Elon Musk personally cancels blogger's Tesla order after 'rude' post
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's a bad review of an event that was poorly executed. Turning around and cancelling a preorder is just childish.
I honestly hadn't realized that he had such thin skin.
If Musk has just said "sorry for the delay" at the start of the event, all of this could have been avoided. But no, no apology, and then petty revenge when someone complains about it.
You ignore them, which is what Tesla should have done.
Keep in mind at this stage the guy got his 5k refund and just lost his place in line. A real first world crisis...
Of course a beta program is a different situation. When I've been a beta tester for various products, I expect them to be buggy (and typically have had to sign NDAs or at least have an implicit agreement not to talk publicly about my experiences).
People selling things can be as exclusive as they want, and sometimes exclusivity means excluding people.
"I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post, “Dear @ElonMusk: You should be ashamed of yourself”, was a personal attack on you. I also hear that you are not comfortable having me own a Tesla car and have cancelled my order for a Tesla Model X."
The thing that jumps out at me is "you are not comfortable having me own a Tesla". There certainly is no concrete indication on whether that's a lifetime ban or what since it's a paraphrase of a conversation we didn't get to hear.
"Find devoted customers and work with them to build a great product for them."
It's clear from his posts that he was a devoted customer (his recent post even praises Telsa the company). That doesn't make the disappointment in the how the event was run any less. They invited those devoted customers to an event, and then ran it poorly. Someone calling Tesla out on that, and pointing out that Tesla is treating those devoted customers in a negative way could be handled in a less heavy handed fashion.
[0] - https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb
[EDIT: To just add, as someone who is not "in" PR but deals with PR in various ways regularly, sometimes an aggressive response is indeed called for. But it shouldn't be the default response.]
Just few weeks back there was this Blue Origin pissing contest about nothing.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/05/top-gear-tesla-...
b) Appeal court judge Lord Justice Moore-Bick ruled that the programme did not libel Tesla.
c) Everybody except Tesla knows Top Gear is an entertainment show that uses cars as props, just like Mork and Mindy was an entertainment show poking fun of human foibles, not a show about aliens.
b) I care less about the legality of it and more about the ethics of it
c) Literally the first sentence of each Top Gear presenter on Wikipedia labels them as a journalist. Make whatever label you want for the TV show, the content is largely journalistic. The segment about the Roadster was largely journalistic. The can hide behind the "it's just entertainment" veil as much as they want, but it's a huge grey area at best. Regardless of this, you can still libel and be damagingly deceitful even without being a journalistic program - as far as morals go, it is only slightly less shitty.
If you watched Top Gear even occasionally you'd know how rediculous it is claiming that Top Gear is serious news rather than an opinion-based entertainment show.
I actually remember a banter they did about the Ford GT that Jeremy owned having to stop at every gas station just to have enough gas to get to the studio. It's not like they're picking on Tesla, exaggeration is a form of comedy and they regularly exaggerated everything in the show.
That they are journalists elsewhere is utterly irrelevant, also they would more properly be called columnists these days rather than journalists as their work in print now is usually opinion based and presented as such.
Even wikipedia splits up James May's journalistic career and his Top Gear presenting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May#Journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May#Radio_and_television
There's virtually no mention of journalism on Richard Hammond's page (and no evidence that he actually is one).
Jeremy Clarkson was a journalist for actual papers before he started presenting Top Gear.
You could say the same thing about most mainstream newspapers and TV channels, and yet...
c) Top Gear's audience doesn't. It's the _Sun_ of TV shows.
He's built a very cool rocket company, but on HN people take the CTO title at face value and assume he's a genius rocket scientist. He's built a cool car company, and is right to focus on battery technology and solar being better than biofuels etc etc. I admire him a lot, but i think a lot of people project their ideals onto him as a sort of symbol of the primacy of the Valley Way, which they're staking their twenties and thirties on. Whilst taxonomy doesn't really achieve much, I sort of think of him as more Henry Ford than some sort of Tony Stark/Einstein hybrid that is often seen here.
Like I said, there's a lot to admire, but he's just a guy still. Petty, tantrums, lots of SpaceXers i know (current and former) talk about how really you have to go to Gwynne Shotwell for some sober leadership and patience when he jumps the shark a bit, and she can speak truth unto power and figure out a way forward. She never gets mentioned from from what one hears in this industry (I'm in it to) she deserves a lot of credit.
Except the majority of the comments so far imply that's it's actually not a good move. Also, no one in the thread has yet mentioned him by first name (there are only 3 occurrences of 'Elon' in this thread with 2 being by full name, and then your hypothetical HN commenter being the only that uses it alone)
pg's cult of personality is unbearable at times. If someone reads Hackers and Painters and doesn't see that they're getting hustled, they're a fool. Or they see it and are just sycophants, which is even worse in my book.
I would bet that a dollar of tax money goes farther at SpaceX than it does at NASA, though.
And that's not to diminish him. To the contrary, we need more visionary industrialists than scientists/engineers. Visionary industrialists can provide jobs and funds to brilliant scientists/engineers.
I am from India and I know how this works in India too. A lot of government officials who are in charge of our space programs, defense programs become "rocket scientists" or get a mention next to "Tesla and Newton" in school textbooks as great scientists while in reality their role was merely administrative.
This is not to say they are ordinary and deserve no credit but it depends on how they project themselves on people's mind.
What have you done with your life?
Musk is a guy who spends money to promote himself everywhere. Tesla is a rich people's car subsidized by poor people's tax money and the company is not making a profit and is unlikely to make a profit in future either. Even if it does there is nothing groundbreaking about it that Toyota or Ford can not replicate without much efforts.
SpaceX is good company but hey it isn't profitable and has not achieved anything major that NASA or Blue Origin could not have given the investments.
An hyperloop is going to be a regrettable experience for everyone involved.
All three of his companies are piggybacking on government money and have not made our lives better than the alternative.
And Tesla is about a month and a half away from unveiling its "non-rich" people car, and they used Model S revenues to corner the market on lithium ion batteries in the meanwhile.
Space X is the only US company that can currently deliver shit to ISS. Soon they will also be the only US company that can deliver people to ISS, and the only company in the world to use a reusable first stage. If that's not an achievement in your book, then I'm not sure what a real achievement would look like to you.
Silicon Valley is a relatively small world; venture capital is even smaller and more incestuous. While most people here have not heard of Stewart Alsop, Elon Musk almost certainly knew of him, even if they've never met. Elon Musk may have been insulted because venture capitalists in SV are generally not expected to so openly criticize other SV companies (especially those funded by rivals?), and when they do criticize companies, they certainly don't insult founders. You can't deny that "you should be ashamed of yourself" is insulting to Elon.
But by the way: If someone tells you you are lazy on the weekends and you actually know you are lazy on the weekends, that is also not an insult. It is just a true observation. If you feel ashamed then it is because you don't want to be lazy on the weekend, for whatever reason.
It is possible you mean that as feeling insulted by being judged. But that is another story and not the definition of insult. Insult would be if the caller would call you a lazy piece of shit for being incredibly lazy on the weekend – the explicit defamatory judgment. This honor insulting part is missing from the original scenario.
Though it might be more a culture than a language thing.
You should be ashamed of yourself is an insult specially if you are writing a public letter to Elon Musk.
It was meant to be insulting had he written just a normal blog post on a badly managed Tesla event he would not have gotten such a response. If you are going to insult him publicly Elon can say fuck off in public or he can show you how to fuck off. He chose the more picking reply.
This open letter bullshit is annoying write a blog post or article on something but don't post open letters if you don't want a reaction good or bad.If I was an investor, I'd very much like to know what his suppliers think of him and how much seller's power they have in that supply chain. As the company grows he may start to become a liability.
Mr.Alsop was just complaining about the way the launch event was organised. Even if just one customer showed up for the event its just bad on Tesla's part to keep them waiting that long without even owing an apology for that long. Half hour delay is within normal limits for a big event. On top of that cancelling a pre order was very very childish. Look who's treating their customers badly.
Now people will think again before paying him for a trip to mars. Better not annoy him or ...
I agree to disagree on it being fine to fire a customer. If someone acts like this before they have your product, why give them your product? Nothing good could come of it. If a customer Is rude in their first email to you - don't respond or don't sell them a product. The relationship isn't going to magically get better down the road. Some people are just rude.
[1] the referenced blog post ACTUALLY says that! direct quote : "you shuffle out on stage and start with a slide show — an amateur slide show at that — all about how safe the Model X is.\p Yup, you lead with safety, like that’s why we’re all spending $130,000 or more on this car"
>>Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention
Just saying. Rude customers are nothing new. As somebody who worked as a tech support guy for a call center, for a major US computer company, if anything a rude customer was treated as a opportunity. I would receive any where between 10-12 extremely rude and inconsiderate calls. Many would be very intimidating. And a lot of times, I have managed to get them to understand our side of the story, followed up on their issues, taught them how to use the internet, worked with their ISP's to fix their issues(sometimes people think, no internet is the computer's problem, not ISP's) and some times even given tuitions to customers on how to use their computers. None of that needed to be done, but doing it built very strong relationships.
I can't even remember how many times our customer interaction coach would talk to us telling delighting a rude/irate/inconsiderate customer many a times mattered more than the very quality of the product. Because strong relationships bring people back, they help in word-of-mouth of marketing and helps build brand value.
You do not look at your customers as your enemy. No matter who you are. Especially CEO's need to realize this more.
Would you like to business with a company whose CEO/Employee(s) fights with its customers? It doesn't take much common sense to understand this. If this is the experience pre-sales, how do you expect to be treated after you've purchased the product.
He probably spends millions of dollars to keep himself in news with "Musk does this cool thing" type stories where in reality his Tesla or Space-X hasn't made any serious progress disproportionate to the money people have put into it.
This move is petty, brings bad PR to Musk and his company and gives more exposure to this one customer who did not like the company. This shows that Musk's PR team (and he) is incompetent to the extent that they have let emotions and ego take precedence over smart business decision.
It also probably supports the case in favor of the state level auto dealership laws Tesla finds so troublesome. That's one reason why negative comments about BMW don't prevent someone from buying one.
But then again, no one ever said that great men are good men.
The man's obviously brilliant. But there are a lot of other brilliant men and women who don't get the credo and also don't get their flaws overlooked because of celebrity. Hopefully this is a sobering reminder that it's good not to take anyone's personality at face value until you get to know them well.
[EDITED to add:] It occurs to me that the original saying runs as follows: "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- which is amusing, at least if you're as easily amused as I am, because your objection is precisely that it's only relative power that corrupts :-).
This is a homophobic term of abuse. Please reconsider attacking people by saying that they are gay.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Tesla was woefully late in delivery, they made no attempt to apologize as stated, and honestly I don't think they really care. Not a shining example of why the manufacturer direct model is better, if anything it shows people exactly why the dealership model will survive.
At that point, I can just go to another dealer and preorder there, and hopefully get better service.
That's just not possible with Tesla. There is no dealership competition with Tesla. If Elon Musk doesn't want to sell you a car, well then you are screwed. Less competition, less customer service, punishment for bad reviews, etc.
Now, please understand that I'm a fan of the 'no dealership' model, which is why I'm highly disappointed in his reaction to the bad review. I was hopeful that Tesla would be a good citizen, and show everyone that the 'no dealership' model is a fair one, with no downsides. Unfortunately, this reaction isn't it.
Tesla wouldn't be able to not sell you a car. The dealerships buy (not really) the car, then they sell it to you. If a dealership is unhappy with your review, and won't sell you something (again, something within their rights), some other dealership would. If the manufacturer is pissed, and doesn't want you to own one of their cars, then they have to convince the dealership not to sell to you. And there is likely to be at least one dealership who would be willing to (or more likely the manufacturer would never make that request because of the power relationship between manufacturers and dealers).
For all the crap that dealerships do, they provide a layer of abstraction between the buyer and the manufacturer. Normally that's a crap deal for the buyer because it's inefficient, but it cuts the other way when the manufacturer is going to be childish about a bad review.
I just have a really hard time imagining BMW coming around and saying 'we got a bad review for a preview event, the CEO called the writer up, and we're banning every dealer in the world from selling a vehicle to that person'.
It's honestly the kind of 'parade of horribles' that the dealer's themselves are spouting in trying to prevent the 'no dealership' model from happening. Except it happened, and that sucks for everyone.
> Dear @ElonMusk: Thank you for reaching out to me. I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post...
Did he personally ring and say fuck off to a potential customer/medium blogger? Cause that's a CEO I'd support.
Willing to get dirty with customers... I'll give that a shitload more cred than most CEO's who just hand it over to hitmen or cowardly marketing.
Musk, is running balls out to actualize his vision for the future. He has also shown himself to be rational, able to handle failure with candor and trust, and emotional about what he's doing.
That last bit is important. How else does one find the motivation to work that hard?
Had that guy actually not tried to invoke drama, I suspect Musk would have responded differently.
But he did.
Frankly, I believe Musk will find that sort of thing as offensive as it is irrelevant. Rewarding the guy means validating drama, not enabling a meaningful conversation, which Musk has demonstrated he will have eagerly.
If the potential for drama goes away, Musk will sell him a Tesla too.
Rude isn't the right word here. Musk understands rude, and sometimes is rude as are the alphas on his teams. (Mostly all alphas anyway)
No, rude isn't the issue. It's drama and how inconsiderate that use of precious time is. Musk is very keenly aware of time, and values it highly enough to be very seriously annoyed at such an egregious attempt to waste it.
Secondly, all that waste does is raise the profile of someone not yet ready for it.
Musk will take on a lot, and he's hard core too. Just don't attempt to burn his time to ride on his coattails, and it's likely all good.
And I am not saying the intent here was nefarious or anything. What we are seeing is a clash in values and priorities. Sometimes, we feel like we know people, when we really don't.
That is what happened here.