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Sometimes it hard to keep the faith: repeated Supercharging failure and bad service

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Hi There,

I love EVs and want Tesla to do great but sometimes they really get it wrong. Last summer we couldn't charge at a Supercharger and got towed:
Can't Supercharge after 4.5 software update

It spent a week in the shop and since 'they couldn't find a fault they didn't change anything'. Yesterday on the way to Tahoe the car would not Supercharge in Vacaville - same fault as before. Tried different chargers, rebooted car etc etc. Got on the phone to Tesla roadside assistance to get them to flatbed me the last few miles to the mountain cabin again as the Level 2 charging is fine and I can get home to the bay area no problem with the 6000ft downhill. He suggested I drop in the new Rocklin service center as 'maybe they have a quick fix or way to fast charge you'. I was hesitant cause I knew if they just flatbeded me the last 50 miles and I arranged it now then my total delay would only be about 30 min and I had a cantankerous 4 year old in the car. The rep 'called ahead to Rocklin and made sure they were ready for me'. Got to Rocklin, and they were in no hurry to help. They said at best the fix was half a day and it was already 3.30pm. I asked for the original tow plan, and they talked about it and called around for 45min before they refused as it was 'their policy not to let problem cars leave the service center'. I argued till I was blue - they could give me a 50 mile tow now, versus the 3 day, one-way rental and flatbedding my car home 150 miles they were proposing. I live really lose to the Palo Alto service center.

I ended up driving away to their tow provider in Auburn where I started all over again on the phone with Tesla. New rep this time, insisted I'd have to pay for the tow cause the fix would have only taken 1.5 hours in Rocklin. I argued till blue again, finally doing a con call with the Rocklin service director who confirmed that the BEST CASE part replacement was only 1.5 hours, after an hour or two of diagnostics, then a trip to the Vacaville superchargers to test - half day minimum and it was now 5pm. He also confirmed my plan made sense and agreed to sign off on the extra 15miles of towing that the phone rep couldn't. Thank goodness for him finally stepping up. Their dicking around ended wasting a couple more hours and left me steaming. Now we'll see if they actually fix the problem this time.

MS tow 3.JPG
 
Email Jerome Guillien (jguillen at teslamotors dot com). Seriously, he stood up in front of a crowd and one point and said to let him know specifically if someone had sub par service.
 
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I third Ckessel's suggestion. I e-mailed Jerome twice when I was unsatisfied about things, and he's always responded to my e-mails within hours. Not only has he responded, but he's gone out of his way to make sure I'm completely satisfied with my service and always pointed me to the right people. He's a great guy, and sincerely wants to help and everyone be happy with their Model S.

Sorry about your luck. I recently took a delivery of an 85 and I've supercharged it at Freemont consistently with no issues.

I'll keep an eye out for your red car in Palo Alto. I currently have a no-plate white 85 in the area, but not so close to the PA service center.
 
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Email Jerome Guillien (jguillien at teslamotors dot com). Seriously, he stood up in front of a crowd and one point and said to let him know specifically if someone had sub par service.

May I suggest, guys, that whenever posting someones email address at corporate, we do not print it literally ... spam bots will pick this up and he'll be inundated with SPAM!!!!
I have replaced it in the quote as an example.
Mods please fix hopefully before G00gle picks up on it.
 
Btw, it should be jguillen and not jguillien.

Also, Robert, corporate spam filter appliances (Barracuda and the like) should be robust enough to handle such situations. As it's common practice to have the first initial followed by last name as the email alias at most companies, spam bots don't necessarily need the address posted in full to figure it out :)
 
May I suggest, guys, that whenever posting someones email address at corporate, we do not print it literally ... spam bots will pick this up and he'll be inundated with SPAM!!!!
I have replaced it in the quote as an example.
Mods please fix hopefully before G00gle picks up on it.
Pointless. His email is in multiple posts on multiple forums throughout the world. The obfuscation stuff really isn't effective anyway. Any middle school hacker can write code to look for that.
 
What is the SC history of this car? Just the 2 failed attempts or perhaps a long list of successful SCes? Did the fault codes point to the items replaced or did they just replace items until it finally worked? A full post mortem of this unusual failure will be much appreciated in case it might happen again to other users.
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Before I get to the meat of this post, I sincerely sympathize with the OP and his plight. I also understand TMInc has repeated several times that Supercharging is Free, Forever, to paid-up Model Ss.

Now: what if Tesla, through its analytics, determined Owner X was abusing SpC access; for example, noting that the car charges at the SpC located less than five miles from the owner's home 330 days out of the year. Might a specific piece of code be dropped into that specific auto, denying it charging privilege?

I'm not suggesting either that it is appropriate or that it occurred in this instance. But might it so happen?
 
Aren't you a bit young to be driving?

You made me laugh! I lived in the UK for 8 years and am married to a Brit (she is the main driver of the car). The underaged driver is actually named after the beer my future wife was drinking when we met!

- - - Updated - - -

Now: what if Tesla, through its analytics, determined Owner X was abusing SpC access; for example, noting that the car charges at the SpC located less than five miles from the owner's home 330 days out of the year. Might a specific piece of code be dropped into that specific auto, denying it charging privilege?

This Supercharging failure was the next time we needed to Supercharge after the summer failure that Tesla failed to do anything about.

- - - Updated - - -

What is the SC history of this car? Just the 2 failed attempts or perhaps a long list of successful SCes? Did the fault codes point to the items replaced or did they just replace items until it finally worked? A full post mortem of this unusual failure will be much appreciated in case it might happen again to other users.
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Just these two failed real world attempts where we were depending on a Supercharge. Apparently (I'm just learning) Menlo Park service center tested it on a 'simulator' after the first fault. A more senior technician (more on this as it plays out) thinks he sees a 'high voltage junction box' fault in our logs now.