Tesla banned me from purchasing another Tesla after vehicle buyback

[cucubits]

I have an original 2012 S, I ordered it 2 years before and love the car, I have a new Tesla 3 and love the car, I bought my son a 3 and an X. So we have 4 cars. The cars are amazing, best cars ever made. I do have a major problem with the battery on the S. It is an 85 and the battery does not hold a charge. Service will not even look at it. I have referred so many people to Tesla, and have been so loyal to the Tesla company and Hugh fan of Ilan Musk. But over the last 6 months I have had such awful experiences at the service department with 3 of the cars. They stopped giving loaners so give uber, they called me at 430 my car is ready, I call uber which arrived at 5, and I arrived at the service center at 605, my car was there, and only the one employee was locking up. I asked him for my keys and he said he had to leave, and I would need to come the next morning. I was furious, called uber, ...next morning I come when they open he is at the front desk I ask him for my keys and he says."sign in and sit down" no other greeting.....I waited 15 minutes....and then just lost it. Watching the other owners, the feeling is like going to the DMV in California. Service which should take one day takes 3 or longer, no more loaners, parts take for ever to get. Each experience over the last 6 months have been identical, they do no longer wash the cars, or charge the cars. I spent from $70,000-$100,000 on these cars. I expect service. I understand that the issue is too many cars and that is what the company is trying to do is build cars, and not infrastructure, but this has become unbearable. One of the old service managers who left and had been with them since the beginning told me that most service people have left, they do not longer allow overtime, and they try to do as little as possible. I did put an order in for a mustang electric car. I figure at least I would get ford service if needed.
I am hoping things do change, but at this point I am so disappointed. If others are like me Tesla will not be able to sustain the growth as owners will become one time owners like the old days with jaguar.
The good news is mobile service is good, and the cars rarely need much service. and the cars are amazing. But would I spend this money again on Tesla at this time.
absolutely not.

Not the easiest post to read but I yeah, I am sure there are lots of people who will gladly leave from Tesla as soon as something good is available. Some are bothered by the service, some by the build quality and cheap parts which are hard and expensive to get...

 

[Simon_Emes]

You are not really surprised, are you? I can actually follow their logic, despite also understanding your frustrations with the car before the return.

 

[doghousePVD]

Some customers are nnneeevvveerrrrr happy. Good riddance. They tried, paid you well, you still weren't happy, and now looking for sympathy?

Move on, get something else you like.

I have had to fire several customers, too.

 

[JimHarris]

Dude, why don't you just have your wife, partner, mom, ect. buy it for you. They can't ban everyone you know from buying one, only you. I would just have my wife buy it in her name and registration, problem solved.

 

[P85DBeast]

Dude, why don't you just have your wife, partner, mom, ect. buy it for you. They can't ban everyone you know from buying one, only you. I would just have my wife buy it in her name and registration, problem solved.

Smart Idea.

Although if I was OP and Tesla wouldn't allow me to buy a car UNDER my name I wouldn't stress it and I'd take my money elsewhere. They obviously don't want his business and I wouldn't want to give my money to them.

 

[ohmman]

Smart Idea.

Although if I was OP and Tesla wouldn't allow me to buy a car UNDER my name I wouldn't stress it and I'd take my money elsewhere. They obviously don't want his business and I wouldn't want to give my money to them.

Besides, going to the service center might get awkward.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

It's called Caveat Venditor

“fully informed, rational actors making decisions in their best interest.”

Also the Porsche Taycan Forum is here

 

[kkillebrew]

No offense but I would not do business with you either.

 

[George Marley]

Have you tried telling Elon to shove it where it hurts?
Bet ya a signed dollar he'll enjoy that

 

[xenodata]

Under federal anti-discrimination laws, businesses can refuse service to any person for ANY reason, unless the business is discriminating against a protected class. In this case though, its because of exactly what they say, this isn’t a good relationship for either of you.

 

[P85DBeast]

Have you tried telling Elon to shove it where it hurts?
Bet ya a signed dollar he'll enjoy that

If OP does that then Elon will probably have his M3 put on the "Make his Model 3 ownership a living hell list".

Besides, going to the service center might get awkward.

Considering OP still has a Model 3 the trips to the service center WILL (without a doubt) be VERY awkward.

 

[jaboki]

LOL

 

[dannycamps]

Just a point of reference - all of this predates internet and social media. In 1993, my father-in-law purchased a new Mercury Topaz from a local Ford dealership. The car had an alignment problem from the first day of ownership. After several unsuccessful attempts by the dealer to fix, and a lemon law refusal, he took the dealership to court and won the case (and a monetary award) plus a guarantee to either fix or replace the car.

The car was eventually fixed but he received a lifetime ban (still in effect) from purchasing another Ford. Not a big deal to him as he never even looked at another one but still - some pretty sour grapes by the dealership in question.

 

[dethman]

Pretty douchey of Tesla to do that AFTER the buyback.

 

[Chickenlittle]

Many of you know me from this thread: Yellow screen? Force Tesla to Replace it!. In the thread I state very clearly and factually the process I went though to get Tesla to replace my yellowing Model S screen. Nothing I posted was covered under any NDAs. I simply wanted to make sure everyone was aware what the NCDS process looked like as an option to combat warranty denials over the screen. The NCDS procedure I documented there has been invaluable to many customers both on these forums and off.

It turns out, Tesla has banned me from purchasing another vehicle for posting online.

How I found out:

Several months after the yellow screen incident, I contacted the lawyer from Tesla I had been working with.(I will not state his name here, others have stated it in the linked thread) The Model S had a worsening problem with reduced battery life. Averaging ~330KW/h we were only getting about 70-80% of what we should have. On a full 100% charge we would get somewhere in the range of 170-200 miles.

The service centers would not acknowledge the problem. In fact, I could not even get them to write up a service ticket. So, I went to the lawyer at Tesla. I informed him of the problem, and he referred it to an internal engineering department. I was contacted back a couple weeks later (after having to prod for a response)

The engineer informed me that I had an API requesting tool (TeslaFi) constantly hitting my car, and that was the reason for reduced capacity. He recommended changing my password to block the API requests. I thought this sounded odd, but figured it did not hurt to try.

This did not make a difference. I reached back out to the lawyer and got a response of "What do you want me to do?". I informed him I just wanted it fixed. The response I got back was asking me if I wanted to just do a buyback on the vehicle. At first, I baulked at this. I really did love that car, aside from the screen issue (which was ultimately fixed), and now the battery problem.

Ultimately, I decided that this was a good idea. It would allow me to get out of the battery problem, and get a brand new Model S Performance. The offer was at $68,024.75. This is 60-70% over KBB value, it was calculated by the the full price I paid including taxes, fees, etc ($99,563.63) - mileage deduction (-$31,538.88 calculated as $96750 x 39,118miles/120,000).

We placed a deposit on a brand new Performance S to replace it with about two weeks before we had to surrender the car to the Burlingame service center. The day after we provided the car to them and signed all of the documentation we received a phone call from the sales manager at Burlingame. I was told that they would refuse to sell me another vehicle and he refused to provide any more information and simply cancelled the order.

I emailed the lawyer, sure that this was a mistake. I thought that maybe the manager saw there was a buyback and decided that I should not buy another vehicle. The response I got back from Telsa's lawyer was:

"
We aren’t obligated to sell you a car and we don’t believe selling you another car is in either of our interests. You’ve been repeatedly frustrated despite our best efforts and we are not inclined to continue doing business with someone we don’t believe we can satisfy such that they resort to threats repeatedly and/or disparaging us publicly. You ought to consider another EV or other vehicle and perhaps you’ll have a better relationship with their service team. "

This came as quite a shock. I can only assume that the "threats" he was referring to was being willing to file another arbitration case to get the battery issues fixed and that the "disparaging" them publicly was the yellow screen NCDS thread.

During the process, he said they hoped I would go with a different manufacturer for my next vehicle, but never said I could not purchase from them. It turns out, the "hope" was more of a "it will not be possible to buy another vehicle from us".

I tried a few more times to place the order, but it was always ultimately cancelled. We finally gave up on trying to purchase another Tesla, and opted to place an order for a Porsche Taycan.

After this situation I reached out to a few contacts and found that I am not the only one that Tesla has banned for having arbitration / lemon claims. I can't speak for those other (former) owners but It seems that this is a strategy that Tesla legal employs with at least some regular cadence.



I've attached the buy-back paperwork for my vehicle (VIN: 5YJSA1E14HF193196) for any that would like to see what it looks like

Did you get the promised 300 mile range with the Porsche?

 

[CraigE1965]

Actually I thought of a great follow thru. After your wife, friend, brother, ect. buys the Tesla, have them sell it to you for $1.00. It is totally legal and I know someone who did that. Don't recall the reason, maybe the original owner was going to get sued, bankruptcy, or some reason he wanted to basically give the car to a friend for $1.00, of course the friend payed him the value of the car later.

 

[cucubits]

Actually I thought of a great follow thru. After your wife, friend, brother, ect. buys the Tesla, have them sell it to you for $1.00. It is totally legal and I know someone who did that. Don't recall the reason, maybe the original owner was going to get sued, bankruptcy, or some reason he wanted to basically give the car to a friend for $1.00, of course the friend payed him the value of the car later.

That would work but then Tesla still could make his life miserable. There's basically zero chance that he won't need service on it.
Also, if it was me and a company treated me like Tesla did with the OP, I wouldn't want to have to do anything with them, let alone give them more of my money. The Taycan will be a great option. Range isn't everything and it doesn't matter that much to most. You're leaving every morning with a full tank of gas, what does it matter if it's 200 or 300 miles? Also worth keeping an eye on Audi, the e-tron GT could make me completely forget Tesla every existed.

 

[cwerdna]

Did you get the promised 300 mile range with the Porsche?

Range ratings on standardized tests are NOT promises, let alone promises in real world driving.

EPA tests procedures (for instance) are call for driving on a dyno (not a real road) on very strict schedules. See How Vehicles Are Tested and the tabs at Detailed Test Information.

 

[whitex]

@testhrowaway
While I sympathize with you completely, I am not surprised that Tesla does not want to do business with unhappy customers - many businesses do it. That said, have you considered that Elon may actually be counting on you posting a post such as this - to scare off anyone else from posting step by step instructions how to get Tesla to do things they should but would rather not do?

PS> I test drove the Taycan myself. Unfortunately 2 things prevent me from wanting to go that route:

1. Size - I use my S as the only driver, and from time to time I need to be able to load it with a bunch of stuff
2. EV driving characteristic - while the car handles around corners amazingly, it has great acceleration (me coming from P85DL), it's not smooth like a Tesla. It just felt "twitchy" all the time, especially when punching the accelerator - when I came back and asked about it, when they reminded be that the car does have the 2 speed transmission. In a Model S, when you punch it, it just goes, like a video game. In a Taycan, the shift just annoyed me to no end, every time I hit the accelerator on the highway. Their hill hold was also very binary, you could hear the brakes slamming ON/OFF, instead of using the motor to make it smooth.

 

[FlatSix911]

Many of you know me from this thread: Yellow screen? Force Tesla to Replace it!. In the thread I state very clearly and factually the process I went through to get Tesla to replace my yellowing Model S screen. Nothing I posted was covered under any NDAs. I simply wanted to make sure everyone was aware of what the NCDS process looked like as an option to combat warranty denials over the screen. The NCDS procedure I documented there has been invaluable to many customers both on these forums and off.

It turns out, Tesla has banned me from purchasing another vehicle for posting online.

How I found out:

Several months after the yellow screen incident, I contacted the lawyer from Tesla I had been working with.(I will not state his name here, others have stated it in the linked thread) The Model S had a worsening problem with reduced battery life. Averaging ~330KW/h we were only getting about 70-80% of what we should have. On a full 100% charge, we would get somewhere in the range of 170-200 miles.

The service centers would not acknowledge the problem. In fact, I could not even get them to write up a service ticket. So, I went to the lawyer at Tesla. I informed him of the problem, and he referred it to an internal engineering department. I was contacted back a couple of weeks later (after having to prod for a response)

The engineer informed me that I had an API requesting tool (TeslaFi) constantly hitting my car, and that was the reason for reduced capacity. He recommended changing my password to block the API requests. I thought this sounded odd, but figured it did not hurt to try.

This did not make a difference. I reached back out to the lawyer and got a response of "What do you want me to do?". I informed him I just wanted it fixed. The response I got back was asking me if I wanted to just do a buyback on the vehicle. At first, I balked at this. I really did love that car, aside from the screen issue (which was ultimately fixed), and now the battery problem.

Ultimately, I decided that this was a good idea. It would allow me to get out of the battery problem, and get a brand new Model S Performance. The offer was at $68,024.75. This is 60-70% over KBB value, it was calculated by the the full price I paid including taxes, fees, etc ($99,563.63) - mileage deduction (-$31,538.88 calculated as $96750 x 39,118miles/120,000).

We placed a deposit on a brand new Performance S to replace it with about two weeks before we had to surrender the car to the Burlingame service center. The day after we provided the car to them and signed all of the documentation we received a phone call from the sales manager at Burlingame. I was told that they would refuse to sell me another vehicle and he refused to provide any more information and simply canceled the order.

I emailed the lawyer, sure that this was a mistake. I thought that maybe the manager saw there was a buyback and decided that I should not buy another vehicle. The response I got back from Telsa's lawyer was:
"
We aren’t obligated to sell you a car and we don’t believe selling you another car is in either of our interests. You’ve been repeatedly frustrated despite our best efforts and we are not inclined to continue doing business with someone we don’t believe we can satisfy such that they resort to threats repeatedly and/or disparaging us publicly. You ought to consider another EV or other vehicle and perhaps you’ll have a better relationship with their service team. "

This came as quite a shock. I can only assume that the "threats" he was referring to was being willing to file another arbitration case to get the battery issues fixed and that the "disparaging" them publicly was the yellow screen NCDS thread.

During the process, he said they hoped I would go with a different manufacturer for my next vehicle, but never said I could not purchase from them. It turns out, the "hope" was more of a "it will not be possible to buy another vehicle from us".

I tried a few more times to place the order, but it was always ultimately canceled. We finally gave up on trying to purchase another Tesla and opted to place an order for a Porsche Taycan.

After this situation, I reached out to a few contacts and found that I am not the only one that Tesla has banned for having arbitration/lemon claims. I can't speak for those other (former) owners but It seems that this is a strategy that Tesla legal employs with at least some regular cadence.

I've attached the buy-back paperwork for my vehicle (VIN: 5YJSA1E14HF193196) for any that would like to see what it looks like

Thanks for sharing your story... it's a cautionary tale for anyone daring to expose Tesla failures and poor customer service.
Elon should be exposed... as you were clearly banned for your NCDS thread posts that helped many TMC forum members.

I would recommend that you publicize this story more widely in the media... Electrek, Jalopnik, InsideEVs, etc.