As a quick summary, i picked up my X last week and absolutely love it. However, there was a small paint scratch/ding on the edge of one of the rear driver panel. I accepted delivery and my delivery rep set up a service appointment for a 1 week later.
I just took my car in to my scheduled service appt and Tesla said that they would have to send my X out to a 3rd party body shop to fix the paint ding/scratch but the first availability was 30 days out and that was the earliest one of their body shops could squeeze me in.
From my forum reading, i knew any body shop work turn around would take some time, but 30 days just to get a body shop repair appointment is a bit absurd.
Man, hopefully Tesla starts really fixing the body shop repair turn around time.
Alas, here is a gloomy reality check on the Tesla Body Shop located in Fremont on Spinnaker Court, and on Tesla's organizational shortfalls in general.
Our family has two Tesla Model X’s: A 2016 Model X 90D, and a 2017 Model X 100D.
The 2017 Model X 100D had a rear trunk lid alignment issue when we picked it up in July 2017. 40% of the time the trunk would not close all the way, and my wife or I would have to push it shut manually. Now, after a year, the problem exists about 60% of the time. It is a monumental nuisance.
I took the car in to the Tesla Sunnyvale Service Center on June 20. They could not do a quick fix. I asked when they could get it done. They requested that I bring the car back on June 26. I dropped it off on June 26 and they advised me that they would have to send the car to the Tesla Body Shop at Spinnaker Court, Fremont. Amazingly, they said it could take upwards of 2 weeks. On July 3 I was told that the car would be ready on July 10, 2 weeks after I dropped it off.
Clearly, Tesla’s clueless approach is to take the car from the owner and leave it sitting around for 2 weeks until they get to it. What possible sense does that make when the car is perfectly capable of being driven? The alignment on the trunk lid was off by approximately 1/4”. I’ve owned a lot of cars over the years. The notion that realigning a trunk lid that is 1/4” off the mark should take two weeks is unfathomably absurd.
Here we are on July 11. The car has been up at the Spinnaker Court Body shop for over 2 weeks. The car is still not ready. Tesla's usual phony excuse for delays is that "we are waiting for parts." No new body parts were required, the car is fully capable of being driven, and yet Tesla sees fit to warehouse a customer’s car for two weeks. For what?
We paid cash for the 2016 Model X. We leased the 2017 Model X that has been hijacked by the Tesla Body Shop. During that 2 week period, absolutely nothing has been done to the car. Gee, do I still have to pay lease payments for a car that Tesla is storing in its body shop? Gee, do I actually have to drive around in a beat up 2014 Model S "loaner" with 50K miles on it, with all sorts of noises, dents, and problems, only one engine, and the the stench of cigarette smoke?
Clearly, when a vehicle needs a simple repair for an issue that does not even slightly affect its ability to be driven, Tesla should not be hijacking the car to one of its parking lots and let it sit there while nothing is being done. Hello? The car should be delivered to the body shop when the body shop is prepared to perform the repair.
Given that this is a leased car, with a trunk lid that has been out of alignment since the day the car was picked up, Tesla ought to be doing a more competent job of doing things right. Tesla should also credit the lease payment for the time period during which the car was unnecessarily removed from the possession and use of its owner: over one half of a month.
My vehicle has been taken from my lease use for a 2 week period, without any rational reason whatsoever, to remedy an extremely minor problem that has existed since the car was delivered, is very easy to fix, and did not affect the ability of the car to be driven. Yet the car has been sitting idle and unattended for that entire length of time.
I leased the 2017 Model X because my intention was to get a new Model X every 3 years. Our plan was to keep the 2016 for a long duration. Given Tesla’s ill advised approach to warehousing cars that need minor repairs for 2 week periods, that logic no longer makes sense. It now makes sense to evaluate carefully the upcoming EV designs from Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes, and others, manufactured by companies with a deeper bench and a better understanding that customer sales are all about customer service after the sale.
OK, we are all beta testers for assisted steering, autonomous driving, the maddening sloppy software that produces so many "loading error" messages when trying to play songs from our USB's, sloppy fit of body panels, etc., etc., ad infinitum. I don't mind being a beta tester for new stuff. But it's not beta testing when a car company hijacks your car for over 2 weeks and lets it sit at a body shop while nothing is done.
