Recommended protocol for addressing issues with TM

At the moment, I think there is no obvious course of action to get anything done. Tesla's mostly doing the "black hole" thing; no information ever comes out.

Best examples of success seem to come from particular groups who have assembled a lot of people to send a joint complaint; maybe the Dutch Tesla owners who got a response on the horsepower question could share their tactics.

Here are some don'ts:

(1) Don't call them by phone. They never get you to a person who can help, and any information you submit appears to go in the circular file.
(2) Don't contact the Service Centers. They are generally just as frustrated with inability to communicate with Tesla HQ as we are.

Probably the best way would be to loiter (but not plugged in!) at the popular Supercharger sites and engage everyone who shows up. Eventually, someone high enough up the food chain will stop to charge, and we can politely make our concerns known to this individual. Probably a lot faster than waiting for the phone to ring or checking our email. But, still not very fast. :frown:

I just found this thread, months after it was started, and with very, VERY few posts. That may be partially due to people not knowing the thread exists, but I think it must also be partially due to the fact that no one really has an answer to the originally posed question.

I think it's definitely worth attempting to come up with one, though, if we can put our heads together.

Andyw2100 said:

I just found this thread, months after it was started, and with very, VERY few posts. That may be partially due to people not knowing the thread exists, but I think it must also be partially due to the fact that no one really has an answer to the originally posed question.

Click to expand...

I doubt anyone has a real answer. There really needs to be a new George Blankenship to act as ombudsman. Hanging out at an SC would only work if you are hanging out at the correct one.

I agree about not contacting the Service Centres. They can't really do anything. I'm not so sure about calling because if there are enough people tying up the phone lines, someone will eventually be curious as to why.

What's really needed is to get Elon's attention, which is becoming increasingly hard to do, and convince him that this is a serious matter.

I would think TMC has enough weight that if an issue were to get enough support, TMC could approach Elon directly (or via twitter or whatever) and say "Hey, look, we have X people having this issue and you are not addressing it. Please take a look and see what you can do".

santana338 said:

I would think TMC has enough weight that if an issue were to get enough support, TMC could approach Elon directly (or via twitter or whatever) and say "Hey, look, we have X people having this issue and you are not addressing it. Please take a look and see what you can do".

Click to expand...

Maybe TMC needs to include a petition site page (the way activist groups do). Of course, we could start a petition on one of them, such as care2.com, but then there would be no verification of who signed the way there could be on TMC. Petitions on TMC could be limited to registered members, where the more general sites can't be.

I totally agree with the concept of establishing s formalized and systematic approach to communicating common issues or problems to Tesla. In the past, posting in this forum was, many times, enough to get some attention and action. However, TMC has become so diverse that I suspect that it does not receive the scrutiny of TM that it once received. What is really unfortunate is that we have to have this discussion at all! Customer service is a big part of product satisfaction and if the customer is not or perceives that he/she is not being adequately "served" then it is reflected in the customer's overall satisfaction with a product. In this case, our cars. I personally have found that my enthusiasm for both of my Model S's has not waned but it has become more difficult to be enthusiastic about Tesla Motors itself in light of events and situations that have occurred since I first put my money down in 2009.

Apologies for the rant but I hope that more effort in establishing and opening real lines of communication, will have a positive effect for all concerned.

Thanks brianman.

jerry33 said:

What's really needed is to get Elon's attention, which is becoming increasingly hard to do, and convince him that this is a serious matter.

Click to expand...

santana338 said:

I would think TMC has enough weight that if an issue were to get enough support, TMC could approach Elon directly (or via twitter or whatever) and say "Hey, look, we have X people having this issue and you are not addressing it. Please take a look and see what you can do".

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I attempted to do with my letter to Musk in the thread that I'm guessing is probably the thread Brian referred to in his opening post (the timing is about right.) But of course there were a number of problems with that. The most significant problem was that it was picked up outside of TMC, and thus conceivably could have made Tesla look bad. That in combination with the fact that Tesla may have thought that was the idea certainly changed both how they viewed and how they dealt with the letter.

I'm not sure how we get Musk's attention without also drawing media attention.

jerry33 said:

Maybe TMC needs to include a petition site page (the way activist groups do). Of course, we could start a petition on one of them, such as care2.com, but then there would be no verification of who signed the way there could be on TMC. Petitions on TMC could be limited to registered members, where the more general sites can't be.

Click to expand...

I really like this idea. I think there are still some of the risks I mentioned above, but perhaps they could somehow be mitigated. Appropriate disclaimers stating that the information may not be used outside of TMC, etc. (I did not have that disclaimer on my posts at the time I started my letter thread. I do now.)

If the owners of TMC would be willing to provide this petition site, perhaps access to this area could be limited to owners, requiring a VIN number or something to register.

If there's a way to allow us to gather support for issues without doing it in a way that appears to Tesla that we are trying to make them look bad, I think that could definitely work!