Had some spare time so thought I would share my Tesla experience so far.....and I am pleasantly surprised...
26th Dec 21 - Test Drive, (All booked online) - Arrived Chelmsford SC and after a 5 minute wait was shown to the car, they had a pre-planned route just in case you didn't know the area, pointed out the up/down forward/backward control stalk and sent us on our way (no forms, no checks, no faffing around), spent about 45 minutes on the road and was hooked. Spoke to the guys back at the SC, all very laid back, no suits or fake smiles, just honest answers to my questions.
28th Dec 21 - Ordered M3P, Blue/Black and paid my £100 deposit (Cancelled order for Q4 Etron Vorsprung)
29th Dec 21 - All paperwork uploaded and confirmed (luckily a company cash purchase so no issues with finance)
29th Dev 21 - Committed to purchase so enabled 2FA on the Tesla App (So glad Tesla have this on their application, adds a level of access control)
Other than the initial test drive I haven't actually spoken to a single person at Tesla
14th Jan 22 - Delivery Appointment Confirmation (provided a date range for the first 2 weeks in February), Selected date which immediately appeared in portal
18th Jan 22 - Invoice available for review
19th Jan 22 - Sent £90 to an account and sort code that couldn't be checked by my bank (Tesla use CitiBank and they really need to start working with UK banks to allow them to validate accounts). After about an hour the amount was deducted from the total in the portal (phew)
20th Jan 22 - Still decided to split the payments (I worked in IT banking for 20 years and just don't trust the controls in place)
21st Jan 22 - Sent the final amount and my balance finally at zero (At this point I collated all of the receipt screenshots and emailed them over to Tesla)
28th Jan22 - SMS confirming pickup and registration number
2nd Feb 22 - Ordered centre console bin storage (Thanks for whoever posted this on the forums as they are now sold out again)
3rd Feb 22 - Insured via DirectLine (a few issues here as the reg number is not yet registered with DVLA and not on their systems, using their online GUI it kept referring to the car as a 2019 model, called them up and they entered the year an dreg manually, £50 increase in premium but still cheaper than the comparison websites)
Still not spoken to anyone at Tesla
4th Feb 22 - SMS out of the blue saying I had been allocated a complimentary chauffer service (Bonus as its a bit of a journey and I would have had to pay for the Dartford Bridge 3 times) - Selected Y and an email appeared a few minutes later confirming collection time
8th Feb 22 - Document arrived in portal confirming they had received payment (had forgotten all about that, portal showed zero and I had a screenshot for what it was worth)
9th Feb 22 - First contact with a real person, call from a young lady in Manchester confirming I was still OK with my collection date and that the Chauffer company had contacted me and arranged pickup with sufficient time to make my collection time
All in all I can only say it has been a positive experience, different but positive, I have worked in IT for too many years to remember so am comfortable with technology and wish that other car companies would put a little more faith in technology and remove some of the showroom red tape and sales tactics that give you the impression that they are doing you a favour. Not once have I had anyone try to push products, when I have contacted the team via Live Chat they have been informative and not tried to spin excuses. This forum has been a bundle of fun, everyone has an opinion but no one seems to be slated for having a different opinion. It also bee a great source of information, I ordered my car without knowing a thing about the upgrades that were in the pipeline and I have only learnt about those from this forum, bought one car and found out it has a few bits that I didn't even know I was getting. Just hope the positive experience continues when I pick the car up.
Anyway I now have some conference calls to join and will end my essay, hopefully it has been informative for those just starting their journey
??? I paid 1100 extra for a white interior only to get the car sooner
