Tesla repossessed my car due to an extreme oversight on their end
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These days, I go out of my way to tell people: DO NOT BUY TESLA.
In the early days, service was wonderful. Over the years it steadily eroded. Now it's the worst customer experience I am forced to go through. Far worse than Comcast, various airlines, cell providers, county permits, etc.
The only reason I still have this car is my desire to a) not be wasteful and b) find a non-Tesla 3 row electric SUV.
This story is outrageous, but not at all surprising. The rudeness and disorganized nature of Telsa is deep in the company DNA. I have experienced it many times in recent years.
Most recently, I arrived to pick up my car (after $4k of service!) at 8am, when their website said they opened. About 20 employees were there, playing corn hole and talking in a group. A dozen people walked by me with a cockeyed look and when I finally asked if I could be helped, they said: "oh we don't open until 8:30am, we hold daily team meetings at 8am now". I told them their website said otherwise and they should update it... I got a literal shrug.
I just checked: the website still says they open at 8am. So even my polite attempt at helping them fix their website error went ignored.
I can't even with this company.
I haven't been offered a Tesla loaner in years when I take it into service. I don't even ask anymore.
They also don't wash your car. After spending $4k on service and waiting for 30 minutes for them to "open", I was told to go out into the side parking lot to find my car (using the location feature in the app), which led me to the car being parked underneath a tree, collecting sap. I also then had to come back in because they still had my key.
It's a shit show.
The 3 and Y are way to cheap to sustain such a high level of service.
However that doesn’t excuse this theft or other examples of truly bad service from this thread.
This is in Scotland.
Source: owner of a Model 3 SR+ 2023 MiC
See my car wash story I just shared in another comment.
Last week had to fix the instrument clusters, door handle, and a couple of recall issues. My 100k warranty ends in 400 miles - so needed to get it done.
This was my first time in the shop. Got a loaner for 4 days, problems all fixed, no cost. They communicated everything going on.
Really fantastic- I feel like a valued customer. Only thing I’d suggest is they wash and vacuum - but that’s just a nice-to-have really.
Emailing that you are "very dissatisfied", after they locked you out of your very expensive car, erroneously and illegally repossessed your car in front of your boss, yelled at your father, and dug in their heels?
Careful, your path of unhinged aggression might someday escalate as far as a sternly-worded letter!
> we have been talking about getting an attorney or at least taking this to small claims court
Attorney.
“That’ll be $4500 up front for me to even look at this, billed $300/hour against that. Of which I will take 4 hours to “review your case” and another 2 hours to write a letter. Oh, you have no damages besides time/embarrassment? I won’t say that your chance of getting anything is basically 0%, at least not until I’ve spent all of that retainer deposit. Oh, you want to take them to court? That’ll be another $20k deposit please.”
Pricing is between you and the attorney, and some will go on contingency for it
Also, given the facts of the case as presented good effing luck getting a lawyer to “take it on contingency”. They only do that in the states if there’s potential for a six-figure payout
(And your great example doesn't even take into account that e.g. the letter they wrote is literally a free download they got from somebody's blog, and they left the example template's case details intact...)
I’ll always buy electric cars now but I’ll never buy another Tesla. Love the powertrain, dislike the cheap car parts wrapped around it & hate the company that comes with it.
Both my cars did come with quality issued; the seat controls didn't work on my first car, and a tail light was out on my second. This is at delivery. That seems crazy on a 100k car, but it honestly didn't bother me too much.
My biggest motivation for buying an EV was to support and contribute to positive changes we need for the climate. It was galling to see Tesla buy a tranche of BitCoin, and felt like an absolute kick in the teeth. It made a complete mockery of the "zero emissions" aspirational tag. I realize that tag has never counted emissions created during production, but to pour money into an egregious emitter with negative social utility was bonkers.
Over the years, it was very concerning to see the "Full Self Driving" and "Robotaxis" lines so consistently promoted in a way that seemed to be to be an outright scam. I'm not a lawyer, but as a consumer I can't comprehend how massive fines or prison sentences have not followed.
But the real last straw was Tesla's woeful customer service. Everything is through a misanthropic app and when anything goes off-script, it becomes byzantine and kafkaesque. I had long long waits for replacement parts, but also a crazy situation where the Tesla team couldn't seem to process a payment from my insurer properly and then tried to hold my car hostage. I convinced the local service team to release my car so that I could drive it away when I showed them the paper trail, but resolving the situation so that Tesla did not think I owed them thousands of dollars took much longer. Twice I had to resort to physically going to a service center and politely refusing to leave until my issues had been sufficiently escalated and I had points of contacts who would respond to me. Every time I simply framed it as "This is a 100k car, and I think it's reasonable to expect to be able to talk to a person when things go wrong.". The Tesla staff were incredibly overworked, the lady dealing with insurance claims said she had 160 or so ongoing delayed customers. They were as helpful as they could be within the confines of the system, but it just seemed clear to me that Tesla's corporate policies were designed for a short-sighted kind of scale at the expense of customer trust.
As I said though, I really hope they have a major turnaround.
to be clear I am not defending Telsa, I will never buy one for many reasons, but to pretend Tesla is some outlier is crazy to me when every manufacturer is doing similar things
Hmm why exactly did the title have [BANK] on it instead of their name in the first place if they paid in full up front? I'm not sure I'd accept anything other than my name on a title after forking over that kind of cash.
My guess is the OP did not in fact fully legally own the car at the time of towing. Which is further supported by him not having the title and financing having to change the name on the pending title
This looks more like a bank’s fault than Tesla’s fault though of course Tesla has a responsibility for the banks it chooses to affiliate with
Also, as the Reddit post says, "Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed."
Thus, nothing remained to be settled. Everything was fully paid by the time the vehicle was delivered.
Are you claiming that mistakes are never made? Clearly a mistake was made in this case. From the Tesla representative: "I am having the team fully post the funds of the cashier's check. I am redrafting the documents and title/lien to your name instead of [BANK]."
Of course, "fully post the funds" is a meaningless load of garbage. (What would it even mean to "partially post" the funds from a cashier's check?) Tesla is admitting that they had the cashier's check the whole time, and cashier's checks don't bounce, which is the whole point of a cashier's check from a bank.
The remote lockout is really lame and attention-getting, especially for the tech crowd, but any auto finance org would have repossessed in that situation. And I'm sure every auto finance org has experience with deadbeats who don't pay and ignore all communication attempts until the repo man comes.
That wasn't the situation. The vehicle was already paid for upfront with a bank cashier's check, which the Tesla representative admitted that Tesla had the entire time. There was no missed payment. You never get your car repossessed if you never financed it in the first place. That's probably why the emails sounded like a scam.
Most Teslas are ordered online and delivered directly to the customer. There are very few Tesla showrooms that can sell onsite.
no title, no ownership.
I purchased a new Honda at a dealership a couple months ago, and my title was still sent in the mail later. The title is issued by the state government, not by the vehicle manufacturer or dealership.
The form also directs the state the send the title to me, not the dealership. This is official notification to the state that the car was sold, with no lien or claim, and they should send me a the title.
Int he case of a loan the same form is used to direct the state to send the title to the lien holder but the title is still in my name.
Your full sentence was "If I paid cash for a something, I am walking out with the Title, or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork in my name..." But there is no "walking out" in this case, because as I said in an earlier reply, "Most Teslas are ordered online and delivered directly to the customer." The paperwork is filed from Tesla's office, wherever that happens to be, far away and out of sight of the customer.
Of course this kind of error is much less likely to occur in a dealership, where the buyer sits down with the seller, and they go through all the paperwork together.
Then you selectively edited my comment so if you want to post the full comment then post the full context, as I clearly said for a Tesla " if I went to buy a tesla and it was not delivered with a title I would not accept delivery."
thus if the delivery driver shows up and does not have that paper work, either title or application of title, then i am not signing for the delivery to accept the vehicle
Which is fine, you don't have to buy a Tesla. However, I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork, which they won't.
However Ford, GM, and many other Manufacturers have expressed the desire to move to a more Tesla style sales for their EV's, Ford for example reorganized the entire company into 2 divisions to support some of these sales method changes.
>>I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork,
I absolutely, 100% would, as I would have insisted that I have said paper work before delivery, and the transaction would not have proceeded with out said assurance so if we got to the point of delivery and I still did not have the legal paperwork then I would not take delivery as I would have no proof of ownership.
They really should invest in some accountants.
No apology. No restitution.
My father emailed them back saying he was glad the issue was resolved but was disappointed that there was no restitution offered, not even an apology.
They then emailed back the equivalent of saying “well we did try to contact you about this.”
OP is going to have a field day in court, I hope
Don't get me wrong; scaling is essential. But the danger lies in when companies forget what made them loved in the first place. The on-the-fly service appointments and tech-forward ownership experience is what differentiated Tesla, much more than just their battery technology.
At the end of the day, it's a classic lesson in not forgetting your roots. A company can have the most cutting-edge technology, but if it can't maintain the human side of business, its reputation will eventually erode. Elon's always been about "first principles thinking," but sometimes, the first principles of business are just good old fashioned customer service, something a lot of tech companies just don't Believe in with this fixation on relentless optimization of everything
It is not a Telsa problem, it is a industry problem. We had to pass the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act to prevent the Automotive companies from abusing customers in the 70's
Looks like we will need to update that, through out history Automotive companies have been some of the most abusive companies to work for, to work with (as a vendor) and to buy from as a customer.
I'm surprised there's even a steering wheel.
Also, Musk wasn't quite so obviously pungent a few years ago.
Not that I'm a Jobs fanboy, he's still a toxic shit messiah-complex execution-genius (all can be true), but don't just hyperbolize because it fits your narrative. Like the overblown story about Musk's emerald mine. This is the same thing: a Jobs/Musk hater pushing a heavily modified version of a decades-old story told by a third party, but based on a grain of truth.
I've known rich people who love getting stuff for free even though they have money falling out their ass. It's a disease.
https://www.cultofmac.com/2613/steve-jobs-still-parking-in-h...
Whether he got a new car every week or 6 months or whatever because he preferred to drive one without a license plate for aesthetic reasons(and not so he could park in a handicap spot) is irrelevant.
- aggravated theft, due to the previous lock out of my vehicle;
- commercial fraud;
- slander.
A copy of the complaint to my lawyer, and all media I know, stuffed with proof of payments. In the civil process following I'll ask for full refund for anything paid to them so far, legal expenses of course, compensation for slander and fraud, around 500.000€.
Next time Tesla will learn the difference between cloud slaves and Citizens. I do not know much about the legal systems in the US, but I'm pretty sure the same path is very possible. The issue here is in the formal owner behavior, trying to explain instead of directly respond aggressively and politely to the substantial owner, witch as facts prove Tesla.
Personally I consider Tesla the main culpable entity here.
not even for that...
It is a common trope in modern times for companies to use "security" as a method to prevent ownership of a product, Apple does it, Tesla does it, Microsoft Does it, most companies use this excuse
You can have security with out giving up ownership
By ownership, i use that under the original term, that I the owner of product have the sole and exclusive control over the property.
In this case it was human error (or an antiquated payment system). But is the remote lockout bug free?
Of course it isn’t. This is an example of a big in the system.
I'm not sure what you'd go after them for, but the fun part of owning a Tesla is that you're only renting the software so you're going to be dealing with them in the future, and you're probably setting yourself up for future headaches and maybe just getting cut off at some point.
Edit: oops, forgot how cashier's checks work.
Tesla then never cashed it. That’s on them.
A casihiers check debits the money from you account on issue. As soon as the bank gives you the check, the money is out of your account. A cashiers check cannot bounce for this reason. Its why it or a wore transfer are the required payment type for large purchases of this type.
from the post
From the post:
> The car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed. so no, we did not notice extra money sitting in our account because it had already been withdrawn.
So Tesla did not accept the payment, and tried to contact the customer to sort it out. Customer did not reply to emails, or respond to phone calls.
After some time, Tesla needs to get car back, so they do.
Once payment has been made in full, car is returned.
Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently? They tried and could not contact the customer, for all they knew the person was deliberately trying to avoid them and keep the car without paying.
Would you expect any company to behave differently if acceptable payment has not been made, and the customer does not respond to contact attempts?
[quote] He looked through his emails and noticed that he did in fact receive only two emails on July 27 and July 28, stating that we had not yet paid for the car and that the full cost of the vehicle is still at large. These emails went ignored as he believed them to be a phishing attempt because we had already PAID IN FULL at the dealership. He also believed that Tesla could not have made such a huge mistake like this. [/quote]
Customer ignored Tesla communications attempts. Perhaps because he read on sites like HN that the entire internet is out to get you. Maybe we should share part of the guilt.
These people didn’t send them new money, they got people working at Tesla to properly deal with money they had been given months ago.
Legally Tesla committed grand theft.
PS: It’s an important distinction as people often want to get out of contracts, saying we didn’t deposit the check therefore the contract isn’t valid isn’t allowed.
They could start by not losing their customer's check, and then blaming the customer for it?
A payment by cheque is legally made when the cheque changes hands (like when notes/bills change hands). This is only reversed if the cheque bounces (and banker's drafts don't bounce anyway, that's the point of them).
They shouldn't go after people based on bad information. A poor internal process is not a license to do whatever you want. They made up a lie, believed it, and used it as justification to hurt someone.
No, they accepted payment at the point of sale, lost the payment instrument after accepting it (and apparently without recording the fact of acceptance), and then took property that had legally been transferred to the customer with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the posession of the property.
> Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently?
Administratively, they should record the acceptance of payment at the point of sale. To avoid inconvenience to themselves, they should probably better keep track of payment instruments. In any case, they should not commit what certainly seems like grand theft auto, barring a rather extremely broad view of what constitutes a reasonable mistake of fact.
When you buy a car and put any amount of money down, including full, the amount and method is documented.
It’s patently clear that some Tesla agent saw that a car was not paid for for some reason and didn’t bother to spend more than a second of time investigating before blaming the customer and repoing their car.
The remote control an tracking features should be in the hands of the owner, not Tesla. Tesla should be forced to contact the owner and get a secret password before they can even track the vehicle, let alone bricking it.
Incorrect. Vehicles are never handed over to customers until they're paid for. (A vehicle that is financed is paid for upfront by the bank, and the customer pays back the bank over the loan term.) The price of vehicles (especially Teslas) is such that it would be negligence, malpractice, insanity for the manufacturer or dealership to hand a vehicle over without full payment. It's always sorted out beforehand.