I hear you early--just getting a little worried dropping $115K with issues of my car potentially sitting in service for 2 months. If I wanted that, I'd buy a Range Rover :biggrin:
Anyways, all's good--best of luck with the repairs.
Looking forward to my P85+.
I understand where you are coming from but I'd say take some time away from the boards. You can work yourself in a frantic worry if you read these boards too long. Again, I'm not saying there aren't issues to work out. Because there are. Case in point, I just came from a party tonight here where I live. There were 2 other guys I met that had Teslas. Well, BOTH of them also said their car is in the shop. And both of them, like me got them just a few weeks ago. Like mine, none of the problems sounded serious.
But they also were pretty easy going about it. They also got Model S loaner vehicles and Tesla seems like they are stepping up to the plate and doing the right thing. So that is more what I care about.
I totally understand your nervousness Tex. But again, I think that's all a part of being an early adopter. I give BIG kudos out to the TRUE early adopters of Tesla that bought these cars before they could even test drive them. I know many consider guys that are buying in 2013 not to be "early adopters" but I'd disagree. I didn't plan to be an early adopter and wait until 2014 to buy it. I made the mistake of test driving it. LOL. I put my deposit down the same day.
Tex, I know the wait can be frustrating, especially reading about potential issues. But so far, I haven't read of anyone that had problems where Tesla didn't make it right. I think that is a true testament to the spirit of the company.
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Totally agree. It was maybe understandable when they were directly shipping the car to your house but with the service centers taking the car first, they should be able to address any issues prior to delivery.
Well, I just think they are still in high growth mode and still need to work on overall communication, staff training, corporate philosophy and employees that also want to take an initiative to know the product better than the end buyers/users. I've talked to other people that picked up cars recently and their experience was far from good. In fact, one guy I met told me how the person that showed him the car upon delivery was pulled from another department. And it was really bad. Ultimately Tesla admitted to him that they fired this guy.
And when I got the car, the girl showing me never went through 5.0. I mean, honestly that should NOT be happening. You have to understand and know your product. It was clear they never went through 5.0 yet. If it takes the a day longer to get trained on 5.0 then they need to do that, IMHO. Kind of along the same lines as some of the staff at the San Diego UTC store. Tesla seems like they are mostly hiring young recent college grads and paying them by the hour. More of a "warm body" type thing. I went in literally dozens of times before I bought my car. And several times I got wrong information or they didn't know.
So I think Tesla needs to be hiring people that really are passionate about the company and the product instead of just a warm body that wants to get their paycheck. At this stage in the game it shouldn't be difficult to find employees that really are more passionate and actually want to know more than a potential customer. Tesla probably needs to do more periodic testing of their existing employees to see how much they know and also make it a requirement for them to read some of these forum boards.
Also, I've mentioned this in another thread but the San Diego service center where you pick up the cars is located close to a HUGE Rock quarry. See Google Maps to see how enormous it is. There is a constant haze of dust in the air. I'd be embarrassed if I was Tesla to have customers picking up $100,000+ cars to be blanketed in dust. I mean, I couldn't see much of my car when I first picked it up. It's not like I could have dusted it there when I picked it up. I didn't have anything to but once I washed it the next day and noticed the paint imperfections I let them know and they immediately said they would fix it.
Heck, even yesterday when I picked up my loaner, I picked it up at 9:30 AM. They open at 8:00 AM. Already in that 1:30 hours there was tons of dust on the cars. Any one that is curious, just go to the San Diego service center and take a photo of all the cars sitting out there covered in thick dust. I was going to take a photo and post it but I don't want to embarrass Tesla and it WOULD be very embarrassing to see that. But if you live in San Diego, just go by to see it yourself. There is no gate in the parking lot so anyone can see it with their own eyes. This is clearly a problem which they probably should address sooner rather than later.
The scratch I did notice (a red scratch of paint on the back) was impossible to miss so not sure how they missed it. But it was bad enough where the detailer that came out couldn't remove it on the parking lot. They had to take my car back to the garage and remove it. Which they did successfully remove. But the question remains, should a customer picking up a new black car have a red paint mark on it upon delivery that they can't get off in the parking lot?? I don't think so.
Also, another problem is that it seems like the actual great employees at a given Service Center are getting shuffled around and transferred. For example, Erick Pinzon was GREAT. He would even come to the San Diego Tesla group meetings and was very involved. Well, he got transferred. So it might be a case of that as well where they have good staff but then getting transferred.
I'm certainly not complaining but I think it's very important to be VERY objective throughout this entire process. Sure, we can cut Tesla some slack and be patient, but it doesn't do them any good to sugar coat anything. They obviously have issues they need to address and improve. That will be good over the long haul for their customers, their investors, management and their employees.
And I've mentioned this in other posts but the guys at the top level management are AMAZING. Guys like Jerome Guillen are truly incredible. The guy is a workhorse. I've worked with a lot of top executives at various Fortune 500 companies, governmental agencies, banking institutions and other corporations and this guy is as good as it gets. The guy is always working. The guy has emailed me on a Sunday night at 10 PM PST time still sitting in his desk at work.
It's wonderful to have guys like Jerome but the guy is pulling more than his weight, IMHO. And people probably wouldn't have to bother him if they got proper training and communication was better at the lower levels. I realize things are moving fast but it makes sense for Tesla to really take a look at their corporate communication at the lower levels so it doesn't even have to make it's way up to the "Jerome's" of Tesla.
Whatever they are paying guys like Jerome it's probably not enough and I hope they never lose guys like him. But I can honestly say that with guys like him at Elon's side, I'm still confident that Tesla will do the right thing when there are problems. And ultimately why I'm more patient with them when there are problems or issues. I do think we owe it to Tesla to be more patient. But I also think Tesla owes it to the future buyers further down the road to fix all these problems.
Case in point, when I buy a Model X next year and take delivery of it. I wouldn't expect to go through these same types of issues. I'd hope that the experience will be more polished, more detailed, more organized and I won't have to take it to the service center.