deposit and hound them for inventory deals closer to the date? Sounds like the former.
 
#31
Unlike high end dealerships who staff may have extensive knowledge of state credits and many years experience with a particular model, many tesla employees mean well but have limited knowledge. This forum has been very helpful to me but if you don’t have time to do your own research it is difficult to know what questions to ask.
 
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#32
csalvato said:
Also just saw this. Super freaking helpful, because Tesla's inventory search on their site is terrible.
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Yep, Tesla inventory shows different things depending on desktop/mobile and how you get to the list. But those inventory search sites are much easier to use. Keep in mind, though, they don't have access to everything. There are inventory cars that don't show up there, to see those you'll need to go through an OA and hope he/she is doing a good job at searching.
 
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#33
The OP lost me with his post. Is he buying a CPO or new? It sure sounds like a CPO to me since he mentions CPOs. He's not going to get the $1k referral credit off a CPO, since what the Tesla rep told him about it was correct --- if they do that for him they have to do that for everyone and Elon said "no" to that:

Elon Musk to Tesla employees: NEVER discount a car

csalvato said:
Fault 5: I told my rep I was 100% ready to order but he needed to call me on Oct 24th early in the day, before I got on a plane and was disconnected for a week. He called me late in the day on Oct 24, as I was on the Jetway - not in a position to place an order.
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If you're 100% ready to order, then he doesn't need to call you since you do it yourself online. Unless we're talking CPO. I don't know how that works.

csalvato said:
I ... realized I didn't see any features of Enhanced Autopilot. I set up another test drive.
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Seriously? You need to do your own research. No rep will tell you everything about the car but missing autopilot seems nuts to me, more so on the Tesla's rep's part but you don't escape blame with me. Research all the options -- it doesn't take long -- and any ones you want, or are considering, you need to put in your email arranging the test ride. If you're interested in air suspension, you don't want to be test driving a coil vehicle -- and you can't expect your test drives to be in a P100D so you need to be clear when arranging your test drive what options you are interested in so they have an appropriate vehicle ready for you.

Test driving a Tesla and AP never comes up once? Sorry, but I'm not surprised I have a hard time understanding what you're even buying.

csalvato said:
To be honest, all of this has me seriously questioning whether I should get a Tesla at all.
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And it has me wondering why I read your post.

Good luck to you anyway. When I bought 4 years ago I knew a lot more about the car than the Tesla rep which didn't surprise me since in looking to purchase one I had heard that can be the case and we didn't even have a store back then, only a small service center. I got more answers here than from Tesla.

But I loved the buying experience since I only needed the vehicle. The rep could have stayed behind but he had to come.

I'm used to walking into a car dealer and being relentlessly hounded, and fed all sorts of BS, to try to get me buy, because that's how they earn their living. I'll take the Tesla model but they do need to get better. The problem is also the job market. It's hard to find one good person to hire these days and Tesla has had to hire a ton.
 
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#34
Best way to find an inventory car is to go into the gallery and have an OA search on the trims you want while you're there with them. Make a note or have them send you the VINs of the cars you're interested in. Once you have the VINs, you can lookup the cars on Tesla's site, even if they're hidden from normal searches. The X I bought wasn't listed on Tesla's site or any of the external inventory search sites. Once you know which car you want, you can buy it from the Tesla's site.

Dealing with them on the phone, you're easily forgotten and coming second to the bodies that are actually in front of them.

There are not a lot of publicly searchable inventory cars right now. I don't know if most have been hidden or if they're just all gone. When I purchased in July, I had dozens of P100Ds to choose from. Now, there's only 11 total Model Xs listed on teslainventory, all 100Ds.
 
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#35
Canuck said:
If you're 100% ready to order, then he doesn't need to call you since you do it yourself online. Unless we're talking CPO. I don't know how that works.
Click to expand...

I was going with an inventory car, because with their current sales process it's framed up as somewhat stupid to NOT go with an inventory model. The inventory cars can have additional features for the same cost as a custom build. When I started looking, several inventory models were a much better value than custom build. But the only way I knew to get Inventory info was to use an OA (didn't know about those other sites).

Canuck said:
But I loved the buying experience since I only needed the vehicle. The rep could have stayed behind but he had to come.
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This is the main difference in experiences. Now, the OA plays a much bigger role, and this is a mistake. It just seems like it's not Tesla's core competancy.

Canuck said:
The OP lost me with his post. Is he buying a CPO or new? It sure sounds like a CPO to me since he mentions CPOs. He's not going to get the $1k referral credit off a CPO, since what the Tesla rep told him about it was correct --- if they do that for him they have to do that for everyone and Elon said "no" to that:
Click to expand...

CPOs were eligible for referral credit. The problem wasn't that the car wasn't eligible. It was that I missed the deadline by 6 hours because of dozens of miscommunications/OA dropping the ball.

Canuck said:
you don't escape blame with me.
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I am definitely not blameless, which is why I have been so forgiving to Tesla so far.

But when I look back at this ordering experience for a $100k vehicle, I just realized how much of a slog it's been to keep this ball moving forward. It's not what I would expect from purchasing a premier vehicle. Maybe my expectations are off, since this is the first luxury/performance car I've purchased.

But based on other replies here, I don't think my expectations are off. I think Tesla is trying to do a high touch sales process after mostly being low-touch up until their inventory program was rolled out...and is doing a mediocre/poor job at it.
 
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#37
Purchasing a discounted inventory car is a much more complex process than custom ordering which is the “normal” route. You are also attempting to buy at one of the worst times since tesla pulled almost all inventory cars on October 26th to conserve the loaner fleet. Inexperienced OAs have a tough time getting these cars, as they are time sensitive and they need to work with the SC that has the car. Sounds like you should walk from your current OA and get a recommendation for a new one on TMC. You also need to be prepared to do a lot of work yourself like searching ev-cpo and facebook groups for deals.
 
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