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.