Warranty/Servicing - official Tesla responses (incl GeorgeB)

[shokunin]

I think the 1200 number is not a cancellation rate over the past few years. I'm sure there are way more than 1200 cancellations out of 13,000+ reservations they have taken. They simply subtract the few that do each quarter with the new reservations each quarter, stating the "net new" reservations.

The 1200 to me sounds like the cancellation rate once reservation holders were notified to finalize their vehicles. It's hard to get $5k from people, it's even harder to get $75K from people when many haven't even seen or driven the cars for longer than 8 minutes, plus timing would have to coincide perfectly to those that want / need a car in 3 months.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are less than 2500 confirmed orders for Production #5000 and below. I would hope that the conversion rate for those higher than 5000 would be much better just due to recency of their deposits.

 

[wycolo]

> It is illegal if Tesla doesn't get an FTC waiver -- Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act (US Code 15 section 2302 clause c).[neroden]

Which they may already have filed for. If anyone can get a waiver you would think the mfr of a truly unique high tech vehicle could.
--

 

[kevincwelch]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are less than 2500 confirmed orders for Production #5000 and below. I would hope that the conversion rate for those higher than 5000 would be much better just due to recency of their deposits.

I have a fear that this is the case, although it is completely unfounded on my part. I consider myself a pretty cautious fellow, so I don't fit the category of an early adopter in all senses. Being an early adopter for a $400 cell phone is one thing; being an early adopter for an $85k car is another thing!

Given the recent announcements about service plans, delayed delivery of warranty information, connectivity charges, implementation of software updates/tech updates, fees for 60 kWh charging and now reports on this website from Sig owners of technical problems (potential battery problems as well), I am sure that is going to affect the number of completed purchase agreements.

I am just 3000 slots away from getting my email, and if I were to get it tomorrow, I would most certainly defer until more reviews from owners were out there.

 

[clindsay]

I am P732 and I just bailed. First it was not including cupholders, which we hear might come later in an opportunity console (opportunty for Tesla to charge that is), then it was $600 wiper blades every year, now $1000 fee for superchargers listed as included and the reason I went from the 40 to 60KW battery. One to many hidden Tesla taxes on this car and we haven't even gotten wind of the data plan or the year 5+ taxes yet.

Nickel and dime = bye bye

 

[sublimaze1]

Well ....

.... this is certainly an eye-opening thread. I have spent an overtly immense amount of time on this forum in the last two to three weeks. I have read the threads that I feel apply to my needs and curiosity. I will say that this thread certainly concerns me. I am looking at my car arriving around or slightly before Christmas.

Having said (written) that, I have signed my purchase agreement and will stay on to receive my car. There is not doubt that there is inherent risk as an early adopter. Look at the iPhone 5. But this is an inherent risk that I am willing to take. It is a material item, and although nobody (including myself) wants to lose material wealth, it is - in the end - material wealth.

The upside, however, has the potential for being huge: that I will/would be one of the first people to own and drive, what is unquestionably, the pinnacle of cutting edge development in the electric vehicle genre. Sure, it could turn out to be all the above (warranty failure, service failure, etc.). But, again, the upside is an experience for me. And it is an risk that I am willing to gamble, the payout being a true life experience.

Regards,
WJ
P188
McKinney, Texas

 

[splitsec002]

Here's my take on what's Tesla has been doing.

I'm # 4007 res holder so I've been waiting over 2 years on this. Many things were mentioned but maybe not promised. Specifically I remember 4 USB ports, 4.4 second car.

Pricing finally rolls around and now only the performance does the 4.4 seconds. Out of my price range. Fine I will buy the 40kwh or 60kwh.

Options rolled out, now my 49900 car is not about 60k with options. Fine, that's fair, all the other car dealers do the same thing.

Air suspension will hold up your order till 2013. Fine it makes sense that Tesla would do batch orders and maybe their robots cannot make cars without air suspension. I'll give Tesla a break because I want them to succeed.

Cars are finally getting released and there are a slew of bugs and that Tesla needs to fix. I'm an early adopter so that's ok with me too as long as Tesla fixes these issues free of charge. Hold on now, we HAVE to pay for the maintenance program otherwise our warranties and software updates are invalid? 600 a year is not too bad but what happened to low maintenance? I'm getting less excited about the car. All the word of mouth I've done for Tesla about not having to pay for oil changes, filter changes, etc etc are now down the drain. It'll cost me more to do the maintenance than it will for me to do simple oil changes. I still love the car so I'll grudgingly pay for this maintenance that I am force fed otherwise my warranty will be void. Good job Tesla you just made another 600/year off me.

Now one of the reasons I finally decided to go with the 60kwh was because the website changed from TBD to Included for the supercharger. I've already signed my contract with Tesla and there is no wording at all that mentions anything about a fee to activate this hardware. If Tesla would have left that TBD I would not be pissed but they decided to say Included then make you pay for something else. That's plain stupid to me.

Why don't we go and buy a TV that says remote included! But when you go home and want to use the remote, you have to pay $500 to activate the thing. What's the difference Tesla to say something is included when you're going to charge for us to activate or test or whatever else your lawyers can come up with to word things to make it right for you to charge us and screw us up the hole?

It's sad that I will probably pay for this "Configuration of your Model S hardware, software and interface for Supercharging", because of resale value and the odd chance that I need to use it because it's an EV and I can't fill up like a normal ICE car. It's sad that Tesla is using this nickle and dime tactic.

I feel cheated because I have already signed my contract and now Tesla wants more money, yet again. Can't wait till they start charging us for connectivity, creep, map updates, software updates, etc etc etc.

 

[AnOutsider]

I'm # 4007 res holder so I've been waiting over 2 years on this. Many things were mentioned but maybe not promised. Specifically I remember 4 USB ports, 4.4 second car.

Pricing finally rolls around and now only the performance does the 4.4 seconds. Out of my price range. Fine I will buy the 40kwh or 60kwh.

To be fair here, 5.6 was promised and at the Oct event Elon's "one more thing" was a performance model that did 0-60 in under 4.5s. 4.4 was never promised for anything other than the performance model.

 

[dsm363]

Here's my take on what's Tesla has been doing.

I'm # 4007 res holder so I've been waiting over 2 years on this. Many things were mentioned but maybe not promised. Specifically I remember 4 USB ports, 4.4 second car.

Pricing finally rolls around and now only the performance does the 4.4 seconds. Out of my price range. Fine I will buy the 40kwh or 60kwh.

Actually, the 4.4 seconds was never mentioned in public, only rumored a few months before the October event. Only at the factory event did they announce a performance version. The 5.6 second 0-60 times was mentioned often before that.

 

[MikeK]

Now one of the reasons I finally decided to go with the 60kwh was because the website changed from TBD to Included for the supercharger. I've already signed my contract with Tesla and there is no wording at all that mentions anything about a fee to activate this hardware.

You have the option to switch back to 40kWh if you're not happy with the cost of using the Superchargers. It's right there in the email.

 

[splitsec002]

You have the option to switch back to 40kWh if you're not happy with the cost of using the Superchargers. It's right there in the email.

MikeK, I'm not iliterate I know I can pony up and pay the man or drop to the 40kWh. That's not the point. The point is Tesla made me believe that it was included and is now charging a fee for it.

Let's say you went and saw an advertised price for an Iphone5. You went ahead and paid for it. A week later the phone is released and there was a new feature that was supposed to be included. Let's just say it was a camera with the new 16mp. So the phone is now released and you go to pick it up. ATT says the hardware is included, the camera is in your phone but you need to pay an extra $100 to use it. If you don't like that you can buy the Iphone 4s instead. Or you can keep your iphone 5 and not use the camera at all.

That's how I feel.

 

[Chas F]

You have the option to switch back to 40kWh if you're not happy with the cost of using the Superchargers. It's right there in the email.

I don't really think that is splitsec002's point. His summary is spot on that we have been asked to accept a lot being early adopters and we've given Tesla leeway as they've set expectations and subsequently pulled away features or hit us unexpected new charges. They have also done this in a way that seems less than honest which is the most frustrating part of it.

Even though I am on a budget, I would probably pay more than these extras are worth just because I'm an early adopter. I paid $600 for the first iphone. Not financially rational but it was worth it to me because I enjoyed the heck out of the product. The difference here with Tesla is that they are dropping these extra costs on us in a way that is leaving some of us feeling deceived and extorted for the sake of profit.

I am even willing to give them a break if this is all due to some dire financial circumstance the company may/may not be in, but they need to find a much better way to handle this or they will loose their customers anyway.

 

[dsm363]

They do and will smooth things out and have less surprises in the future but have the feeling they are flying by the seat of their pants on getting the Model S out the door. I don't think (but have no inside knowledge of course) that they are not planning these things in advance to try and hook people in and up-charge them. It seems to me that identify a financial concern and look to address it with addition sources of revenue to try and get cash-flow positive. By next year, all expenses and costs should be known to new customers but that doesn't help the early adopters. We are paying a premium but are also the first kids on the block to play with one of the coolest toys around.

 

[jerry33]

They do and will smooth things out and have less surprises in the future but have the feeling they are flying by the seat of their pants on getting the Model S out the door. I don't think (but have no inside knowledge of course) that they are not planning these things in advance to try and hook people in and up-charge them. It seems to me that identify a financial concern and look to address it with addition sources of revenue to try and get cash-flow positive. By next year, all expenses and costs should be known to new customers but that doesn't help the early adopters. We are paying a premium but are also the first kids on the block to play with one of the coolest toys around.

I agree, with one small difference. I would say, "By next year most things will be known". I suspect we won't know what the second four year maintenance will be, how fast the SCs will be rolled out, complete opportunity console pricing, etc. for some time. I don't believe there is any malfeasance on Tesla's part, it's more that they have been so focused on production and quality they have mostly ignored communications and what communications they have done, other than the few events, has been mostly of the damage-repair type. And of course some of this is because when you try something new, things usually don't go smoothly. Just seeing how the TM website runs into the weeds and does the bounce on every lap is a pretty good indication of how the pricing and communications are being handled.

 

[dsm363]

This is a company where they have IKEA furniture at HQ. They are running lean but with time and success hopefully, they'll be able to improve their communication, I agree.

 

[bluetinc]

Hey Splitsec002,

Let me play devils advocate to you for just a second, and tweak your analogy. You put your order in for the iPhone5, which has the ability to send txt messages, but no new rate plans for txt messages have been released. (I switched to txt messages because they use a phone network, the camera doesn't) Then the phone company comes out and says, we screwed up a bit, we looked at the way to set up a txting network, and the billing, and the costs associated with billing. After all that, we decided to offer our customers unlimited txting for the life of the phone for and extra $200. And, if you already ordered a phone, we understand that this is new, and partially our fault for not getting this info out sooner, you have the same option but we will cut your cost to $100. You of course could pass on this, but then you cant txt message.

Is this perfect, no, but I guess I would ask you if you expected to pay for charges at supercharging sites? (as we expect to pay for txt messages). If this had been sold to you with a better explanation would that have helped?


Peter

MikeK, I'm not iliterate I know I can pony up and pay the man or drop to the 40kWh. That's not the point. The point is Tesla made me believe that it was included and is now charging a fee for it.

Let's say you went and saw an advertised price for an Iphone5. You went ahead and paid for it. A week later the phone is released and there was a new feature that was supposed to be included. Let's just say it was a camera with the new 16mp. So the phone is now released and you go to pick it up. ATT says the hardware is included, the camera is in your phone but you need to pay an extra $100 to use it. If you don't like that you can buy the Iphone 4s instead. Or you can keep your iphone 5 and not use the camera at all.

That's how I feel.

 

[Brian H]

Sadly, that's a huge number.
You have to wonder how many were Sigs at $40,000 and how many were production $5k.
Even so, at $75,000 (avg.) a car?, that's $90M.
Probably the cost for 2 years build out of the Supercharger network.

Well, if you want to play with numbers:
Of the $90M, about ¼ is margin, so $23M. Superchargers are reputed to cost $¼M ea. to erect. There are about 92 or so scheduled for 2012-3, so about $23M. About the same. The question then is: how many more reservations will result from the free charging announcement? Their margins will have to make up that $23. I'll bet there will be 10x more than enough.

-- And about counting the activation or any other fee as "payment" for the free charging, at the reveal Elon made it clear Solar City was covering those charges out of its surplus from selling array output back to the utilities (Feed-In Tariffs, etc.)

 

[pete8314]

Let's say you went and saw an advertised price for an Iphone5. You went ahead and paid for it. A week later the phone is released and there was a new feature that was supposed to be included. That's how I feel.

This is actually a good analogy. In the Apple keynote they spent ~10 minutes showing us all how wonderful the new Maps app is. 3D vector graphics, turn-by-turn etc etc. Turns out, it's mostly pretty crappy. I'm in France at the moment and it's completely unusable. I'm certainly not defending Tesla, but even the mighty Apple can get stuff wrong - they've been testing Maps for months, they must have known it was flawed, yet they still did the dog and pony show, hoping nobody would notice?

The point is, people will get over it. Apple will fix the app. The assumption is that Tesla will do the same. There's still no excuse (IMHO) for all the little hidden charges that are slowly becoming visible, but the silly thing is, all of these could have easily been made far more palatable with good communication. I still think their biggest sin is not rewarding those that put down $40k up to 3 years ago for something that, at the time, was nothing more than a loose concept. At least give them free servicing in reward for the faith they showed Tesla.

- - - Updated - - -

This is a company where they have IKEA furniture at HQ. They are running lean but with time and success hopefully, they'll be able to improve their communication, I agree.

In the last office I built out, we went with Ikea desks and drawers....it has a comparable, of not better warranty than many of the more established brands. I was on a tight budget too, but it felt like there wasn't any compromise, except I paid less. The only downside is that it's instantly recognizable as Ikea for anyone that's had the pleasure/misfortune of spending a rainy Sunday inside an Ikea

Sidenote: the money I saved went on Herman Miller chairs for everyone, can't go wrong with those

 

[PeterW]

I know this thread is about warranty/servicing but there is a lot of discussion on here about the supercharging fees for the 60 kwh pack. So just in case you
have not seen this


Supercharging and 60 kWh Model S Orders - Message from George B

 

[Hank42]

I quite agree with you here. If Tesla wants to inspect my car every 12,000 miles in order for my warranty to not be voided - no problem. I'm all for it. But don't hold me hostage and tell me I have to pay $600 for the inspection - that sounds like ransom right there.

How about a compromise guys? You can inspect my car for free every year and get all the juicy data you need, provide me with a list of items that you are going to replace that are broken as part of warranty, and then provide me with a list of items that you are going to repair/replace that are not under warranty, but need to be changed in order to keep the warranty valid.
Somehow, I don't think $600 justifies changing the brake fluid every year.

Keep warranty separate from "service plan". Telling me to "not worry about it" is silly. I *DO* worry about it and VOIDING a warranty because I couldn't or wouldn't cough up the cash shady to me.

Or how about this - charge me the $600, and if refund me the difference if you find nothing wrong.

 

[RDoc]

I agree, with one small difference. I would say, "By next year most things will be known". I suspect we won't know what the second four year maintenance will be,
...

This is what really worries me. I'm waiting on an X, but since I intend to keep it awhile as I do most cars I like, I really want to know what it will cost to keep the battery on warranty for years 5 - 8. I'll definitely not accept the car if I don't know.