Tesla App added a new car, a car I don't own

[nicoletep]

I was alerted this morning via the tesla app that my charging had been interrupted so I clicked on it to see what was going on. I own a Model 3. Suddenly there is also a Model S associated with my account. I don't own an S and can't think of any reason a new car would be on my account.

It has me a little worried that now MY car could be paired with a strangers app and they would have full access to my vehicle and my location. Because i happen to know that the person that named their S Champion is currently driving down the 5 freeway in central california at 70mph.

Anyone else seeing this anomaly?

 

[RayW]

Press the Summon button and see if it comes to you

 

[nicoletep]

Press the Summon button and see if it comes to you

Ha! I am sort of tempted to honk the horn when they park, which should be soon as he's down to 36 miles of range.

 

[oripaamoni]

wow that is concerning....

 

[mblakele]

Could be that the car changed hands recently, and someone at Tesla fat-fingered the ownership update. At some level these are all just records in a database, I suppose.

@nicoletep what did Tesla say when you contacted them? I'm not sure who who have access to the ownership database. Probably not Service. I guess I'd try Roadside Assistance first.

 

[nicoletep]

Could be that the car changed hands recently, and someone at Tesla fat-fingered the ownership update. At some level these are all just records in a database, I suppose.

@nicoletep what did Tesla say when you contacted them? I'm not sure who who have access to the ownership database. Probably not Service. I guess I'd try Roadside Assistance first.

They didn't have an explanation as to what may have happened and they didn't divulge any details about the other car. They unpaired us and assured me it was a one time thing, I was the only case they have heard of.

I was actually getting range anxiety for the guy, he was down to 7 miles when he plugged in.

I think it would be useful to see either from the car or from the app which phones are paired to the car, if only because we would know if someone else somehow paired with ours. I am sure that Champion had no clue I was watching his commute. I only hope that my car doesn't ever pop up on someone else's Tesla app.

 

[ThisIsTrue]

They unpaired us and assured me it was a one time thing, I was the only case they have heard of.

Uh huh. I'm SURE there's another thread with a similar story here, with a fairly small subset of "all Tesla owners".

I was actually getting range anxiety for the guy, he was down to 7 miles when he plugged in.

That's pretty wild.

 

[daniel]

I'd have been tempted to honk his horn in Morse code. "I have control of your car." Or "This is Planet Zonkboggle calling Earth car Tesla." Or just "CQ," (ham radio lingo for "Does anybody out there want to talk?")

My first thought was that somebody hacked your account to charge their supercharging to you.

On the screen in the car, under "Keys" there's a list of which phones are paired as keys. But probably no list of phones that are on the account but are not yet paired as keys.

 

[SMAlset]

Wow that is a pretty wild experience and I don't blame you for being concerned from your end too. Good thing I guess you had configured the notifications to alert you, although you only received it when it was interrrupted and not initiating a charge or when complete I assume. Makes me wonder how long you were paired since I know from our car (my husband and I have our apps paired together to his MyTesla account) I get the notification when he's at work and the car finishes charging. I'm set up with for "all" notifications but for some reason only get that one. He doesn't get the completed alert so I call him from home and tell him to go to the car in case he hasn't been watching his app.

Something got messed up on our app end I think because I use to get all the alerts I had checked. Don't know if it happened during an app update or what but I've even rechecked things and saved and still have the same issue. We also use to get the charging nearly completed warning alert and don't any more. I wonder if this goes back to when we ordered our Model 3. The car didn't appear in the MyTesla originally and they had to do something at their end to reconfigure it so that it did and we would get our priority as well. Hmm. Don't want to mess up my Model 3 reservation/invite until I get my AWD car so might live with it until then. We mentioned this notification issue when we had it in for the annual last month but they couldn't see any reason it wasn't sending them.

 

[Chickenlittle]

I was alerted this morning via the tesla app that my charging had been interrupted so I clicked on it to see what was going on. I own a Model 3. Suddenly there is also a Model S associated with my account. I don't own an S and can't think of any reason a new car would be on my account.

It has me a little worried that now MY car could be paired with a strangers app and they would have full access to my vehicle and my location. Because i happen to know that the person that named their S Champion is currently driving down the 5 freeway in central california at 70mph.

Anyone else seeing this anomaly?

Tesla gives away a model S to every 1000th purchaser of a model 3. Just call and tell them where to deliver it

 

[drawfour]

Tesla gives away a model S to every 1000th purchaser of a model 3. Just call and tell them where to deliver it

Personally, I'd see if I could track down the car and take it for a joy ride.

 

[ThisIsTrue]

Personally, I'd see if I could track down the car and take it for a joy ride.

But only if it was a Performance model. *sniff*

 

[smartypnz]

They're testing a new game called "Track down the Tesla". A random Tesla appears on your app along with 9 other people and each has to get to that car first. Owner of the car being tracked is unaware of what is happening with everyone trying to be the first one there. Laughs ensue when a group of screaming fast Teslas converge on one location. Rules limit the location to within 1000 miles.

 

[megazone]

"One time thing"... yeah, last Friday they *took away* my Model X. I posted about it on FB earlier...
---
I had a little incident with my Tesla Motors Model X this weekend...

Last week I was on a Disney Cruise Line cruise with my SO Jess (which was a hell of a lot of fun - Star Wars Day at Sea!), and since data connectivity is not at all cheap onboard ship I had turned off most of the auto-syncing on my phone. Besides, I was having too much fun on vacation to have my nose in my email all the time. Basically I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the outside world very much.

To leave on this trip we flew JetBlue out of Boston Logan, and I drove us there in my Model X, which I left parked in Central Parking. I've done this a number of times before and don't think much of it - no reason to expect any trouble.

So, we docked on Saturday morning and took the Disney bus over to the All-Star Music Resort at Walt Disney World (our flight home was Sunday), then headed over to Disney Springs for lunch at Morimoto Asia and some shopping.

After a wonderful lunch (Morimoto Asia is always great) I thought "Maybe I'll check the Tesla app just to see how the battery is doing". I recently had a dashcam installed and this was the first time I'd left it parked for a while with it, so I thought I'd be cautious.

I opened the Tesla App - and got some kind of error about not having a vehicle in the account. Weird, but I've experienced glitches with the app before, so I didn't think much of it. I tried logging out and logging back in - and still got an error. OK, weird... maybe I should log into the website directly.

I log into the website, check my account - and do not have a Model X. There is a reservation for a solar roof, which I put in last year, but no vehicle.

OK, *now* I will panic a bit.

We left Morimoto Asia and I tried calling Tesla support - and ended up in phone queue hell. The entire time I was trying not to freak out, thinking someone had managed to steal my X or something. In hindsight it doesn't make a lot of sense, but when you suddenly find your car is 'missing' and the adrenaline hits, it isn't conducive to calm, rational thought.

This was not at all helped when I thought to check my email to see if there was anything from Tesla that might explain this - and found this:
---
We have received a request to move Model X #008061 to a new owner. If this request is in error, please call us at 1-877-798-3752 (1-877-79-TESLA). We hope to see you in a Tesla again soon.
---

WTF?!?! Now I was really stressing out.

Of course, this was the number I was already dialed into. 10-15 minutes in I couldn't take the phone queue anymore, so I tried again and selected roadside support - and went into another phone queue. (I'm glad I wasn't stuck on the side of the road somewhere.) After a while I got frustrated enough that Jess used her phone to look up the number for the Tesla Dedham store and she called while I remained on hold. They answered right away, so I abandoned my call.

I spoke with someone in the Dedham service department (sorry, I've forgotten his name) who was helpful. We quickly figured out that what seemed to have happened is that someone in Florida had just taken delivery of a Tesla Model 3 which just happened to have a VIN that ended in the same string as the VIN for my Model X.

Apparently Tesla's internal system only requires entering the ending digits of the VIN, as it will be unique for a given model - but not across models. And someone in the delivery team in Florida goofed and selected Model X instead of Model 3 when performing the delivery. So they assigned my Model X to the account of the new Model 3, instead of their new car.

It seems like that really shouldn't be so easy to do. Like there should be a big red alert "Warning: You're transferring ownership of a previously owned vehicle. Are you sure?" Even better would be to not allow this without approval by the previous owner - not just an email that amounts to "We're giving your car to someone else - let us know if this is a problem. K'thnx, bye!"

So we got this straightened out and I got my car back in my account, but it really wasn't a fun experience at the time. I kind of feel like I should've asked for some kind of free swag for being put through that, since it was their mistake. But I didn't.

So yeah, I'd like to not go through that again. Thanks.

 

[Tezlanian]

Scary stuff. Tesla definitely needs to improve the UIs of their administrative tools. To have even this many people experience such issues comment here is disturbing. It continues to amaze me how Tesla can get so many extremely difficult things right and fail at the mundane.