Not just new ...
I've had 6 cars off Tesla. Last one they revised my trade in offer (upwards). I was surprised, My Tesla didn't reflect the email offer, I questioned it and I was told (in writing, repeatedly) that it was a system problem and they would honour the price (words like that - i.e. hard to wriggle out of ...). Of course I needed a final invoice that was accurate before I could pay ... and that, repeatedly, didn't happen. Eventually (day before collection) someone calls to tells me they are not going to honour the revised price and I can take it or leave it. They could have offered me, for example, a tow bar or some bunce. Nope.
Tesla have had loads of referrals off me (and I have the swag to prove it) ...
Business Model chooses not to have credence for any of that. I happen to like the cars, was surprised at the revised price for trade in anyway, so I decided to go ahead (and it then took then 3 goes to get the invoice right - a brand new car and a trade in and take into account a £100 deposit - get one wrong each time and you need 3 attempts (clearly manual, rather than automated, which in itself is astonishing) . so payment was at 16:59 the day before a 09:00 collection, and despite their "
Payment will register in your account within minutes if you quote the RN on payment" that didn't happen either (and not for a further 3 days as it turned out) so was a whole other level of hassle to get confirmation payment was received with tight timeline to collection.
I'd like to think that this is the crux.
Company growing at phenomenal speed, "back office systems" are a challenge to put in place. We have the same thing in my company, and I am the IT guy, and I definitely know what I am doing. But we still have massive manual workarounds for things that we can't get into place fast enough (and we deliberately tolerate them, but they lead to errors, and generally speaking more time is spent sorting out any errors than actually getting the routine job done ... automation, once we have that built, does fix it). But we don't then have an approach that pisses off our customers on top of that!
I have no idea why Tesla is forecourting cars that have needed respray at 40K miles ... or "a bunch of replacement bits". I would have expected them to send those to auction ... maybe they have decided they don't want poor quality 2nd cars floating around the market and decide to do something about it ...
Either way, over the 7 years I've been a customer their back office systems have never kept up with growth. Musk (I presume) has pressured their DEV to rollout stuff that their competitors don't have. "
Move the Customer Service to APP / human-free". That was rolled out long before eithger the market or their back office systems was ready for it! and was total chaos for a while - as in "Didn't work properly, but they had already removed the human component - "as per plan"
Musk (again, I presume it comes from the top) has pushed lots of things on timescales that are ambitious (and mostly not achieved, when originally expected). The appetite of early adopters to put up with that is different to Early and Late majority, let alone the Laggards!
The Captain needs to alter the Ship's course to accommodate that. Question is whether he will do it before the reputational damage is irreparable.
My history:
2015 bought my first MS. Delivery guy had the car parked in pride of place in the showroom and whipped a sheet off it, and then spent an hour going through everything with me - whilst it was plugged in and fully charged by the time I left.
Had a few snags, nothing was too much trouble. They came and picked the car up and dropped off a loaner each time. One time I took the car there, picked up a loaner and, like a complete idiot, I left my house keys in the car ... they sent someone to my house (2 hours drive) to drop them off ...
Bought one of the first M3's into the country, collected from Heathrow - they were shifting 100 cars a day - looked like the start of Le Mons!
Got a second M3 a year later - by then they had a PowerPoint Presentation to "everyone collecting at 10:00" - by then they were shifting 200 cars a day (for a few weeks of the quarter)
Replaced the MS and got the same PowerPoint presentation (i.e. only suitable for an M3) !! My MS was just parked in between the rows of M3s ... Made no difference to me, I was familiar and didn't need hand holding). But imagine a 1st time buyer of a £100K car ...
Replaced M3 with MY - Dartford. Two guys at a rickety wooden table in a multi storey car park. "Here's the keys off you go". PowerPoint was no more!
I counted well over 200 new cars ... turned out that they didn't only use that one level of the car park. All key0-handover was well as any questions anyone had was "those two guys"
I think that's because their back office system don't accommodate it. Back Office system should know exactly where your car is, on what boat, when it will be in Southampton, when the car transporter will pick it up ... when it will arrive at Handover ... putting all that on your My Tesla would be cool (sorry Mr Miserable, the shipping thread would be out of business!)
Likewise with integration of the assessment of what is needed to be done to get a 2nd hand car ready, what bits are needed, and when they will be in stock. Deliveries are all "just in time" (or jolly well should be) so that data should all be known "down to the minute".
The only reason they aren't able to tell you that, and call you back, and all the rest, can only be because their back office systems don't, yet, do all that stuff. The cost of the manual workaround they are doing strikes me as bonkers. Each time they have to speak to you (or handle a request) is a "Big cost" (if it could otherwise be automated, or you were informed such that you didn't call at all). I'm surprised a manager isn't saying "Get that fixed".
I like the letter-headed Memo paper Churchill used to use for his hand written notes to people. Printed at the top was "Action this day"
