The first failure was while they were away from home and had to convince the service manager that a week was a long turn-around time. They offered them a loaner, but not one they were allowed to drive to their destination so they had to rent a vehicle with their own funds. They found nothing wrong after three days.
As they left from that repair, the car announced that it needed service twice between Ohio and California. As such, they brought it in for service in CA. This service took 10 days and they found nothing wrong.
1 week later, the problem is back and they took it in for service (at yet a third service center, this time the headquarters). Another 10 day turn-around time.
The next problem was that the car refused to start.
Through this, Tesla kept taking their sweet time and being less than communicative. They also didn't offer a Tesla loaner (rather giving them rentals from Enterprise). Most luxury automakers try hard to make their customers happy. Tesla didn't.
When it came time to deal with the lemon law, Tesla offered to re-manufacture the car for them. They accepted and around 2 months later Tesla told them that they'd have to pay up for the re-manufactured vehicle.
Finally, Tesla wouldn't even admit that there was a defect with the vehicle.
As the author notes, friends with similarly priced cars had much better experiences with actually getting them repaired or replaced.
It's frustrating to have problems with a car, but if the manufacturer/dealer is communicative, prompt, helpful, and honest with you, it feels a lot less bad. In this case, it doesn't feel like Tesla was any of those. They had to keep checking in on the status, Tesla took much longer than I expect car repairs to take, Tesla wasn't able to help them, and the dealing around the re-build and refund feels like a bait-and-switch.
Yes, car trouble can happen to you if you buy a Porsche or BMW. But that's not the issue in this story. This isn't a story about Teslas being unreliable. This is a story about Tesla service and customer support being non-communicative, unhelpful, slow, and possibly even dishonest.
This is what happens when there is in fact an intermittent defect, but the technical staff does not believe the user/customer. Basically, this is poor epistemology on the part of the Tesla staff. If this is an exceptionally difficult intermittent problem, their choice is between replacing the unit, or losing a customer. They chose the latter, which is clearly the wrong choice. This indicates some sort of dysfunction and/or poor planning on the part of Tesla management. That they are going to have wastage based on defects is inevitable. They must have underestimated the numbers.
That said, hearing that they provide fossil fuel powerred vehicles as loaners has lowered my opinion of them.
The Russian military during WWI also underestimated wastage of its rifles. (~800000 a month) They were building rifles as fast as they could. In fact, they were stressing their resources so hard, they took up all their gunsmith/worker manpower and were unable to repair broken weapons sent back to the factories, which only exacerbated their problem.
It could be that they feel they've already made their reputation, and that more profit is now their priority. In other words, it seems that they no longer think they have to give amazing service. I think that would be a bad policy move for them. They still have to be better than all the internal combustion engine cars out there.
This isn't the usual holier-than-thou I did noth-ingggg! bad review.
But it's always hard to know....
If there is something you can do from between the wheel and the seat to cause those error messages, it's Tesla's fault.
All I'm saying is that the letter is not actually wrong; as far as Tesla can tell, they had repaired everything wrong with the vehicle and therefore it was in good working order. And for all we know, this diagnosis is correct, seeing as how the owner didn't try out the vehicle again after the last repair.
> After a few days, we’ve been told that the car is working with no problems again.
At that point the owner rightfully decided they didn't trust it anymore and wanted a refund. That's perfectly fine. All I'm saying is that the thing he was being asked to sign wasn't a lie, because Tesla had repaired all known defects. Yes, the owner is perfectly justified in not believing that, but that's not the same thing as saying it's false.
Like the several previous service incidents where they said the same thing, but there obviously was?
I'm willing to deal with that when it comes to buying a $300 cellphone, but for a $100,000 car it is inexcusable.
(The primary reason I haven't gone to a Pixel from a Nexus 5X is that even $650 crosses over my threshold of dealing with Googley-service).
The difference is those companies have their shit figured out.
If I had a vehicle checked like 2 times and it left me stranded, I would blow up in someone's face if I got handed a letter that says "Customer made it up"
BMW NA told me that there was nothing they could do and that they "stand behind their dealers". All manufacturers leave a lot to be desired on the customer service front.