I wanted to chime in here again to follow up on my recent service that I mentioned in my previous post on this thread (
Page 9). Something came up during the service which was unexpected, but I feel Tesla did their best in responding to it.
First off, the service folks were great. I arrived with my car at 8:00am. On my 180 mile drive over, I had a low tire pressure light come on. I pulled into a gas station about 10 miles after the light came on and checked each tire pressure with my pressure stick. The air compressor at the station wanted 3 circular metal discs to operate (I think they're called quarters), which I didn't have, and I figured the tire pressures were ok enough to make it the remaining 40 or so miles of Interstate to the service center (the lowest was 35 psi). The check in was smooth, and they had an S85 available to me for my 2 day loan period. It was charged to the full daily limit, which was more than enough range for me to handle the job runs I needed to make that day and make it to the Woodburn Supercharger to launch me over the pass and back to Bend for the night.
Tesla called the next day and said they ended up doing a bunch more warranty work in addition to the things they had mentioned previously, but that they had also checked out my tires/wheels and found a bubble on the right rear tire, and both right side wheels were bent. They noted that both the front and rear wheels showed curb rash (the rear wheel I mentioned had the rash on it when we picked it up. The front wheel also had a tiny bit of rash, but again, it was so little, maybe about 1" of a few nicks that I discounted it as serious damage), and assumed we had hit something.
This was all surprising to me, as we've only had the car for 2 months, driven it about 2,000 miles and were now looking at about $1400 in replacement wheels and tire. We've driven the car very carefully and I know we haven't hit anything. Most of the miles have been long distance. I explained that the damage shown on the rims were exactly the same as when we picked the car up. They went through the records of the car and were able to confirm that they had replaced the tires before selling the car, but that there had been no damage to the wheels. They said the shipping receipts showed no damage at any point either. Since I wasn't home, I couldn't check our delivery documents, but I was completely positive the scuffs had been on the wheels the day we first saw the car. Tesla said they would review their records again and get back to me.
When they called back, they confirmed that all of their paperwork showed no damage before they handed the car over, BUT they offered me a deal: If I bought a new rear tire, they would provide 2 new wheels. I knew that if my delivery documentation did not have that damage shown, it was basically my word against theirs, and their records showed no damage. So if push came to shove, I'd have to replace everything on my dime. Also, I was already in Portland with their loaner and pretty much needed to pick my car up at the end of the day. So I agreed. I paid for the new tire ($375), and both scuffed/bent wheels were replaced with brand new.
When I got home, I checked our delivery documents. There was actually no condition report in our documents at all, and nowhere in our documents did we make any comment about the wheel scuffs. I never mentioned the chin scratches to them either, because again, I'm buying a used car, I sort of expected the "As-Is, Where-Is" sort of deal.
Tesla could have just said no, we've got documents that say the car was perfect when we gave it to you (and they did actually say the wheels were bent enough to where they could not let the car go with them on there, and no, I never felt any issue when driving). But they did make an offer, and I felt it was more than fair. As much as I didn't like having to pay $375 for a new tire, I recognize that it could have been much more and that Tesla went out of their way to find a solution.
If this had been a brand new car, I would have noted every little speck and gone over and under the car in fine detail. In hindsight, I wish I had been more thorough in our initial inspection, or at the very least, pointed out every bit of visible damage just to note it, not necessarily expecting Tesla to fix it.
