Greetings Comrades! I’m new here, so apologies for any misunderstandings and thanks in advance for your indulgence.
Onward!
I REALLY admire this company, what they’ve done, and what they’re trying to do …
But!
Tesla Service is a debacle in my experience. I’ve been in it for three years now and it’s getting much worse, which doesn’t bode well for any of us moving forward.
Alas, Tesla clearly values and prioritizes prospective customers over current ones. I also own a Lexus Hybrid, and when it comes to service, THERE’S NO COMPARISON. Apple manages to maintain top-tier customer service in the midst of unparalleled growth, so it clearly can be done … with the right people and priorities. If you can’t help current customers thrive, then fostering new and impassioned ones will become increasingly and ultimately monumentally difficult, especially against a backdrop of mounting competition from legacy providers with vast support services already in place. There’s no more powerful marketing asset than consistently high customer satisfaction, and no more insidious or invidious one than anger, especially in the age of social media.
Now, I’m not an angry guy by nature, but the Tesla service experience has made me one. For example, putting customers in an Uber during a pandemic so Tesla can allocated to sales every car they produce is just the tip of this iceberg. How can you build a company on the premise of unparalleled safety if you consistently put your customers in Harm’s Way?
Brief outline of my latest experience enclosed. Executive Summary: Lord Help Us!
Michael
My Tesla: 2018 Model S 100D 30K mi
My Story:
My back driver-side door kept popping open electronically on its own. This problem had surfaced previously and subsequently been “repaired.” Under these circumstances, the car would start running if parked and send me alerts about open doors. Delivery drivers would knock on our back door and tell me my car was running. My wife drives the car too, so I had to worry about what might happen if the door opened on its own during a turn — perhaps carrying a passenger!
I tried getting a service appointment—many weeks out. I called Tesla support and spent 20 minutes on the phone with a representative who was VERY concerned and sympathetic. He recognized this was a critical safety issue, and over the course of our conversation, he repeatedly promised a callback from the local service center within 24 business hours.
I never heard another thing.
So, I lived with the problem, the recurring annoyance, and the risk. My appointment finally rolled around this past Tuesday. I looked at the Tesla app that morning and noticed that the door issue wasn’t even in the service log, so I added it manually. I called the service center at 7:30 AM to ensure a previously promised loaner would actually be available, since that recurring commitment hadn’t been honored in the past. There was no answer, so I left a detailed voicemail.
I arrived at the service center for my appointment. What luck! No queue! Two service representatives were very busy, heads down, hammering away relentlessly at their computers. Neither looked up. After a few minutes, one of them noted (head down) that someone would be with me shortly. Ten or so minutes passed. No change. One of the agents got up and left. Two more customers arrived and we all waited while the remaining agent continued hammering away, head down. After about 20 minutes, he finally looked up and invited the client who had arrived 10 minutes after me to approach. Not wanting to make her experience any worse than mine, I let it go. Several minutes later, she was dispatched, also unhappily for some of the same reasons, e.g., no loaner and no projected timeline. The attendant then invited the next person to join him, leaving me completely flummoxed. I noted that I had arrived before everyone and had been waiting for over 20 minutes. He apologized and bumped me up the queue. Whew! Close call.
He looked at my service record. The only thing noted was to replace the washer fluid cap that they had removed and failed to replace during my last visit. No mention of my prior calls or conversations. He said they could get the car back to me in a week or so. I nearly fell over. A week or two to replace a washer fluid cap?!? “That’s what it says!” said he. A cordial but unconstructive discussion ensued. He suggested I talk with the service manager.
The service manager was very professional, supportive, and apologetic. She said the service system was in error and she seemed earnestly concerned about the lack of follow-up after my conversation with Tesla support ten days earlier. She said she’d talk with a technician about the reappearance of the popping door problem and tell me what they could do under the circumstances since the repair had been performed there before.
I waited.
When she returned, she noted that the technician said it wasn’t the same problem. I smiled and countered that it was EXACTLY the same problem … same door and the same behavior under precisely the same circumstances. wHaTeVeR. She said she’d have them look at it immediately and provide an assessment about what could be done and in what timeframe.
So there I sat. My car was at the service entrance and in full view. Nothing happened. Hours passed. I endured other customers’ disappointments. I offered one of them the opportunity to join our Tesla Service support group in the lounge, noting we were all suffering from PTSD, or Post Tesla Service Disorder. He wasn’t amused.
That’s when I noticed something wet, cold, and unpleasant welling up around my feet… Yikes!! The bathrooms were overflowing!!!What now, no bathrooms?!? ABANDON *sugar*!!
I called my wife. She borrowed a friend’s car and head out to save me. My car was still sitting where I had left it on arrival, now rear door ajar, profoundly unattended.
My beloved wife and savior arrived and we began our return journey home. That’s when I got a call from the Tesla service center. They were returning my call from 7:30 AM… “How can we help you?” Say what?!? Sadly and much to my own personal chagrin, that’s when I lost it. “How can you help me?!?! You CAN’T! Evidently you can only HURT me!! Do you know that I’ve been sitting in your waiting room for hours on the promise that someone might just glance at my car?!? As far as I’m concerned, you can keep it!!”
I hung up on him.
Now, I’m not proud of any of this. As I explained to the service manager, I only paid ~$110K or so for the car, so what should I expect? Alas, I had simply reached the end of my rope … and it snapped. My wife was understandably alarmed… Not that I had snapped—oh, that would make a fine story around family and friends—but that I had just proffered my beloved Tesla to The Mother Ship, no strings attached! But … I was a Man with a Plan… “One more experience like that and I will give the car away for free in a social media raffle, which would likely generate a lot of media attention since they just LOVE to ravenously pick on Elon and Tesla in the spirit of journalistic sensationalism...”
But I digress. The service manager was very supportive and kept me posted remotely. The door controller was replaced, microcode updated, and the car was made ready for pick-up the following morning. Now, if this were Lexus, they would have driven it to me under the circumstances, but I can’t say for sure, since, in my 10 years of service experience with Lexus, there have been no such nearly comparable “circumstances.”
Again, I adore this car and this company. I’ve recommended them to family and friends and “sold” more than a handful of them. But that’s all the more reason for my angst. Now *I* have “customers” and *MY* credibility is at stake.
These supercomputers on wheels may well fully drive themselves someday (a still unfulfilled promise I paid a tidy sum of money for BTW), but I’ve heard no mention of them servicing themselves, and in the absence of service and support, we’re in for a carful of sadness.
Here’s to better times ahead. In the meantime, thanks for listening!
Michael