Canadian Price Increase Fact or Fiction?

Well, Tesla do hire staff with specific sales targets. Here's a snippet from a current job posting for Toronto Yorkdale:



You can see the full job posting here.

Pushing sales based on a hypothetical price increase does seem a bit out of line with another job posting responsibility of representing the company in a professional manner, however, the sales person may have honestly believed or heard there was to be an increase. With the drop in the Canadian dollar against the US dollar, it would have been a good bet if nothing else.

Not a tactic and as you say, you can back out. Exchange rates fluctuate, which can change prices.

For now, Canadian prices on the Model S and accessories are actually less than in the USA in converted dollars. This is despite TM having to pay a 6% import duty on each car due to not enough North American content.

allanhof said:

....my issue is the integrity of the buying process. I have run sales org's for over 20 years. If one of my seller's intentionally deceived a customer for a sale, the outcome for that seller would not be positive.

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Agreed. I am just wondering if it was intentional deceit or eagerness to meet a sales quote based on a hunch or even good information that didn't materialize. Tesla is famous for changing their stories on the fly. Just ask any early owner who bought the Service Plan because it was required to maintain your warranty... until it wasn't

Yes, I was on the fence on a 70D. Sales Rep gave me the same line about price will be increasing on midnight April 28th. I put a deposit down and have until May 5th to cancel, but i haven't see a price increase on the website.

I'm going to send the rep an email asking about the price increase....see what he has to say.

showing the other side of the coin:
To give an example of when the sales people were right about a price increase : I think it was Jan 2013, and I was told the prices were going up in a week. I didn't put down a deposit. Sure enough, they went up, and I ended up paying more for my S85.

mibaro2 said:

showing the other side of the coin:
To give an example of when the sales people were right about a price increase : I think it was Jan 2013, and I was told the prices were going up in a week. I didn't put down a deposit. Sure enough, they went up, and I ended up paying more for my S85.

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When they raised prices in late January-early February 2015 due to the Loony's continued decline, there was a poster who was disappointed and miffed that he was not warned of it during a test drive. Apparently, some other potential customers got advance notice, though not necessarily at the same store.

I placed my order just before the European prices increase in Jan and this saved me 5k Euros.

I guess the staff is aware of timing around price changes but not if the details like exact percentage, etc.

Is there a problem canceling and re-ordering when the timing is better for you? I highly doubt there was deliberate subterfuge.

I too was told a $CDN price increase would happen inside of x days (but was not told a %). Given our numbers, it seems there was an internal communication. At my place of work we recently told our customers certain products were going up in price, and then on that date we did exactly what we said we would do. Though I'd like to see more sales in Canada and want the prices to be as low as possible, not following through reeks of cheesy sales 101, exactly what Elon Musk preaches against with regards to the customer experience.

Looks like the price increase has just happened in Canada. Base 70D price is now 87,200. Price increase of $1200 or about 1.395%

Price increase in Finland also

allanhof said:

Appreciate the insight. I really do not want to believe this was intentional, it just felt wrong.

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On the other hand, had you waited to place your 'refundable' deposit and then the price increased a few days later would you not have felt the Tesla rep should have told you? There's always two ways to look at it. It is a shame that the timing hasn't been as the Tesla rep was informed or believed because now he or she looks bad and you as a potential customer feel that perhaps you'd been duped. Instead of focusing on the possibility of the Tesla rep being shady, simply focus on your situation concerning the car. Are you ready for a new car and all that that entails like financing, selling an older car, etc...? Are you ready to go electric? Will this car suit your purposes, lifestyle etc...?

Edit: Ah, I see the price change did come. I know it's hard to believe that Tesla does things differently than traditional dealerships, but they really are different. Reps have been wrong about things before and I'm sure they'll be wrong again in the future, but most (because there's always a bad apple somewhere in the cart) seem to (from several hundreds of posts here on this forum) really try their best to get it right for the customer.

allanhof said:

Not sure what this has to do with timing.

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OP:

allanhof said:

To lock on the price I went ahead......days later still no increase and it is now May 1st. In fact I am now told it will be 1-2%. I really feel as though this was a tactic to get me to buy in April at month end.

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I thought you were writing that you feel you were misled by a timing tactic, i.e. "price is going up, buy now". Then, why not just cancel? You get your deposit back within the first several days, right, so you don't lose anything. Then you can be sure you weren't misled, and you didn't succumb to the supposed pressure tactic. The flipside is, re-ordering later when you are not feeling pressured would (you now know) have cost you an additional $1,200.

In hindsight which is always easier -)), it seems clear the staff had been warned that a price increase was imminent. They weren't quite sure when, but "knew" it was coming darn quick. As it was, it sounds like they were 3 days early with the warning (Apr 28 you were told; actual increase May 1 midnight). Tesla's normal internal communications ...challenges... notwithstanding, I can see a message going out to Canadian staff about the increase but then the web group doesn't quite get the change into production for a few days afterwards. Maybe it was supposed to have been changed by Apr 28. I've been on a few projects like that myself.

I know we're all used to stealerships who have 743 of these kinds of tactics, and tactics within tactics, to show us that we need to buy RIGHT AWAY! That's probably a natural built-in barometer for judging how Tesla behaves.

"Never assume a conspiracy when mere stupidity would explain it." (For "stupidity", put in "normal human communication wire crossing", or "Tesla internal communications timing delays".

On TMC Tesla staff are often accused in absentia of nefarious dealings. Most often (not *always*), those accusations prove false. I'm just sayin'.

So if you either kept your order in, or canceled and re-ordered, fess up what's your configuration??? Inquiring minds want to know!