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Tesla is either extremely incompetent, or extremely dishonest, or both.

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No, it isn't. People that have bad experiences tend to advertise far and above what people who have good experiences do. By far, most people have a good experience and enjoy driving a superior vehicle. As to bad "service", Teslas do not require service, no oil changes, no filters, no nothin' but a charge, overnight in your own garage. And you can go eight times farther on the dollar with electricity than you can with gas.

Weird, why do the threaten to void the warranty unless you take it in for wiper fluid and other crazy things at their "service intervals"?
 
No, it isn't. People that have bad experiences tend to advertise far and above what people who have good experiences do. By far, most people have a good experience and enjoy driving a superior vehicle. As to bad "service", Teslas do not require service, no oil changes, no filters, no nothin' but a charge, overnight in your own garage. And you can go eight times farther on the dollar with electricity than you can with gas.

I didn't want "disagree" your post because it's your opinion and is generally true; however, you post does absolutely nothing to help the OP with his situation with Tesla. He's currently out $63K and seems to get charged $2,500 every time he talks to a sales advisor. Do you have any advice that would be helpful for them?
 
No, it isn't. People that have bad experiences tend to advertise far and above what people who have good experiences do. By far, most people have a good experience and enjoy driving a superior vehicle. As to bad "service", Teslas do not require service, no oil changes, no filters, no nothin' but a charge, overnight in your own garage. And you can go eight times farther on the dollar with electricity than you can with gas.
Well you completely misunderstood what we are talking about.
Also not everyone who has received bad customer service from tesla goes on the forum to talk about it
You can’t just refute my claim and not provide any facts.
 
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One more thing. I thought maybe there was an issue with the CC processing and it just went through 3 times. But nope - the charges happened on separate days.

The salesperson just responded to me and again denied there were any additional charges. The very charges I'm seeing on my credit card as not just 'pending' but 'posted', meaning the funds have already cleared!

Anyway since the salesperson responded, I am sure I'll see a fourth $2,500 charge tomorrow morning... my head is in my hands.
 
One more thing. I thought maybe there was an issue with the CC processing and it just went through 3 times. But nope - the charges happened on separate days.

The salesperson just responded to me and again denied there were any additional charges. The very charges I'm seeing on my credit card as not just 'pending' but 'posted', meaning the funds have already cleared!

Anyway since the salesperson responded, I am sure I'll see a fourth $2,500 charge tomorrow morning... my head is in my hands.
I would email him that screenshot and stay on the phone with him as he sees it for himself

Absolutely ridiculous!
 
I would email him that screenshot and stay on the phone with him as he sees it for himself

Absolutely ridiculous!

I've already emailed him that screenshot in my initial email this morning... his response to the screenshot showing the charges was that there were no charges.

I'm wracking my brain trying to think about what else Tesla might have charged me for... which is a hilarious thought since I don't even have a Tesla anymore and it's THEM who owe me $63,000.
 
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There's no question that MOST people who own or have owned a Tesla have no service issues whatsoever. Most people, I imagine, haven't had any problems that have even required servicing. And there are a lot of smaller issues that I think Tesla probably handles just fine.

But when it's bad, it's BAD. Embarrassingly, frustratingly, head-shakingly BAD. There's a black hole where certain service issues are concerned, and it's fed by problems with (1) the centralized structure of this company, (2) personnel shortages, and (3) in some cases, just basic incompetence. Tesla service does "well" or at least "good enough" in probably most cases, but they do BAD like no other company I have ever dealt with. Most people will be fortunate enough never to fall into that black hole, but, if you do, you will know what we are talking about.
 
I think 90% of my posts on here consist of me banging on Tesla for service issues. Your post sounds very familiar to me.

I did finally get my refund check about 60 days after the car was returned. But there were many wasted hours trying to figure out what was going on. I finally found the right employee online, who was able to help me, but it was exceedingly frustrating up until that point. The refund department is fully dysfunctional. Rest assured, there is a tracking number for your check, but nobody thinks you should have it for some reason.

My girlfriend has had a nightmare of a time trying to get a car. She ordered and cancelled so many cars--almost entirely on the advice of her sales adviser--that Tesla took the extraordinary step of banning her. Without even talking to her first.
So what are you driving now?
 
Update (or lack thereof):

- The two $2,500 payments (completely unauthorized) have posted, which means Tesla has got the funds. At this point I think it's safe to say Tesla 'stole' this money from me? It's ridiculous, I know, but what else can you say?
- The original $2,500 payment (authorized, meant to be refunded) has not been refunded
- I have not gotten any response to this ridiculousness since yesterday (and then the response I got was 'there are no charges') even though I emailed a billion people
- I have not gotten any part of my original refund for the car that I returned to them
- I have no car, out $63,000 for the returned car, and out a further $7,500 for absolutely nothing, and nobody from Tesla is responding to me or really acknowledging that I exist.

I am livid - beyond frustrated, beyond angry. I would love to hear some of you permanent Tesla apologists defend this clusterf***.of a situation.

(Hint: "but the cars are great" does not count.)
 
There's not really an excuse for what has happened. I think it was Now You Know who pointed out that Elon, in his shareholder meeting, when pointing out his main focuses didn't include customer service in that list. This concerned them, and you don't find many who are more of a Tesla fanboy than those two.

Customer Service was headed up back in the day by JB Straubel I believe? Whoever it was, it clearly worked at that level pretty well. Obviously they have a lot more customers now. Jon McNeill was supposed to have made things easier by adding an Executive Escalation option to the MyTesla account back in 2017. Did it work? Does it actually work? I've read enough accounts on here to wonder.

Statistics!

Now obviously people who have a nice simple process of pick car, buy car, car delivered aren't going to be complaining. People who buy other ways but get a car with no issues are also not going to complain either. That's a big chunk of purchasers but only because they didn't vary from the easy path, and they were lucky.

It's good in that most people seem to have no problems. But how unproblematic are they really? The manufacturing must've improved enough that things don't happen to cause problems that require good customer service. However it's also worth saying that not everyone is going to reverse their car into a wall, or get hit by another driver today. So there are complainees in potentia that perhaps are not yet realised, due to their currently fortunate circumstances. How big of a number could that be? As the company sells more cars to more people, how much more does the employee to customer ratio dynamic change?

As an aside my friend reversed their second hand inventory Model X into a wall earlier this year. It replaced a Mitsubishi PHEV but otherwise they're not fans of electric for anything other than cost-effective motoring. Certainly not fans of Tesla per se. Suffice to say that getting hold of a new bumper took an amount of weeks that was measured in months, which they weren't impressed with. They like the car, but they didn't like the wait.

Back to stats. What if you don't take the easy 'buy a new car off the website' path. Now our chances of having to interact more with actual Tesla staff who have to do things increases. This isn't a single 'your car will be delivered on x date' email job (although I've seen even that fail a few times). What percentage of these inventory car sales have complaints? Is it significantly large comparatively? Does the level of issues rise concomitantly with the amount of involvement with Tesla employees? This is the crux of the argument, I feel.

I don't think it even has to be a large percentage that goes wrong. But if a significant enough percentage of these highly involved transactions is going wrong then you have a major customer services problem; because a vocal minority can become a major PR issue. People talk about their cars. That talk is selling Teslas right now, but it can also unsell Teslas if there are enough voices clamouring about sales and service issues.

Does this happen with other manufacturers? Of course it does. Some models from certain brands are a veritable money pit when it comes to untraceable gremlins and the dealers/network are a nightmare to work with (*cough* Ford Kuga *cough*). But they sell so many cars to so many people that those few get drowned out in the noise. Tesla doesn't have the figures to be able to ignore even a smallish percentage of unsatisfied customers.

And I don't get it. This is a guy who pushes his engineers to greater and newer heights. So why not push customer service that way too? Perhaps he just doesn't understand it well enough. Perhaps he doesn't cognate that way. Maybe he can't let go enough to allow someone else who does do customer service well to have the freedom to get the job done.

Letting go is hard. But strangling yourself is far worse.
 
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Update (or lack thereof):

- The two $2,500 payments (completely unauthorized) have posted, which means Tesla has got the funds. At this point I think it's safe to say Tesla 'stole' this money from me? It's ridiculous, I know, but what else can you say?
- The original $2,500 payment (authorized, meant to be refunded) has not been refunded
- I have not gotten any response to this ridiculousness since yesterday (and then the response I got was 'there are no charges') even though I emailed a billion people
- I have not gotten any part of my original refund for the car that I returned to them
- I have no car, out $63,000 for the returned car, and out a further $7,500 for absolutely nothing, and nobody from Tesla is responding to me or really acknowledging that I exist.

I am livid - beyond frustrated, beyond angry. I would love to hear some of you permanent Tesla apologists defend this clusterf***.of a situation.

(Hint: "but the cars are great" does not count.)
I think you should start a thread called “Tesla stole money from me”.
 
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When a customer does not accept delivery of a car they ordered, or has ordered and returned many vehicles, it really makes it difficult for them to run their business.

I see many customers rejecting their cars because of a small dust spot under the top coat or panel gaps that are not up to their very high standards. Even see some that reject their cars because the panel gaps on one side are not exactly the same as on the other side.

I see lots of posts on these forums from people kinda bragging that they are returning their cars due to some slight.

Don't think that this is the case with the OP, but there has been many cars returned that were then re-offered to another customer who found it perfectly acceptable.

Cars are built in large volumes. Some will come off the line in better shape than another. That is the reality of high production manufacturing.

Everybody want the highest quality ones, and that is understandable, but when you are buying a used car, it is even more magnified.

Hope the OP gets his money back quickly.
 
When a customer does not accept delivery of a car they ordered, or has ordered and returned many vehicles, it really makes it difficult for them to run their business.

I see many customers rejecting their cars because of a small dust spot under the top coat or panel gaps that are not up to their very high standards. Even see some that reject their cars because the panel gaps on one side are not exactly the same as on the other side.

I see lots of posts on these forums from people kinda bragging that they are returning their cars due to some slight.

Don't think that this is the case with the OP, but there has been many cars returned that were then re-offered to another customer who found it perfectly acceptable.

Cars are built in large volumes. Some will come off the line in better shape than another. That is the reality of high production manufacturing.

Everybody want the highest quality ones, and that is understandable, but when you are buying a used car, it is even more magnified.

Hope the OP gets his money back quickly.

As annoyed as I am at not getting my money back yet for the car I returned, I am infinitely more annoyed and frustrated at tesla literally taking my money without my authorization, for no reason, and then denying anything happened.
 
Update (or lack thereof):

- The two $2,500 payments (completely unauthorized) have posted, which means Tesla has got the funds. At this point I think it's safe to say Tesla 'stole' this money from me? It's ridiculous, I know, but what else can you say?
- The original $2,500 payment (authorized, meant to be refunded) has not been refunded
- I have not gotten any response to this ridiculousness since yesterday (and then the response I got was 'there are no charges') even though I emailed a billion people
- I have not gotten any part of my original refund for the car that I returned to them
- I have no car, out $63,000 for the returned car, and out a further $7,500 for absolutely nothing, and nobody from Tesla is responding to me or really acknowledging that I exist.

I am livid - beyond frustrated, beyond angry. I would love to hear some of you permanent Tesla apologists defend this clusterf***.of a situation.

(Hint: "but the cars are great" does not count.)
I can only shake my head.

BTW, I screen-copied this and tweeted to Elon Musk...will see if he has anything to say.