UK 2022 Orders to Delivery inc the shipping thread for posts with no shipping news

[yessuz]

I agree with you on the overall experience.

Went for a test drive, the chap asked me whether I knew how to drive a Tesla - showed me how to put it in gear. Told me to be back in about 30 minutes. No needing to sit and wait for a chap from sales and sign insurance documents and small talk about colour etc. After came back, he came and asked if I had any questions, I did and got answers. None of the other small talk, no if you buy today we'll take couple of hundred off the price.

The price is the price and we know it. To me this feels more transparent than normal dealership model. Yes it's expensive and yes it's overpriced but we still buy these cars. It seems to work for Tesla. If one feels they are too overpriced then they will probably look elsewhere. Previously, when haggling, I always felt a bit disappointed as even though they might have given me some discount, or mats or shiny keyring, I never felt I really knew the "price" of the car.

So ordered online. Few quick forms. Awaiting for delivery and rough idea when this is to be. Would have been nice to be able to pick this up at the local service centre, especially as it is very near but happy to pick up from delivery location.

Prior ordering, I did test drive the Ioniq 5. When discussing delivery times, the sales chap could not give me much of an idea when it would be.

Last year bought a car from Vauxhall, and actually did most of the ordering process online which was already much easier than with any of my previous cars. But still, the car was then delivered to the main dealer where the usual myriad of forms had to be signed, printed and emailed back. More forms at the dealership and the usual spiel about gap insurance, service plans etc. It seemed like hours and I just wanted to sign the final papers and be gone without any of that. Also, that car was a pre-reg model, and on their website it said it would be available in 2 weeks, but with transport and dealers having to be involved, it took best part of 5 weeks from ordering. Mind you, I wasn't in a hurry.

I would definitely hope that going forward this model prevails overall. Especially the test driving was so easy and painless, why can't all dealerships do that.

What comes to last minute changes to delivery locations, that's a bit different and if people have been given a delivery location and a date and there are changes to those, then Tesla should provide transport options.

I went to Tesla for the test drive. same experience. Only the car was still away when I arrived and we had to wait a bit.

then I went to Kia couple of weeks later to test EV6

booked well in advance, like I did with Tesla. chap who I booked with was gone (it was Saturday) and there were 3 others sales reps. waited half an hour in empty dealership - none of these guys even took courtesy to come to me and to chat about the car or show one (there was one at the car park ready to test), not talking about taking me to a test drive.

waited 30 minutes and left.

The chap I booked with didn't even call back to me (he did in order to book test drive) or sent an email.

wtf is this If I would do something like this with my customers, I would never be able to look in their eyes

 

[yessuz]

You’ve obviously never been to a market or a car boot sale if you think the only place you haggle is a car dealership.

Of course it’s overpriced, just look at how much the cost of a Model 3 has gone up since it was first launched here. You go on about dealerships and salesman of the month trophies but Tesla also need to pay for their service centres and the staff who work there.

I wonder how does this work, if you go to, let's say, BMW website, build your onw car and you get your total car price. How much you will haggle down? floor mats and keyfob?

 

[mdunc]

This always baffles me when I see people saying this… why is it a good thing? I’ve always managed to secure good discounts on every new car I’ve purchased except for the Tesla which irks me because rule number 1 when it comes to buying cars is you never pay list price

It's not so much you got a discount but rather you paid less "dealer tax".

 

[Cantonalegod]

Is it overpriced? Is Tesla’s mark up the same as a traditional car maker? The traditional car maker’s mark up has to be enough to keep the dealer - which is a whole separate company - going and profitable. Even if Tesla do generate the same profit per car, at least that’s money going to them to potentially invest to improve the product. For a traditional car maker a significant wedge of it is going to the dealer so they can afford to buy ‘salesman of the month’ trophies for the hair product addicted salesmen.

And, again, if the haggling system is the best one why do we no longer do it for anything other than cars? I can’t go into Curry’s and say, “alright, throw in a bag of magic beans and I’ll pay 10 groats and 3 of my best horses for that washing machine.” Haggling and bartering has disappears in the western world everywhere except for car dealerships.

If you're not "haggling" on your sky TV, broadband or mobile phone contracts, to give but three examples, then you are probably paying a hell of lot more than you need to!

 

[Paul67]

Have to say my experience has been exactly the same up until yesterday. It’s not a massive deal the change of collection destination and I hope I’ll be offered the chauffeur. Definitely a good experience overall though.

 

[Mrklaw]

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how rubbish the Tesla buying experience has been, and maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been really impressed!

• Simple online ordering process. No baffling lists of options to have to decipher and choose.
• No having to deal with fake, insincere 20 year old showroom sales people in skinny suits with so much hair product in their hair that you worry they might combust at any moment.
• No haggling back and forth over price, "throw in a set of mats and we have a deal" type rubbish, with endless emails and phone calls.
• No hard sell on extras, GAP insurance, paint protection, all that rubbish.
• Website gives a clear delivery estimate when you place order.
• At worst the car I get will be the spec I ordered, but there's every possibility if rumours are to be believed that I'll get more range and up to date components than the one I ordered, for no extra charge.
• They beat their own estimate by a month for me, which is unheard of! If you buy a car from a traditional dealer the actual date you'll collect is months after they estimate normally.
• Regular updates by text and email, telling you when you need to complete the next step.
• Bank transfer payment made me a bit nervous, but it worked - confirmed on the website and by email right away. Good to know now that's all taken care of and I don't need to worry about money on collection day.
• Arranged me a complimentary chauffeur driver to pick me up from my house on collection day, without me asking for this or making any sort of fuss about getting there under my own steam.
• By the sounds of things, collection day will be dead simple without loads of paperwork to complete.

Perhaps I'm jinxing myself by saying all this when I still have a week to go until I actually collect, but my Tesla buying experience has been by far the best car buying experience I've ever had in my life.

Generally I agree with you, and a lot of this is ‘new shiny toy syndrome’ where I just want it now.

positives
- Many times when buying other cars new that had long lead times, you’d be in the dark as much as with Tesla in terms of when your car will arrive - I’ve mentioned before but there are similar forums for eg BMW trying to decode build slots, which boat they might be on etc - not just Telsa buyers that are fidgety as f***

- Definiltely prefer the way they throw the keys at you - some I’m sure like the sheet over the car in the dealership and faux sense of ceremony - but I can do without the forced 2 hours doing paperwork and refusing politely after listening to the gap/wheel/leather insurance talk.

- Lack of nickle and diming you on options. On my BMWs it honestly was just a painful game. I know what I need/want, but then they obfuscate in packs or strange naming so you have to tread carefully. my last one I wanted to consider carplay and I knew you could buy it afterwards so I didn’t spec the option. But turned out I couldn’t buy it after picking it up because I’d not specced enhanced bluetooth which lets two people connecdt to the car. Nothing in the details suggested any link to carplay but turned out it was a requirement This is one of my biggest things wiht Tesla at the moment and watching other reviews - oh that i4 is nice and £51900 - same as the LR. Except if you want electric memory seats, or reversing camera, or active cruise - now its £60k. That now puts me off even starting to look in detail at other makes as I have to guess what uplift the actual price will be.


But two main areas still suck
- lack of clarity on spec. This is from order to collection. You don’t know what you’re buying and thats not good. probably a bit of an edge case for us forum dwelling enthusiasts but would be nice to know what you’ll get for your £40-50k

- collection experience.
- Delivery: This is the second time I’ve been dicked around on collection. Almost literally the same experience. They gave me a choice of two locations. Then simply texted me to tell me it had been ‘rearranged’ to brent cross which was a pain to get to. Then after finally working out travel etc, the location disappears and I have to contact them to find out they can’t even organise a car park to be open so it’d be bluewater.
- Trusting the quality : getting better but why should we be printing out car checklists to make sure the car isn’t screwed up when we collect? I’ve never done that because I’ve been able to trust the build quality and that the dealer has done a decent PDI. The flipside of quick handover is the lack of car in the last mile from their delivery people to properly check the cars over. bit more TLC to flag things in advance would help. I’d even pick up a car with a known set of snags if they came from the service people not relying on me to spot a ding on the boot or dirty headliner.


They need to get their delivery logistics sorted. No reason they shouldn’t be able to use dealers to collect, thats what I did last year.

 

[Mrklaw]

Im not saying that it won’t arrive in March, but it’s worth giving them a call to confirm that you’ll likely have a March delivery. The reason that I say that is because the lead time for White paint with the 18” aero wheels is longer than for other colours. If your car is delayed, then the “fix” is to either change the paint colour or go for the 19” wheels. Hopefully your car is on track and no changes will be needed for a March delivery.

RWD base spec says May, but I think LR was still showing March when I looked in late Jan. I’d switched to MSM on the RWD to get a March date so when I decided to switch to LR I double checked and white was showing March, but by then I’d convinced myself I liked the MSM so went with that

 

[Paul67]

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how rubbish the Tesla buying experience has been, and maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been really impressed!

• Simple online ordering process. No baffling lists of options to have to decipher and choose.
• No having to deal with fake, insincere 20 year old showroom sales people in skinny suits with so much hair product in their hair that you worry they might combust at any moment.
• No haggling back and forth over price, "throw in a set of mats and we have a deal" type rubbish, with endless emails and phone calls.
• No hard sell on extras, GAP insurance, paint protection, all that rubbish.
• Website gives a clear delivery estimate when you place order.
• At worst the car I get will be the spec I ordered, but there's every possibility if rumours are to be believed that I'll get more range and up to date components than the one I ordered, for no extra charge.
• They beat their own estimate by a month for me, which is unheard of! If you buy a car from a traditional dealer the actual date you'll collect is months after they estimate normally.
• Regular updates by text and email, telling you when you need to complete the next step.
• Bank transfer payment made me a bit nervous, but it worked - confirmed on the website and by email right away. Good to know now that's all taken care of and I don't need to worry about money on collection day.
• Arranged me a complimentary chauffeur driver to pick me up from my house on collection day, without me asking for this or making any sort of fuss about getting there under my own steam.
• By the sounds of things, collection day will be dead simple without loads of paperwork to complete.

Perhaps I'm jinxing myself by saying all this when I still have a week to go until I actually collect, but my Tesla buying experience has been by far the best car buying experience I've ever had in my life.

I agree.
- I still get pestering sales calls from Nissan after I bought a Leaf from them. I haven't owned it for over 3 years!
- Lexus main dealer pushed a 3 year service plan on to me when l bought a used RX350H from them. I double confirmed verbally with them that it included plugs and cam-chain. They promised me it did. Of course, I find out 2 years later that it didn't! (Quite a few hundred quid on a V6).

 

[Zilla91]

I wonder how does this work, if you go to, let's say, BMW website, build your onw car and you get your total car price. How much you will haggle down? floor mats and keyfob?

Go to places like Carwow, Coast2Coast, Drive the deal or someone like Tony Lewis (who will give you the best deal on a BMW short of their UK forces program) to get a price and then take that to your local dealer (in my case I have several BMW dealers owned by different companies) and tell them to better those and play them off each other to get the best deal.

It’s a bit of work and a bit of hassle but that’s the point of haggling but like I said, if you don’t want to do that no one is forcing you. Just pay list price and carry on but at least you have the choice. With Tesla that choice is taken away and that is not good for the consumer.

 

[jmhumphreys]

Not sure if it’s different as it’s a company car through ALD, but here’s the link. I got it via an email which gave me my details to log in and track. But as I say, ALD pretty much guess and tell you to go with whatever Tesla are saying. It’s gone from March, to April, to end of May, and now today gone to the 1st March. I hope it’s right!

Order Update

www.myald.co.uk

View attachment 765025

Thanks for this, but sadly I cannot access it. Page is not available on google and other searches took me to login pages where I would clearly need usernames and passwords (which I don't have). Thanks anyway!

 

[jmhumphreys]

A few LRs have appeared in inventory this morning (white, black silver and red). I imagine that these are rejected cars from customers wanting to wait for the 22 plate in March.

 

[SomeCurry]

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how rubbish the Tesla buying experience has been, and maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been really impressed!

• Simple online ordering process. No baffling lists of options to have to decipher and choose.
• No having to deal with fake, insincere 20 year old showroom sales people in skinny suits with so much hair product in their hair that you worry they might combust at any moment.
• No haggling back and forth over price, "throw in a set of mats and we have a deal" type rubbish, with endless emails and phone calls.
• No hard sell on extras, GAP insurance, paint protection, all that rubbish.
• Website gives a clear delivery estimate when you place order.
• At worst the car I get will be the spec I ordered, but there's every possibility if rumours are to be believed that I'll get more range and up to date components than the one I ordered, for no extra charge.
• They beat their own estimate by a month for me, which is unheard of! If you buy a car from a traditional dealer the actual date you'll collect is months after they estimate normally.
• Regular updates by text and email, telling you when you need to complete the next step.
• Bank transfer payment made me a bit nervous, but it worked - confirmed on the website and by email right away. Good to know now that's all taken care of and I don't need to worry about money on collection day.
• Arranged me a complimentary chauffeur driver to pick me up from my house on collection day, without me asking for this or making any sort of fuss about getting there under my own steam.
• By the sounds of things, collection day will be dead simple without loads of paperwork to complete.

Perhaps I'm jinxing myself by saying all this when I still have a week to go until I actually collect, but my Tesla buying experience has been by far the best car buying experience I've ever had in my life.

Absolutely agree, the whole process so far has been great for me 10/10 compared to Audi and even Mercedes dealer process.

Touch wood the collection is as smooth as the order process.

 

[Mrklaw]

Go to places like Carwow, Coast2Coast, Drive the deal or someone like Tony Lewis (who will give you the best deal on a BMW short of their UK forces program) to get a price and then take that to your local dealer (in my case I have several BMW dealers owned by different companies) and tell them to better those and play them off each other to get the best deal.

It’s a bit of work and a bit of hassle but that’s the point of haggling but like I said, if you don’t want to do that no one is forcing you. Just pay list price and carry on but at least you have the choice. With Tesla that choice is taken away and that is not good for the consumer.

The flipside of that is maybe Tesla are able to reduce costs by not having expensive dealers along with necessary markups as dealers are third parties. So while we all pay the same, the average price may be lower than traditional dealer structure. You know you’re getting the same price as the next person and not reliant on knowing the ins and outs and the nods and winks to get the good price

 

[AutomaticMan]

If you're not "haggling" on your sky TV, broadband or mobile phone contracts, to give but three examples, then you are probably paying a hell of lot more than you need to!

Those are contracts though which is rather different. As is selling pre-owned goods (buying a house, etc.) between two people before someone throws in that example. But I maintain that nowadays when buying most products as a one off purchase from a large manufacturer the price is set and you pay it. Imagine how much longer it would take us to buy anything if we had to go back and forth with a salesman at Tesco and pretend 'walk away' twice to get the best price on baked beans.

I do also think that it seems obvious to me that someone must be paying to keep the lights on at the traditional car dealership. If that person isn't you, by paying a margin to the dealership as well as the manufacturer as part of the price you pay for the car, then who is it? Seems obvious to me that if you cut out that middle man then there's more margin available to either pass onto the customer as a saving, or to increase the profit of the manufacturer. Obviously, I would prefer the former, but the latter still seems like a better use of money to me than paying a dealer salesman's monthly skinny tie allowance, or sending him on a "how to hard sell floor mat insurance" course. Just seems like a lot of waste to me. At least if it goes to the manufacturer it increases their viability and ability to innovate/continue bringing out good products.

If Tesla decided to use a traditional car dealership model, do you think the list price of Teslas would go up or down? There's suddenly another bunch of people in the middle who need to be paid - Tesla would either have to reduce their profit margin to pay them, or increase the price so that you pay them. I know which my money would be on happening.

And even if you view the money you get off from a traditional dealer as a saving (I don't - as someone else said, I just see it as paying a bit less dealer tax), I'm not sure those savings are to be had at the moment. When I priced up competing EVs on Carwow and Drive The Deal, the 'saving' was only a few hundred £s in most cases. That will have been more than eaten up by the last minute addition of a bizarre options pack that I suddenly realise I wanted.

But look, I don't want to get further drawn into a pros and cons of haggling. It seems like an inefficient business model to me, but if you prefer it then ok. It was only 1 point of a multi-point list of why I personally have liked the Tesla buying process. Plenty of people posting to say that they hate the process already, but whether it makes me a crazy fool or not, I like the process so wanted to post my own personal feedback.

 

[Chemist]

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how rubbish the Tesla buying experience has been, and maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been really impressed!

• Simple online ordering process. No baffling lists of options to have to decipher and choose.
• No having to deal with fake, insincere 20 year old showroom sales people in skinny suits with so much hair product in their hair that you worry they might combust at any moment.
• No haggling back and forth over price, "throw in a set of mats and we have a deal" type rubbish, with endless emails and phone calls.
• No hard sell on extras, GAP insurance, paint protection, all that rubbish.
• Website gives a clear delivery estimate when you place order.
• At worst the car I get will be the spec I ordered, but there's every possibility if rumours are to be believed that I'll get more range and up to date components than the one I ordered, for no extra charge.
• They beat their own estimate by a month for me, which is unheard of! If you buy a car from a traditional dealer the actual date you'll collect is months after they estimate normally.
• Regular updates by text and email, telling you when you need to complete the next step.
• Bank transfer payment made me a bit nervous, but it worked - confirmed on the website and by email right away. Good to know now that's all taken care of and I don't need to worry about money on collection day.
• Arranged me a complimentary chauffeur driver to pick me up from my house on collection day, without me asking for this or making any sort of fuss about getting there under my own steam.
• By the sounds of things, collection day will be dead simple without loads of paperwork to complete.

Perhaps I'm jinxing myself by saying all this when I still have a week to go until I actually collect, but my Tesla buying experience has been by far the best car buying experience I've ever had in my life.

Good post

I went to Tesla for the test drive. same experience. Only the car was still away when I arrived and we had to wait a bit.

then I went to Kia couple of weeks later to test EV6

booked well in advance, like I did with Tesla. chap who I booked with was gone (it was Saturday) and there were 3 others sales reps. waited half an hour in empty dealership - none of these guys even took courtesy to come to me and to chat about the car or show one (there was one at the car park ready to test), not talking about taking me to a test drive.

waited 30 minutes and left.

The chap I booked with didn't even call back to me (he did in order to book test drive) or sent an email.

wtf is this If I would do something like this with my customers, I would never be able to look in their eyes

I had pretty much the same experience with Kia. Lead time on the EV6 is terrible too.

 

[devonian]

Good post

I had pretty much the same experience with Kia. Lead time on the EV6 is terrible too.

I agree with AutomaticMan entirely, whilst we can always find some way to critisise on the whole my experience (so far) has been ok. A lot of the issues are caused by forums like this, in the past when I have bought a new car I've done the whole dealer haggling etc. but then once sorted just waited for the car to arrive, when you look at most of the posts on here they relate to 'I want the new battery, the new chip, the latest spec etc.' which whilst perfectly understandable is only because Tesla have a policy of continuous improvements and upgrades, if this wasn't the case and we all just got the car we ordered this thread would be much shorter.
Because of the lack of dealerships in the traditional sense the delivery process is very different from past experiences and undoubtably could do with some improvement but as stated above dealerships come at a cost and the only people who ultimately pay that cost is the customer

 

[milesr3]

I've bought two new cars in the last six months and only one experience was clichéd, deliberately misleading and unnecessarily time-consuming.

 

[MoBo]

My M3 LR is being delivered on Wednesday 10th Feb, I'll post my thoughts on the experience here. I was initially told it was pickup only from Manchester when I placed the order last November, but got a text saying it will be delivered to my home, and that it is contactless.

Anyone had a contactless delivery recently?

 

[prabhu]

Good post

I had pretty much the same experience with Kia. Lead time on the EV6 is terrible too.

Same. Bad experience with kia ev6 despite booking for a test drive in advance. BMW x5 experience had been the best for me but Tesla has outperformed BMW too since they've always answered my emails within the same day! Even for test drive my model 3 test drive lasted for nearly 2 hours and MYLR the usual 30 mins.

 

[mdunc]

I've bought two new cars in the last six months and only one experience was a clichéd, deliberately misleading and unnecessarily time-consuming.

My last car was a BMW. The dealer was helpful friendly and I built up a good relationship with them and a couple of issues were quickly sorted. However, I did seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time at the salesmanship desk, signing countless forms and paperwork, in between them disappearing for chats with his manager every 5 minutes. That part was painfull.