Tesla instructed employees to only communicate verbally about complaints | Hacker News Reader

Tesla instructed employees to only communicate verbally about complaints

businessinsider.com

83 pointsahiknsr49 comments

Narrator: in retrospect, putting their do-not-put-complaints-in-writing policy in writing was not a good idea.

I would be nice if the actually published the evidence.

This story already fits my preexisting view of Tesla so I'm inclined to believe it but at the same time I've learned to be weary of sensationalization by "news" organizations.

If anyone has a copy of the actual employee policy they're talking about it would be good to see, especially if there's additional context around it.

I'm not sure what your motivation for putting "news" in quotes is — Handelsblatt is a business newspaper that's been around for 77 years. They would not assign a staff of 12 people to sort through 1,388 PDFs, 1,015 spreadsheets, 213 Powerpoint decks, image/video/audio files, and email unless they had several sources confirming the leak's legitimacy.

I didn't mean to imping on the reputation of any particular source. I'm unfamiliar with Handelsblatt and they're probably a great and honest publication.

I put news in quotes because lots of media outlets in the United States have moved squarely towards a more sensationalized entertainment style presentation of events that seems in contrast with my expectations of news sources to be primarily informational.

Now any time I see a headline on any site I've learned to click through the article and look for the source then be skeptical if I don't find them.

> I didn't mean to [impinge] on the reputation of any particular source.

Apologies, I didn't mean to imply malice. I was just curious.

> Now any time I see a headline on any site I've learned to click through the article and look for the source then be skeptical if I don't find them.

I think that's a smart default. In lieu of being able to download the leaked materials yourself (which I don't think they can just re-distribute?), I suppose it comes down to your judgment of the messenger's legitimacy, and the consequence of legal risk for them if they were to misrepresent the source material.

More suppression of speech at yet another company owned by a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist. Shocking.

It has become apparent over the past couple of years, what many of these people always meant by “free speech” is, “No one talks back to me.”

I've been told to only communicate certain potentially damaging news vocally by my company, which runs a large public utility. The rationale seems to be that bad news would lower the stock price. (the way things are run here, I believe the stock price is the only thing they care about)

> Thousands of documents leaked to a German newspaper indicate Tesla enforced a company policy that discouraged creating a written record of customer complaints involving acceleration, braking, and crashes.

> The files also reportedly include a piece of Tesla employee policy that mandated employees communicate only verbally with customers about the details of their complaints, specifically instructing them not to put the reports in writing in emails, or leave details on voicemails.

I hope the truth isn't as bad as it sounds like it could be.

Corporate PR damage control and liability butt-covering attempts are bad enough, but sounds like this is bumping up against safety processes.

But do you honestly expect this to go anywhere? Especially in the US, any government involvement in private affairs is called socialism and nothing changes for the better.

Until telsa starts killing more people and they get a reputation hit will they go into PR damage control mode.

Relevant to the Tesla question, the US has great aviation safety programs that are predicated on honest and forthright disclosure of safety-related observations. Government can work for the better.

(Disclosure: I contributed in a small way to some of those programs, as a computer nerd.)

off-topic: so many tesla fanboys downvoting anything remotely negative of their favourite billionaire

The more I hear about Tesla and Musk the more I feel that he's like Willy Wonka and the factories are like the chocolate factory.

Seems like a good idea, you communicate a complaint in order for it to get fixed not for shaming the messenger or the company.

The solution if any can still be written down. If you don't formulate the reason there you would be unable to address any complaints.

Well it's good for limiting a company's liability, at least.

So does that mean future leaks will be voice recorded? That’s even better!!

It is legal for me to record my own phone conversations (if I give myself my consent to do so!) and I have done so in a couple of cases where I feel it may be necessary to refer to exactly what was said. If I ever have any dealings with Tesla, it seems I should.

If the other party announces it may record your conversation "for quality assurance" or whatever excuse they offer, would that have you covered in jurisdictions requiring two-party consent? Whenever I am told that, I usually reply that I may do the same.

That's jurisdiction dependent - plenty of countries (and states) require all parties consent to recording.

If anyone is curious: https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/

California, aka Tesla HQ, is one of those "all party" states.

This is becoming moot, as it is almost impossible to contact any representative of a high-tech company by phone. If one of them calls you, that should probably alert your bullshit and dissembling detectors.

If their phone tree at any point states "this call may be recorded for quality control" you remaining on the call implies consent to recording. But it also implies consent of them being recorded by you because all parties have been notified of the recording.

Whether it's legal to record your own phone conversations depends on a lot of things and isn't a given. At least one case comes to mind where their dashcam recorded video and audio of the mechanic taking their car for a spin and causing some damage, and the fact that it recorded audio got the owner in major hot water.

To the point about recording notifications, I'm not sure, but the only potential sticking point that comes to mind is that it's a machine giving the notification rather than the people you'll be recording. Generally though, if two people are conversing and one says they'll record it then the other person is usually allowed to as well.

In most jurisdictions in seems to boil down to if there is an expectation of privacy.

In the dashcam case, if there was an obvious warning saying it was recording audio, it probably would have been fine for instance. Same with the conversation thing - if everyone knows it’s being recorded, it’s generally fine.

Logically (as if that had anything to do with it) if a mechanical notification from the first party is taken as securing de-facto consent from the second party to record any conversation that follows, and the first party is in a jurisdiction requiring two-party consent, the second party should be allowed to deduce that the first party has itself given consent for the conversation to be recorded.

I don't know whether it applies in the case you mention, but being allowed to record does not generally come with a right to make public that conversation, or to protect one from libel or slander suits resulting from doing so.

Just put it in writing. If you want a record to be permanent, e-mail it. If somebody tells you something over the phone, e-mail them to say "I'm just confirming the details of our call, where you said X".

Does this work, if they don’t respond agreeing with your summary of the call?

Depends. If you can subpoena mail server records of read mail, that proves they read the mail. If they read it and didn't respond, somebody can argue in court that that was an implicit agreement, because if it was wrong, they could have replied and disagreed (you were asking for confirmation). But then again IANAL.

Yes. It’s evidence. A lack of a reply might be part of a pile of circumstantial evidence. It’s not proof, but contemporary notes like this have value.

> It is legal for me to record my own phone conversations

Varies with jurisdiction. Here's a chart for US states.[1]

[1] https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RECORDING...

In a response to Handelsblatt, the company urged the outlet to delete the "stolen" data and threatened legal action against the paper and the allegedly "disgruntled former employee" they believed to be responsible for the leak.

Yet another indication that this company should be expropriated and (if a suitable buyer cannot be found) nationalized.

And its principals subject to the highest criminal penalties afforded by law.

EDIT: a dumb comment, in retrospect. I apologize.

I meant to say "should be punished very, very severely", market forces not likely sufficient. The rest is detail.

This company that was once the poster-child of innovation and progress for the whole nation, etc.

Nationalize Tesla? In the USA? Nationalization of industry can work in other countries for things like rail transport and oil production but the USA doesn’t run have the experience for nationalizing either of those, let alone a complex technological automotive business!

We simply subcontract out those things to the military industrial complex, which eats the majority of our taxes in turn. This is intentional as, our oligarchs & hedge funds MUST be fed!

All defense spending accounts for 10-15% of the federal budget.

https://www.cbo.gov/topics/defense-and-national-security

10-15 percent of all spending, but half of the discretionary spending. The non-discretionary spending comes from a separate pot of money.

(One which, incidentally, rich people basically don't pay. It is capped, so that it falls almost exclusively on the middle class. And who benefit most from it. It's effectively separate from the national budget, and if you view it that way the defense budget consumes half of every dollar we spend.)

I think it depends on how you account for defense spending. For example that doesn’t include veterans benefits. This anti war group is probably over estimating it at 48% but it’s still significant.

https://www.warresisters.org/store/where-your-income-tax-mon...

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... ~16% is defense + veterans

The anti war group considers that a significant portion of debt repayment is due to defense spending too. I’m not sure their calculation of amount is fair but it does make me wonder how much of that to count.

The majority of the us budget is on welfare programs like medicare/medicate and social security.

Sounds like you're just looking for an excuse

No. The market and legal system is "adequate".

Nationalizing should be restricted to truly vital companies. Tesla is just one of many car companies that is the leader (with that lead reducing every year) in one category; overall they represent only 4% of US sales.

The only domination they can show off is in the financial press and the press in general.

This comment is like someone decided to just be a strawman rather than have someone come up with it.

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