“Customer support at Tesla is even worse than I claimed last time” | Hacker News Reader

“Customer support at Tesla is even worse than I claimed last time”

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172 pointsjweir119 comments

There needs to be a process within customer support teams in which they can escalate problems if the rules feel wrong to them.

If a purchase was unintentional and very large ($4,333) a refund should be offered. This feels like common sense to me.

That's a large amount of money to lose. Providing annoyingly bad customer service to people and then signing off with "Warm Regards" is likely to make enemies of customers.

Edit: Somebody mentioned that Taleb might be bullshiting about there being no confirmation, however, to be honest, I still think at this price level, customer support should be able to refund purchases. Keep your customers happy (and they will eventually purchase upgrades from you)!

Also, Tesla upgrades are universally either software unlocks ("boost mode") or promises of future hardware/software upgrades ("full self driving"), as far as I know, and so should all be entirely reversible in an automated way.

I think of Apple, Microsoft, and Steam for comparison, each of which have software stores that allow refunds for purchases, some of which could potentially be pretty significant. For example, Train Simulator has about $10,000 in DLC [1], and a single bundle purchase of all of it would still qualify for Steam's two-weeks-from-purchase/less-than-two-hours-of-play refund policy.

[1]: https://ganker.com/train-simulator-game-all-dlc-total-cost-a...

Nitpick: while I agree that “full self driving” is kind of a promise and that all those charges should be reversible, you still get immediate feature unlocks today immediately after paying for it, like navigate on autopilot/smart summon.

> you still get immediate feature unlocks today

So... turn those off again, then.

So I can just borrow boost mode to impress my dates and turn it off afterwards? For free?

If I can borrow $10k of Train Simulator DLC from Steam to impress my date, sure. As long as the "you can get an automatic refund as long as you haven't used it for too long" timer is cumulative, it doesn't seem too abusable.

Why not? But after the third time, Tesla should require in-person confirmation of the purchase.

I reckon they could charge a monthly subscription and make more money that way from people trialing features...

Only if people repeatedly desire those features, vs being more of a one-time novelty.

Say unlocking Boost Mode costs $2k. What would the subscription cost, $200/mo?

If I can show off Boost Mode to all my friends in one month, I might never care to pay for it again after that.

If my only way to get the feature is a permanent unlock (and I can afford it), Tesla scores an extra $1800.

Subscriptions work for sticky things. Are Tesla's add-ons all that sticky?

What if 20x more of their customers trial it for a month, than purchase it outright? It could still work. It just depends on user engagement.

There have been entire TV shows build around the premise of not paying a cent with "borrowed" cars, clothes, etc. . Hell there are millions lost by people ordering clothes on Amazon and sending them back when they don't like them. Tesla stands out badly if it cannot even offer doing so one time.

I think the clothes-on-amazon thing is fair and a cost of doing business, though. If my only choices, as a customer, were "all sales are final"-buy-online or go in-store, I would 100% go in-store. I would never, ever buy what could be a brick in a box online if I wasn't allowed to return it if it turned out to be a brick in a box.

And clothes have another dimension (heh, literally) of size/fit/feel. I think it's totally reasonable to buy a shirt online, put it on, think "wow this material is awful" and return it. That's what you can do in-store, and it's not your fault that that loop is a lot more expensive for online retailers.

> Hell there are millions lost by people ordering clothes on Amazon and sending them back when they don't like them.

Free returns are usually a requirement for clothing sales though. Say, Zalando has free returns within 100 days -- people expect this as clothes obviously need to fit.

My comment wasn't supposed to be an argument against that. I agree, it should be fully reversible.

Does anyone believe the currently available Tesla vehicles out on the road will be level-5 "fully autonomous" without major hardware upgrades?

> Does anyone believe the currently available Tesla vehicles out on the road will be level-5 "fully autonomous" without major hardware upgrades?

I don't know.

But that doesn't seem very relevant. Tesla has already shown they will upgrade customers who have purchased full self driving to their latest hardware package (v2 -> v3).

Elon seems to think so. He knows more about this than many of us. He may have reasons to hype the story a bit but I do think he’s sincere.

He also says there is another generation of hardware in the works. Not sure where that fits in. But if they can roll out a 2.5 -> 3.0 hardware upgrade, as they are doing, I don’t see what prevents them from doing that for 3.0 -> 4.0 hardware when the time comes.

Although I don’t know where that fits in, I do know where it does not fit in, which is into a made up narrative which falsely claims that Elon promised the hardware would never change and never be upgraded.

I realize that’s not quite in the spirit of your question but I’m also pointing out that the question may be moot.

Also the qualifier “major” is up for discussion. A replacement of the main computer motherboard certainly seems major on its face, but if it can be done by a mobile service tech in half an hour at a location of your choosing without you even needing to be there, then it’s not so major, in an important sense.

Tbf, from a seller's point of view, the larger the purchase, the harder a refund should be. In any case, the bigger party (in this case, Tesla as the seller) holds more power.

I agree about the power balance but I don't think it's in Tesla's interest to have customers that were burned by massive accidental purchases and never buy a car from them again.

I don’t know if it’s still this way, but I liked how Android used to allow returning an app after purchase (time limited I assume), and was always surprised Apple doesn’t have a mechanism like this. Well, not surprised, I guess, there’s an obvious business reason for not making that process easy.

If you uninstall a paid app quickly enough after installing, it's automatically refunded without you requesting it.

I realized by accident once when I bought an app for a one-time thing, it worked very well and quickly, and then I uninstalled it.

Actually re-purchased afterwards and left it installed for a few days so dev would get their couple dollars.

This is just an American problem because there's no real customer protection.

In Europe (EU) you have at least 14 days to revert any purchase made over "distance" unless the product is either custom made or of such a type that a resale isn't possible (eg. Underwear). You are also allowed to reasonably test the product. The only charges you can incur is the shipping back and if you materially lower the value, an example would be rough handling.

This is the reason for the return policy of 14 days or a couple of hours played steam for example has.

Steam has refused every single refund I’ve requested over the years, from €1,99 to €20+, unplayed or not.

Purely digital items bought are not covered by this law. Only physical items bought online, because you cannot try them like you can in the store.

This means no refunds for Steam games unless your government has put additional rules in place to also cover the purchase of digital goods.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, because what you said is more or less correct:

"But section 19 of that EU directive explicitly allows sellers of digital goods to ask users to waive that right before they make the purchase, provided the digital goods are delivered immediately." -- https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/sorry-europe-you-stil...

Interesting, Steam has granted every refund I've requested (I'm in the US).

Same, I've never had any issue refunding a game with less than 2 hours played prior to 2 weeks after purchase.

When was the last time you tried? Steam introduced a refund system with clear rules a while ago: https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

As others pointed out the european 14 day return policy only applies to physical goods.

Complaint was from Nassim Nicholas Taleb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb)

Elon responded - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217493904297058304

It's shouldn't take twitter and involvement of the CEO to get basic customer service.

Or a complaint from a very famous person in startup circles to get people to pay attention to the expensive software issues...

This is not a Tesla only problem, mind you. Most companies I've had the (dis-)pleasure of working with lately seem to be lacking in this area. It isn't until the brass steps in that a decision can be made to unlock an outcome.

I've heard it a lot of Telsa owners where I live. And for something that costs on avg 50k+ it shouldn't be this bad.

I have a coworker who has had tons of problems with a Tesla and has had a terrible time with their support and repair services. I agree that it's becoming the norm even for higher priced products to have shit customer service.

I can't argue with you there. My previous Fifth Wheel RV had a sinking floor issue that took months for the manufacturer to take seriously. It required me to press the issue many times before they got me an appointment. That was a 60k purchase.

Im not saying Tesla is the only company that does this. RV dealers are renown for doing the same thing. That is why everyone recommends buying an RV that is 3 years old because everything should be fixed by then.

Customer Service is a cost center. In that part of the funnel, there is no money to be made, only lost. Hence the rigid CSR scripts, "quality assurance" recordings, and refusal to escalate issues.

It's not dissimilar to security in that regard. Investing in secure practices will never make money, it will only ever be a money hole like CS.

As @jordan_mcrae_ put it, "This is called blue checkmark service. Not available to regular Tesla customers"

http://graphics.wsj.com/elon-musk-twitter-habit-analysis/

He seems to reply to everyone, but I guess a blue checkmark gets more attention

I agree. The problem is both support & IT are cost centers and first on the chopping block when budgets need to be reeled in.

Didn't sound very basic. "butt-purchasing" sounds like quite a stretch. And Taleb is a confirmed provocateur.

> And Taleb is a confirmed provocateur.

Confirmed by who? When? How?

Stuff like this: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1160560285805096960

Just read his books. Brilliant, but clearly incendiary.

And happens to love Tesla. Until he got to experience their customer service:

"First day driving a @TeslaMotors. Something else! I hope I will never ever have to drive a nonelectric car." (https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/897402998787330048?lang=e...)

"There are 150K-200K car fires per annum. You take one event & an emotional statement of an actress & turn it into a statement about the safety of @Tesla. And this is 2018." (https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1008365860057120770?lang=...)

"But they can show evidence of smear campaign (there is) using my Tesla/NonTesla test." (https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1018509262085996545?lang=...)

"Tesla might not be a flawless diamond, but you could smell a smear campaign by the usual culprits, the propaganda machine for middlebrow called the New York Times, heavily compromised in its subservience to Saudi Barbaria/Oil lobbies." (https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1066683244295397376?lang=...)

The "OMG someone said something bad about Tesla, let's question their motives"/"the shorts!" reflexes need to stop.

OTOH the involvement of the CEO is the best way to solve systemic issues.

IOW customer service can & should be able to fix it for one person, but the CEO can fix it for everybody.

CEOs handle optics and politics first. Of course Musk is going to promise top class service to a best-selling author with a massive following. You always take care of the big swinging d's first. You relegate the rest to your minions to handle.

Sorry, how would a company implement basic customer services except at the direction of its senior managers? Musk wasn't just issuing this one refund in that tweet, he was promising to fix Tesla's customer service policies. That's his job, and he's doing it. You can argue that he did it badly in the past, but I don't see much to complain about currently.

When customer support resorts to justification by analogy it's not gone well.

A terrible analogy too! If it's their policy to not refund software purchases they should have a standard response to these requests.

The better analogy for this scenario is "it's like when you make eye contact with the squeegee guy at the corner so he starts cleaning your windows with a dirty mop despite your shrill screaming & then demands you pay him or else you don't wanna know or else"

It is ironic, as usually car analogies are used by default, to explain away any manner of things on the internet. The CS picked the wrong strategy of doubling down and being snarky to the black swan/blue checkmark guy, who knows a thing or two about how the most intolerant wins.

I was shocked by the middle school level English grammar coming from the company’s official customer support. Who knew you could get so much wrong in seven sentences! Bad image for a luxury product.

I would imagine that email support is outsourced abroad. Less likelihood of customers getting irate over accent/communication issues, and easier to respond to customers at all times of the day.

The analogy doesn't even work. If you buy a house, you own it outright. If you don't like the house, you can sell it.

Can you can sell a piece of software that doesn't belong to you and can't be unbundled from the car?

you can sell the car.

You can't really sell the extension to the house without selling the house unless well you live in SF and you turn it into a 5 bedroom apartment.

Yes, and that would have worked had the CSR been dealing with a car return issue that was past the refund eligibility date. But they're talking about a piece of software that isn't critical to the car's functionality and can be refunded.

"flipping a few bits to refund a digital asset is as hard as refunding a house" what a joke

TIL Tesla sells DLCs for their vehicles.

What software does Tesla sell that costs $4000?

There are several software-unlock 'upgrades' they sell, like the $2000 'boost mode' [1].

[1]: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a30294938/tesla-model-...

Wow that just made med like Tesla a lot less. I know it's "just business" and all that but several thousand dollars for "unlockables" reminds of the way gaming has taken a turn for the worse.

I never understood this. If you want the latest tech, you should be expected to pay your share of the the R&D/materials that went into creating it.

The problem is not so much paying for the tech that you want, but the ability to reverse accidental or unintentional purchases.

It is not like the customer accidentally hit a button that burned up $4K of electricity; it is a digital enable code that could be just as easily disabled.

Even if they add some trivial service charge for reversing the transaction, or 1/1000 of the cost (because you had access to the fun feature for a day out of the 1000day expected lifetime), fine, but just stonewalling on an obviously reversible event is tantamount to dishonest dealing

Tiered pricing is a standard way to allow more price-conscious customers to get the product, while still charging higher prices to those who are willing to pay for the best features.

A big fraction of product cost is the overhead of setting up the manufacturing pipeline, so often the product tiers will be very small or even software changes to the exact same object.

This doesn't strike me as unfair. It's helped me recently, when I bought the lowest tier iPad pro (I don't care about storage or built-in cellular, and I want the smallest one). If someone wants to pay more for those things, let them. If it came full-price with all those features bundled, I simply wouldn't have bought it at all.

Exactly. You can see this in Tesla with their 60 vs 75 model S. The battery is physically the same in both, but software limited (liftable via OTA) in the 60.

Though I think it's fair to note for that case that the battery unlocked to full capacity is going to wear out faster, and since Tesla has an 8-year warranty for the S, that increases their costs in a way that doesn't happen with pure software unlocks.

Note that making the lowest tier product cost less requires the highest tier product to cost more.

(Say the lowest tier widget costs $10 and sells 1000 units. The higher tier costs $20 and sells 100 units. The average revenue per unit is $10.91. The question then is, how many units would they sell if the single-tier unit price was $11?)

What you're saying is true, but it's just the price floor and often not the actual sale price. It's more often "what the market will bear." "Professional" customers are often happy paying significant premiums. If it makes me 2x-10x more productive, the cost is of little relevance. "Consumers" are a lot more price sensitive. A durable orbital sander doesn't mean much if I only use it once every few years.

I do hate the idea of software unlocks, though.

I once (like 15 years ago) bought a base model car and the buttons on the radio didn't work right. This was after the era of standard DIN radios, and it wasn't broken, it just didn't do what you told it to. So I took it to the dealer and after initial disbelief, they fixed it.

I realized what happened (they didn't explain in so many words) was that to be as efficient as possible, the difference between the mid level and base level trims was a different plastic faceplate with different labels, and a software switch. So mine apparently had the switch set for a different trim and all that was needed was to change it. But the exact same electronics were installed in all the cars.

Still today. Audi users grab a VAGCOM and enable new features that where disabled by the dealer. Fords disable several cosmetic features based on initial programming that can be overwritten with a change of a single hex value. Etc etc

Once I rented an Audi Q5 from Avis, fancy with leather seats and the touchscreen stereo and all that jazz... but the Nav didn’t work. I didn’t pay for the Nav addon, but the car comes standard with Nav. Looked for the Sd card, and it was there. I figured I’d spend some time after the client to figure out why... well before I even left, while I was putting my bags in the trunk I noticed a panel missing and a cable dangling. I plugged the cable back in, suddenly the car chimes and Nav appears on the stereo.

Don’t underestimate the lack of knowledge by people and the wolves who prey on them.

Doesn’t software cost money to develop and research?

The main ones are Enhanced Autopilot (before it was bundled) & Full Self Driving which make sense as add-ons. Also charging.

If you want more power out of your ICE car you have to pay for a tune and additional parts. Those things cost money just like software development costs money.

That's a broken analogy. Boost mode, etc., is more "your engine has eight cylinders, already installed, but you need to pay us money to use more than six".

> Those things cost money just like software development costs money

The hardware is there. The software development cost is around building a gate/UI so only certain customers have access to it.

Using your analogy, it can be better for all involved to develop a single eight cylinder engine and sell it with two cylinders disabled for less to those that only need six cylinders.

Which is what Intel/AMD do.

Well, and there are non-zero costs of allowing greater wear / risk of damage on parts of the car that are still under warranty. Not $2k, but software isn't the only cost (to Tesla) here.

In the case of the acceleration boost update, it's more like "we wrote a new firmware for several subsystems that increases your acceleration". It's not enabling hardware that already exists, but is disabled. It's the same case with the Full Self-Driving package: you're not paying for hardware you have to be enabled, you're paying for new software features. The purchase price covers the "labor" of creating those software packages.

Okay, I can get behind the "new firmware" for Boost.

But this, less so:

> It's the same case with the Full Self-Driving package: you're not paying for hardware you have to be enabled

Now, obviously there's a cost for software development. But this is nebulous hand waving at best (and though you don't "speak" for Tesla, they're also not alone in this).

"Oh, the hardware is free, you're just paying for software..." as a justification, that is.

The hardware is demonstrably NOT free, no matter how you spin it. It's just a better business model for them. It's no different to Comcast wanting to charge me less for installing telephony equipment that was never plugged in, in order to "bundle", than just plain Internet service.

Okay lets take my hardware out of play. Every car now days is detuned at the factory for reliability. You can get an aftermarket tune and programmer for 1-2k that might void the warranty on your engine and drivetrain. If you want to go the custom route and have your car tuned on a dyno that might be a few hundred dollars an hour. With gas cars the hardware is there. The software development cost is around building a gate/UI so only certain customers have access to it.

So I can take my theoretical Tesla to just any software developer to unlock those optional features? Because where I live a tuned car doesn't require paying the cars creator a cent.

I got my Model 3 in 2018. Since then, it has received a ton of free upgrades making it way more feature rich than I bought it. There are certain add-ons you can purchase when you order (at a bit of a discount compared to if you decide to get them down the road).

I think another way to look at it is that some features cost extra money because they cost money to make, and they add value to the vehicle. In a traditional model, you would have to take your car into the dealership or whatever to have some sort of extra feature installed. (Once upon a time, this might have been upgrading from a tape deck to a CD player.) The difference with Tesla, is for some things (not all), they can do this remotely. There's really only a psychological difference because we perceive if something is technically capable of some feature, it should be able to do it whether or not we've paid for it.

While there are certainly some cases of poor customer service that get a lot of bad press, there are also many cases of excellent experiences where they go above an beyond what they needed to do, and compared to any other car company, the experience just doesn't even begin to compare.

It ain't new. IBM used to sell mainframes that could be unlocked to a higher level of capability, long before the microcomputer era, so I'm told.

Shroedingers autopilot which is and isn't an autopilot depending on time of day and who you ask. If you're a regulator you have to say its the law.

But in spite of these problems, surveys find that Tesla owner satisfaction is very high.

Maybe the service problems effect a relatively small number of owners? Maybe quality has been getting better, and service has been too? Or maybe Teslas have outstanding positive qualities that offset the service deficiencies? Maybe other auto makers also have equally bad service? Or a bit of all of these possible explanations?

Can anyone confirm it's this easy to make the purchase?

I'd rather enjoy discovering that Nicholas Taleb was bullshitting here...

It isn’t. I was trying to do the purchase of the “acceleration boost” intentionally, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it, because the UX for it is unintuitive, and the whole upgrades menu itself is hidden behind at least 3 levels of clicks in the app.

Disclaimer: I have not purchased so I can't say for sure.

The Upgrades menu is on the main list of options when you open the Tesla app on Android. I have not activated it myself by accident, but once you tap Upgrades, it loads the available options. There are 2 for me. If you "check" one of the options, it will be checked the next time you come back to the screen. After a checkbox is checked, there's a Pay Now link at the bottom of the screen.

That's the workflow. I personally find it hard to believe it could be navigated completely by accident, but the placement of the menu option and the persisting of the checkbox across re-visits to the Upgrades screen make me think it's possible.

My Tesla app on the iPhone has an "Upgrades" page from the main menu, and on that page it offers to sell me a Full Self-Driving upgrade for $4000. There's a big Apple Pay button on the page to make the payment with a credit card. I'm not sure what happens when you click that, and given this person's experience I don't want to test it, but it seems like they made it pretty easy to spend $4k.

I've "accidentally" purchased something with Apple Pay before. Not because I didn't want the item, but because I thought once you press "pay" it'd take you to a page to specify shipping address etc. no such thing – payment went straight through and they just assumed the shipping address was the same as for my Apple account. I don't know if this is the same with all Apple Pay purchases, this was my first time using it for anything physical and some place other than an Apple property.

There was no confirmation page, or any way to really regret the purchase (that I could find) other than contacting the seller, which I did to clear up the shipping snafu. (I still wanted the item, just not to that address.)

I've never opted for Apple Pay since, only ever just using card payments instead. It's marginally more involving when you've got cards setup with a secrets manager, but it's worth it to significantly reduce the risk of accidental purchase.

If the purchase flow in this case made use of Apple Pay than I for one find the "butt dial" explanation very plausible.

"I've "accidentally" purchased something with Apple Pay before. Not because I didn't want the item, but because I thought once you press "pay" it'd take you to a page to specify shipping address etc. no such thing – payment went straight through and they just assumed the shipping address was the same as for my Apple account. I don't know if this is the same with all Apple Pay purchases, this was my first time using it for anything physical and some place other than an Apple property."

Speaking as someone who temporarily changes addresses often, ew. That's not good.

It turns out you can go to https://applepaydemo.apple.com/ at the "Try it: ApplePayPaymentRequest" section and do a "Detailed Request" to try it for yourself.

I think it's really actually nice that everything is there on one page and consistent to your platform [1], but I can see missing it and moving ahead by mistake.

[1] Android supports this as well https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020#payment-request-api

That's a really nice link, thanks for sharing!

I made another purchase with the seller that I mentioned in my comment about the "accidental" purchase and verified that the shipping address was not part of the pay sheet, the way it is in the "detailed request" demo, so I guess they just haven't set it up right. I'm going to contact them with a link to that page and your comment so they know who to thank – hopefully they'll get around to fixing it! Thanks again for sharing!

https://github.com/luruke/browser-2020#payment-request-api

I had almost exclusively made purchases through apps for digital goods, but I was really surprised when I did it for the first time on a website for a physical good. The thumbprint or double-click/face scan should be a clue about money changing hands (also implying it's the final step), but I can see how a mistake gets made.

Absolutely. The purchase I made was some time ago so I had forgotten about the side button double-click which seems to be a requirement to approve the purchase. Being reminded of this makes the whole "butt purchase" explanation much less plausible to me, but of course that doesn't excuse crappy customer service in any way.

Rerouting packages paid by CC/online payment methods is a classic fraud, thus not letting you specify alternative address might be on purpose.

I don't think I've ever made a card purchase online where I wasn't able to specify a different shipping address than the billing address.

This is odd to me. The Apple Pay sheet does clearly show all the information being collected (credit card info, billing + shipping info) before you confirm. They didn't "assume" the shipping address was the same without telling you — it pre-filled the information and showed it to you before you checked out. Then you had to either enter your passcode or scan your face/fingerprint, which is a pretty big sign that something big is happening (incidentally, I have no idea how this could have happened inside Nassim's pocket).

No UI is 100% free of being misinterpreted by users of course. But I'm not sure the Apple Pay UI is to blame for either your mistake or Nassim's.

You're right about the passcode/fingerprint/face id authorization step – I think I forgot about that because double tapping the side button to approve is a simple and pretty forgettable action. This makes me think the whole "butt purchase defense" if you will is much less plausible to be honest.

That said, I did get fooled by the lack of shipping address information. It was my first ever purchase with Apple Pay (not including app store purchases, where shipping address doesn't matter much) and I guess I just assumed I'd be inputting shipping details in the next step. It was never displayed on the pay sheet, and I think this may be due to how that particular web shop is set up – you specify shipping details after inputting payment details, but only for card purchases, for Apple Pay it just gets your Apple data.

I actually verified this by making another purchase from them (wherein I had no need to change the shipping information) and it never displayed shipping details on the pay sheet. It did show card information though.

Either way, inputting card details is only marginally more involving when using a secrets manager so I'm just gonna continue to opt for that when possible. Fool me once, and all that.

> It was never displayed on the pay sheet, and I think this may be due to how that particular web shop is set up – you specify shipping details after inputting payment details, but only for card purchases, for Apple Pay it just gets your Apple data.

I've implemented the Apple Pay API in an iOS application, and there's no way to get shipping info without explicitly requesting it from the user. The only options I can think of are that:

1. If it's an app, it has access to your contacts, and it's finding your personal contact info and using that without asking you (seems unlikely for a bunch of reasons)

2. You've given the website your shipping information previously, and it's just remembering that

But there's no way for a website/app to just "get your Apple data"

It's that easy, except when it isn't. I tried to buy that upgrade last year when Tesla was offering a discount and I couldn't find the buy button anywhere. At the time I sent an email saying something like "I've never found it so hard for someone to send a company $3000 for a product." Seems like Nassim experienced the opposite of me.

>I'd rather enjoy discovering that Nicholas Taleb was bullshitting here...

I'll go with user error here, but who cares? What do they think, Taleb purchased boost on a whim to race someone at a red light, then asked for a refund when it was over? The fact that they straight up said "no refund" is crazy, and telling. I'll bet Tesla operates like an insurance company: deny all claims until it's too noisy to bear.

To be fair even if he is exaggerating this should be refund-able. So trying to figure out if he is right or wrong about easy it is doesn't really matter.

This actually happened to my friend over the weekend who just bought a Model 3 Perf on a lease, and will only have the car for a few months until he moves out of country.

His phone purchased the $7k full self driving feature while it was in his pocket from the Tesla app.

Apparently Android has this feature where you don't have to do an unlock / purchase confirm if the phone is near your your body.

Contact to customer support said they can't do chargebacks and to contact the bank instead.

He managed to get the charge reversed at the bank level on Monday.

AFAIK he still has FSD enabled and we don't know what Tesla intends to do once the bank takes back the money from them.

Reversing the charges through the bank is a bold move given that Tesla has essentially complete control over your car, and the supercharger stations.

Yes, that was our concern as well, but customer support explicitly told him to go through his bank...

(He asked me for advice on this entire ordeal because I'm also a Model 3 owner, but I've always made my upgrade purchases through the web UI and not the app.)

Surprisingly, Tesla hasn't optimized the processes for handling rare errors that affect 5 out of every 100,000 customers.

Wanting a refund within a reasonable grace period ("immediately afterwards" definitely counts) isn't a 'rare error', even if the purchase itself could be considered such.

In the UK it's a statutory right - with digital downloads you have 14 days to either cancel for a refund or explicitly consent (i.e. opt-in, not out).

It's not just digital goods.

In the EU all "distance selling" purchases (internet, phone) must be fully refundable within 14 days of taking delivery.

The seller may only charge for incurred costs, like shipping.

The exception to this is customized goods, say for example a custom made piece of furniture or jewelry. I think even stuff like engraving counts as custom made.

I know, but the 14 days 'cancelling' or 'consenting' part of my comment was specific to digital. The old distance selling act was actually 30 days receipt, aimed at mail order physical goods, but I'm not sure off-hand if physical goods still get longer.

The rare error is the unintentional purchase of some software upgrade while the phone is in your pocket (not sure how this is actually possible...).

The refund issues are due to Tesla's policy.

I feel like Tesla has optimized it's customer support for rich people who don't bat an eye at a few thousand here and there. I say this as a model 3 owner rather shocked at random costs that pop up from time to time...

Like what?

Reason #43546 why I'm NEVER buying a Tesla.

The laughably childish comparison to a contractor building an addition is beyond absurd and insulting. Tesla did not rip open the car and physically bolt on additions. No labour was performed and no materials were consumed. It simply flipped a few flag bits or downloaded an archive for $4,333. That should be very simple to reverse and refund, even if the software was used briefly.

Going back to that stupid contractor analogy it would be the equivalent of buying a house with extra rooms locked by the contractor. Doesn't sound like your house anymore. And that took me all of 10 seconds to think up. Try again, rep.

And lastly, what kind of customer service is that? What kind of company lets their reps fabricate awful analogies and patronize customers? That was just a really nice way of saying "fuck you, moron".

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