Imagine they’d have this Ford patent implemented and the car would have just impounded itself with no reason. This proves it’s going to happen, it already did.
>>I understand the need for 'security', but still.
not even for that...
It is a common trope in modern times for companies to use "security" as a method to prevent ownership of a product, Apple does it, Tesla does it, Microsoft Does it, most companies use this excuse
You can have security with out giving up ownership
By ownership, i use that under the original term, that I the owner of product have the sole and exclusive control over the property.
I’ll always buy electric cars now but I’ll never buy another Tesla. Love the powertrain, dislike the cheap car parts wrapped around it & hate the company that comes with it.
Same. I was an early Model S purchaser, and then got a second. I loved its zero emissions, responsiveness and safety rating, but Tesla's antics left me unlikely to ever be a customer again, and to be extremely skeptical for their long term success. Though I still hope for a major turnaround.
Both my cars did come with quality issued; the seat controls didn't work on my first car, and a tail light was out on my second. This is at delivery. That seems crazy on a 100k car, but it honestly didn't bother me too much.
My biggest motivation for buying an EV was to support and contribute to positive changes we need for the climate. It was galling to see Tesla buy a tranche of BitCoin, and felt like an absolute kick in the teeth. It made a complete mockery of the "zero emissions" aspirational tag. I realize that tag has never counted emissions created during production, but to pour money into an egregious emitter with negative social utility was bonkers.
Over the years, it was very concerning to see the "Full Self Driving" and "Robotaxis" lines so consistently promoted in a way that seemed to be to be an outright scam. I'm not a lawyer, but as a consumer I can't comprehend how massive fines or prison sentences have not followed.
But the real last straw was Tesla's woeful customer service. Everything is through a misanthropic app and when anything goes off-script, it becomes byzantine and kafkaesque. I had long long waits for replacement parts, but also a crazy situation where the Tesla team couldn't seem to process a payment from my insurer properly and then tried to hold my car hostage. I convinced the local service team to release my car so that I could drive it away when I showed them the paper trail, but resolving the situation so that Tesla did not think I owed them thousands of dollars took much longer. Twice I had to resort to physically going to a service center and politely refusing to leave until my issues had been sufficiently escalated and I had points of contacts who would respond to me. Every time I simply framed it as "This is a 100k car, and I think it's reasonable to expect to be able to talk to a person when things go wrong.". The Tesla staff were incredibly overworked, the lady dealing with insurance claims said she had 160 or so ongoing delayed customers. They were as helpful as they could be within the confines of the system, but it just seemed clear to me that Tesla's corporate policies were designed for a short-sighted kind of scale at the expense of customer trust.
As I said though, I really hope they have a major turnaround.
So you prefer cheap parts wrapped around even worse powertrains?
to be clear I am not defending Telsa, I will never buy one for many reasons, but to pretend Tesla is some outlier is crazy to me when every manufacturer is doing similar things
OP wrote something about the bank's name on the title. Did the OP have a correct title in hand? Without that, the car was not (yet) their legal property.
Just because Tesla screwed up and sent the title to the bank, it doesn't mean that the owner didn't own the car. I had the same thing happen to me when I paid cash for a new car in 1991. The cashier's check was drawn from my bank and Honda wrongly assumed that the bank had loaned me the money. It took me three months to get the title from my bank.
The “employee” and “Tesla” are one and the same. I guess as long as the repo company followed its obligations (i.e. verified Tesla’s incorrect documents), all this should fall on Tesla.
The current trend in BEV's show that most of the manufacturers are moving to the same systems of control and subject to the same problems.
It is not a Telsa problem, it is a industry problem. We had to pass the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act to prevent the Automotive companies from abusing customers in the 70's
Looks like we will need to update that, through out history Automotive companies have been some of the most abusive companies to work for, to work with (as a vendor) and to buy from as a customer.
Musk is trying his hardest to eliminate the steering wheel too. He has been promising that full self driving is just around the corner for half a decade now. The newest version (still in testing) basically threw away nearly all of the work and replaced it with an machine trained model, because we all know how easy it is to debug problems with ML models.
Back in the day Steve Jobs was a complete asshole, too. Doesn't make it right, and both of them would have done better if they hadn't been. But you can be a complete jerk and still move products. They just have to be good products.
I don't think you can compare the degree of vileness between Musk and Jobs. They both were notorious for abusing employees, and living in reality bubbles (except one company's value is real and the others is over-inflated stock price). The stories of jobs were focused on him demanding perfection, versus Musk rage-firing people on a whim. Musk wins the race to the bottom by orders of magnitude. Ex.: Twitter existed when Jobs was around and Jobs never turned into an cringey right-wing edgelord that stoked cultural divisions by aiding and amplifying the message of the worst people in society.
On the other hand, Jobs would buy a new Mercedes every week just so he could park on the handicap spot closest to the entrance of the Apple office building.
Not sure which is worse.
Not that I'm a Jobs fanboy, he's still a toxic shit messiah-complex execution-genius (all can be true), but don't just hyperbolize because it fits your narrative. Like the overblown story about Musk's emerald mine. This is the same thing: a Jobs/Musk hater pushing a heavily modified version of a decades-old story told by a third party, but based on a grain of truth.
I've known rich people who love getting stuff for free even though they have money falling out their ass. It's a disease.
Whether he got a new car every week or 6 months or whatever because he preferred to drive one without a license plate for aesthetic reasons(and not so he could park in a handicap spot) is irrelevant.
There’s only a handful of EVs that currently qualify for the $7500 federal tax credit now that the rules for it have changed - Tesla being one of them. In California you also get an extra $2000 credit for Teslas as well. So there’s some incentive there right now to buy one at nearly $10k off.
Embedded firmware to run individual components is one thing and a software running on CPU for your entire car is another. My random 2016 Subaru is like this. I haven't needed to update any firmware on my cars parts since buying it. It just works as it is mostly mechanical. For a Tesla they apparently get software updates all the time like it constantly needs bug fixes.
That's true, that is a notable difference. But the presence of such firmware can still ruin your day in terms of repairability. Maybe you can't just replace that part because you need some special software to configure the firmware that you can only get if you're a certified mechanic.
So Tesla did not accept the payment, and tried to contact the customer to sort it out. Customer did not reply to emails, or respond to phone calls.
After some time, Tesla needs to get car back, so they do.
Once payment has been made in full, car is returned.
Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently? They tried and could not contact the customer, for all they knew the person was deliberately trying to avoid them and keep the car without paying.
Would you expect any company to behave differently if acceptable payment has not been made, and the customer does not respond to contact attempts?
[quote]
He looked through his emails and noticed that he did in fact receive only two emails on July 27 and July 28, stating that we had not yet paid for the car and that the full cost of the vehicle is still at large. These emails went ignored as he believed them to be a phishing attempt because we had already PAID IN FULL at the dealership. He also believed that Tesla could not have made such a huge mistake like this.
[/quote]
Customer ignored Tesla communications attempts. Perhaps because he read on sites like HN that the entire internet is out to get you. Maybe we should share part of the guilt.
Or maybe giant corporations failing to perform due diligence internally ought not be a cost that they get to impose on their customers without legal consequence.
This isn’t how it works. If you hand someone a check and they don’t cash it then that’s not your problem full stop. If an employee deposits the check into their personal account and disappears with the money, the customer isn’t liable they already paid by handing over a valid check.
These people didn’t send them new money, they got people working at Tesla to properly deal with money they had been given months ago.
Legally Tesla committed grand theft.
PS: It’s an important distinction as people often want to get out of contracts, saying we didn’t deposit the check therefore the contract isn’t valid isn’t allowed.
For what it's worth, Tesla accepted the payment when they accepted the banker's draft and handed the car over.
A payment by cheque is legally made when the cheque changes hands (like when notes/bills change hands). This is only reversed if the cheque bounces (and banker's drafts don't bounce anyway, that's the point of them).
They shouldn't go after people based on bad information. A poor internal process is not a license to do whatever you want. They made up a lie, believed it, and used it as justification to hurt someone.
No, they accepted payment at the point of sale, lost the payment instrument after accepting it (and apparently without recording the fact of acceptance), and then took property that had legally been transferred to the customer with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the posession of the property.
> Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently?
Administratively, they should record the acceptance of payment at the point of sale. To avoid inconvenience to themselves, they should probably better keep track of payment instruments. In any case, they should not commit what certainly seems like grand theft auto, barring a rather extremely broad view of what constitutes a reasonable mistake of fact.
When you buy a car and put any amount of money down, including full, the amount and method is documented.
It’s patently clear that some Tesla agent saw that a car was not paid for for some reason and didn’t bother to spend more than a second of time investigating before blaming the customer and repoing their car.
The remote control an tracking features should be in the hands of the owner, not Tesla. Tesla should be forced to contact the owner and get a secret password before they can even track the vehicle, let alone bricking it.
There shouldn’t have been a lien on the title in the first place…
IMO this probably a fake story but if it’s not then whoever filed the paperwork to put a lien on the title of a car without there being any documentation of a loan totally screwed up.
> So Tesla did not accept the payment, and tried to contact the customer to sort it out.
Incorrect. Vehicles are never handed over to customers until they're paid for. (A vehicle that is financed is paid for upfront by the bank, and the customer pays back the bank over the loan term.) The price of vehicles (especially Teslas) is such that it would be negligence, malpractice, insanity for the manufacturer or dealership to hand a vehicle over without full payment. It's always sorted out beforehand.
No apology. No restitution.
My father emailed them back saying he was glad the issue was resolved but was disappointed that there was no restitution offered, not even an apology.
They then emailed back the equivalent of saying “well we did try to contact you about this.”
Just yesterday there was a bit rant-y thread about people suck at their job horribly. This is such a perfect example. They mess it up badly, and suddenly somehow it's the customer's fault.
> I am redrafting the documents and title/lien to your name instead of [BANK]. I have attached documents. Once funds post I can then restore access to the vehicle and release title/lien to your name.”
Hmm why exactly did the title have [BANK] on it instead of their name in the first place if they paid in full up front? I'm not sure I'd accept anything other than my name on a title after forking over that kind of cash.
This is one part of the story I find odd... If I paid cash for a something, I am walking out with the Title, or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork in my name...
I am not calling the poster a liar but there is more to this story that we are not being told. If his name wasn’t on the pink slip he never really owned it and he specifically doesn’t say if the bank’s name was on the pink slip. Horrible customer service regardless, but there is more to this story.
I agree. He said he paid both with cashiers check and credit card and so my assumption is that a bank temporarily holds ownership (and financial liability) while the credit card charge becomes fully settled. I assume there was some issue with the settlement of the credit card payment (likely not the posters fault) and so there appeared to be an owed balance.
My guess is the OP did not in fact fully legally own the car at the time of towing. Which is further supported by him not having the title and financing having to change the name on the pending title
This looks more like a bank’s fault than Tesla’s fault though of course Tesla has a responsibility for the banks it chooses to affiliate with
I don't know. It does seem a bit irrelevant, but in any case credit card charges are settled very quickly, at most a few days. The order fee (which is nonrefundable) is paid of course at the time of order, so it would definitely have been settled by the time the vehicle was delivered.
So his name would have been on the title. If you buy a car but your name isn’t on the title you didn’t actually buy the car, whom ever is on the title did.
> So his name would have been on the title. If you buy a car but your name isn’t on the title you didn’t actually buy the car, whom ever is on the title did.
Are you claiming that mistakes are never made? Clearly a mistake was made in this case. From the Tesla representative: "I am having the team fully post the funds of the cashier's check. I am redrafting the documents and title/lien to your name instead of [BANK]."
Of course, "fully post the funds" is a meaningless load of garbage. (What would it even mean to "partially post" the funds from a cashier's check?) Tesla is admitting that they had the cashier's check the whole time, and cashier's checks don't bounce, which is the whole point of a cashier's check from a bank.
Yeah it smells to me like the OP/owner never got the title, didn't follow up on why he hadn't gotten the title yet, and didn't give Tesla a working way to contact him. So it's a relatively minor paperwork screwup which should have been resolved easily but was drawn out and escalated due to errors on both sides.
The remote lockout is really lame and attention-getting, especially for the tech crowd, but any auto finance org would have repossessed in that situation. And I'm sure every auto finance org has experience with deadbeats who don't pay and ignore all communication attempts until the repo man comes.
> any auto finance org would have repossessed in that situation. And I'm sure every auto finance org has experience with deadbeats who don't pay and ignore all communication attempts until the repo man comes.
That wasn't the situation. The vehicle was already paid for upfront with a bank cashier's check, which the Tesla representative admitted that Tesla had the entire time. There was no missed payment. You never get your car repossessed if you never financed it in the first place. That's probably why the emails sounded like a scam.
I purchased a new Honda at a dealership a couple months ago, and my title was still sent in the mail later. The title is issued by the state government, not by the vehicle manufacturer or dealership.
Yes, thus why i said in my orginal comment " or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork" This is offical documents provided by the state (at least my state) as the application of title, and serves as a Temporary title
The form also directs the state the send the title to me, not the dealership. This is official notification to the state that the car was sold, with no lien or claim, and they should send me a the title.
Int he case of a loan the same form is used to direct the state to send the title to the lien holder but the title is still in my name.
> Yes, thus why i said in my orginal comment " or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork"
Your full sentence was "If I paid cash for a something, I am walking out with the Title, or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork in my name..." But there is no "walking out" in this case, because as I said in an earlier reply, "Most Teslas are ordered online and delivered directly to the customer." The paperwork is filed from Tesla's office, wherever that happens to be, far away and out of sight of the customer.
Of course this kind of error is much less likely to occur in a dealership, where the buyer sits down with the seller, and they go through all the paperwork together.
Now you have moved the goal posts from buying a Honda which would be a dealer based network, not a online purchase.
Then you selectively edited my comment so if you want to post the full comment then post the full context, as I clearly said for a Tesla " if I went to buy a tesla and it was not delivered with a title I would not accept delivery."
thus if the delivery driver shows up and does not have that paper work, either title or application of title, then i am not signing for the delivery to accept the vehicle
Which is fine, you don't have to buy a Tesla. However, I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork, which they won't.
Largely because (as I have said over and over) it is not a "Tesla problem" is a problem with where the industry is moving. Tesla may be the most famous for these things, and they often get more attention here simply because of their polarizing owner.
However Ford, GM, and many other Manufacturers have expressed the desire to move to a more Tesla style sales for their EV's, Ford for example reorganized the entire company into 2 divisions to support some of these sales method changes.
>>I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork,
I absolutely, 100% would, as I would have insisted that I have said paper work before delivery, and the transaction would not have proceeded with out said assurance so if we got to the point of delivery and I still did not have the legal paperwork then I would not take delivery as I would have no proof of ownership.
You're the one who said it was "standard practice." Doesn't matter though. Whether they never got it, or by any means they did get it with the wrong name on it, that was the time to start fixing the problem.
> Financial controls?! They don't have any. Any Canadian I know who has placed a deposit for a Tesla product and then requested a refund for that deposit has received the deposit back, no questions, for the correct sum.... except in USD. My one buddy has done this three times, each time receiving back dollar for dollar his deposit, in USD. Great investment.
The oddest thing to me is that they went months without noticing that they had $50k+ more than they expected to in their bank account. Not that it was their job to keep track of Tesla's financials (Tesla clearly screwed up badly), but with a purchase that large I'd be watching my bank account like a hawk until the check posted.
Cashiers checks are not traditional checks that only withdraw funds on deposit.
A casihiers check debits the money from you account on issue. As soon as the bank gives you the check, the money is out of your account. A cashiers check cannot bounce for this reason. Its why it or a wore transfer are the required payment type for large purchases of this type.
> the car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed.
This was not paid with a check, but a cashier's check, and so the money would have already been gone from their account:
From the post:
> The car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed. so no, we did not notice extra money sitting in our account because it had already been withdrawn.
I'm one of the Tesla early adopters: 2013 Model S P85 and still driving it.
These days, I go out of my way to tell people: DO NOT BUY TESLA.
In the early days, service was wonderful. Over the years it steadily eroded. Now it's the worst customer experience I am forced to go through. Far worse than Comcast, various airlines, cell providers, county permits, etc.
The only reason I still have this car is my desire to a) not be wasteful and b) find a non-Tesla 3 row electric SUV.
This story is outrageous, but not at all surprising. The rudeness and disorganized nature of Telsa is deep in the company DNA. I have experienced it many times in recent years.
Most recently, I arrived to pick up my car (after $4k of service!) at 8am, when their website said they opened. About 20 employees were there, playing corn hole and talking in a group. A dozen people walked by me with a cockeyed look and when I finally asked if I could be helped, they said: "oh we don't open until 8:30am, we hold daily team meetings at 8am now". I told them their website said otherwise and they should update it... I got a literal shrug.
I just checked: the website still says they open at 8am. So even my polite attempt at helping them fix their website error went ignored.
I worked with a guy who was a super early adopter. I seem to recall him saying something like: his car notified him that it needed a repair on his phone and then a technician showed up in the parking lot and fixed it while he was at work, after he ok'd it. This was 2013 I think. I take it technicians don't just show up and do this anymore?
Yes. They would meet you at your home or work and work on it there or leave you with a nice loaner if they needed to take it.
I haven't been offered a Tesla loaner in years when I take it into service. I don't even ask anymore.
They also don't wash your car. After spending $4k on service and waiting for 30 minutes for them to "open", I was told to go out into the side parking lot to find my car (using the location feature in the app), which led me to the car being parked underneath a tree, collecting sap. I also then had to come back in because they still had my key.
My Y needed new trims fitted. I left it parked in an accessible area at home and went to work. The technician arrived, accessed the car and did the replacement.
They still do if you submit a support request / ticket that is deemed to be fixable outside their service centers - and they also do it for Model 3s, unlike another poster claimed.
Opposite experience for me. So far my 2016 Tesla has been the best car-owning experience I’ve ever had.
Last week had to fix the instrument clusters, door handle, and a couple of recall issues. My 100k warranty ends in 400 miles - so needed to get it done.
This was my first time in the shop. Got a loaner for 4 days, problems all fixed, no cost. They communicated everything going on.
Really fantastic- I feel like a valued customer. Only thing I’d suggest is they wash and vacuum - but that’s just a nice-to-have really.
> I shot an email back explaining AGAIN that this car had been paid for in full already and that we have been very dissatisfied by how Tesla had been handling this situation.
Emailing that you are "very dissatisfied", after they locked you out of your very expensive car, erroneously and illegally repossessed your car in front of your boss, yelled at your father, and dug in their heels?
Careful, your path of unhinged aggression might someday escalate as far as a sternly-worded letter!
> we have been talking about getting an attorney or at least taking this to small claims court
“That’ll be $4500 up front for me to even look at this, billed $300/hour against that. Of which I will take 4 hours to “review your case” and another 2 hours to write a letter. Oh, you have no damages besides time/embarrassment? I won’t say that your chance of getting anything is basically 0%, at least not until I’ve spent all of that retainer deposit. Oh, you want to take them to court? That’ll be another $20k deposit please.”
That wasn’t legal advice, it was “this is probably how this will go”, advice I sure wish some “random internet commenter” had given me before my last run through the legal system.
Also, given the facts of the case as presented good effing luck getting a lawyer to “take it on contingency”. They only do that in the states if there’s potential for a six-figure payout
Too true. Unfortunately it's the "therapy" of easy suggestions for consumer troubles.
(And your great example doesn't even take into account that e.g. the letter they wrote is literally a free download they got from somebody's blog, and they left the example template's case details intact...)
I really want an EV. But I want even more a vehicle that can’t be shut down, or even tracked, by its maker. Because then I would not own it. They would.
Buy an e-GMP vehicle (Hyundai Ioniq 5/6, Kia EV6, or Genesis GV-60) and disable telematics from the hidden engineering menu. If you choose an EV6 and buy the car new in Massachusetts, this will already have been done for you, because Kia is throwing a tantrum over the state's right-to-repair law.
Tesla, like many pioneers, began with a laser focus on product superiority and disruptive customer service. But as it grew, its focus seems to have shifted predominantly to scale, efficiency, and margins.
Don't get me wrong; scaling is essential. But the danger lies in when companies forget what made them loved in the first place. The on-the-fly service appointments and tech-forward ownership experience is what differentiated Tesla, much more than just their battery technology.
At the end of the day, it's a classic lesson in not forgetting your roots. A company can have the most cutting-edge technology, but if it can't maintain the human side of business, its reputation will eventually erode. Elon's always been about "first principles thinking," but sometimes, the first principles of business are just good old fashioned customer service, something a lot of tech companies just don't Believe in with this fixation on relentless optimization of everything
As an EU Citizen my action in that case would be simply going to the nearest police station filing a formal complaint for:
- aggravated theft, due to the previous lock out of my vehicle;
- commercial fraud;
- slander.
A copy of the complaint to my lawyer, and all media I know, stuffed with proof of payments. In the civil process following I'll ask for full refund for anything paid to them so far, legal expenses of course, compensation for slander and fraud, around 500.000€.
Next time Tesla will learn the difference between cloud slaves and Citizens. I do not know much about the legal systems in the US, but I'm pretty sure the same path is very possible. The issue here is in the formal owner behavior, trying to explain instead of directly respond aggressively and politely to the substantial owner, witch as facts prove Tesla.
That would be my impulse as well, but OP's paperwork said the bank owned the title, which would make the situation rather less clear to the police. OP should have set about resolving this immediately upon getting the title.
> we have been talking about getting an attorney or at least taking this to small claims court
I'm not sure what you'd go after them for, but the fun part of owning a Tesla is that you're only renting the software so you're going to be dealing with them in the future, and you're probably setting yourself up for future headaches and maybe just getting cut off at some point.
137 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadnot even for that...
It is a common trope in modern times for companies to use "security" as a method to prevent ownership of a product, Apple does it, Tesla does it, Microsoft Does it, most companies use this excuse
You can have security with out giving up ownership
By ownership, i use that under the original term, that I the owner of product have the sole and exclusive control over the property.
In this case it was human error (or an antiquated payment system). But is the remote lockout bug free?
Of course it isn’t. This is an example of a big in the system.
I’ll always buy electric cars now but I’ll never buy another Tesla. Love the powertrain, dislike the cheap car parts wrapped around it & hate the company that comes with it.
Both my cars did come with quality issued; the seat controls didn't work on my first car, and a tail light was out on my second. This is at delivery. That seems crazy on a 100k car, but it honestly didn't bother me too much.
My biggest motivation for buying an EV was to support and contribute to positive changes we need for the climate. It was galling to see Tesla buy a tranche of BitCoin, and felt like an absolute kick in the teeth. It made a complete mockery of the "zero emissions" aspirational tag. I realize that tag has never counted emissions created during production, but to pour money into an egregious emitter with negative social utility was bonkers.
Over the years, it was very concerning to see the "Full Self Driving" and "Robotaxis" lines so consistently promoted in a way that seemed to be to be an outright scam. I'm not a lawyer, but as a consumer I can't comprehend how massive fines or prison sentences have not followed.
But the real last straw was Tesla's woeful customer service. Everything is through a misanthropic app and when anything goes off-script, it becomes byzantine and kafkaesque. I had long long waits for replacement parts, but also a crazy situation where the Tesla team couldn't seem to process a payment from my insurer properly and then tried to hold my car hostage. I convinced the local service team to release my car so that I could drive it away when I showed them the paper trail, but resolving the situation so that Tesla did not think I owed them thousands of dollars took much longer. Twice I had to resort to physically going to a service center and politely refusing to leave until my issues had been sufficiently escalated and I had points of contacts who would respond to me. Every time I simply framed it as "This is a 100k car, and I think it's reasonable to expect to be able to talk to a person when things go wrong.". The Tesla staff were incredibly overworked, the lady dealing with insurance claims said she had 160 or so ongoing delayed customers. They were as helpful as they could be within the confines of the system, but it just seemed clear to me that Tesla's corporate policies were designed for a short-sighted kind of scale at the expense of customer trust.
As I said though, I really hope they have a major turnaround.
to be clear I am not defending Telsa, I will never buy one for many reasons, but to pretend Tesla is some outlier is crazy to me when every manufacturer is doing similar things
Personally I consider Tesla the main culpable entity here.
It is not a Telsa problem, it is a industry problem. We had to pass the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act to prevent the Automotive companies from abusing customers in the 70's
Looks like we will need to update that, through out history Automotive companies have been some of the most abusive companies to work for, to work with (as a vendor) and to buy from as a customer.
I'm surprised there's even a steering wheel.
Also, Musk wasn't quite so obviously pungent a few years ago.
Not that I'm a Jobs fanboy, he's still a toxic shit messiah-complex execution-genius (all can be true), but don't just hyperbolize because it fits your narrative. Like the overblown story about Musk's emerald mine. This is the same thing: a Jobs/Musk hater pushing a heavily modified version of a decades-old story told by a third party, but based on a grain of truth.
I've known rich people who love getting stuff for free even though they have money falling out their ass. It's a disease.
https://www.cultofmac.com/2613/steve-jobs-still-parking-in-h...
Whether he got a new car every week or 6 months or whatever because he preferred to drive one without a license plate for aesthetic reasons(and not so he could park in a handicap spot) is irrelevant.
So Tesla did not accept the payment, and tried to contact the customer to sort it out. Customer did not reply to emails, or respond to phone calls.
After some time, Tesla needs to get car back, so they do.
Once payment has been made in full, car is returned.
Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently? They tried and could not contact the customer, for all they knew the person was deliberately trying to avoid them and keep the car without paying.
Would you expect any company to behave differently if acceptable payment has not been made, and the customer does not respond to contact attempts?
[quote] He looked through his emails and noticed that he did in fact receive only two emails on July 27 and July 28, stating that we had not yet paid for the car and that the full cost of the vehicle is still at large. These emails went ignored as he believed them to be a phishing attempt because we had already PAID IN FULL at the dealership. He also believed that Tesla could not have made such a huge mistake like this. [/quote]
Customer ignored Tesla communications attempts. Perhaps because he read on sites like HN that the entire internet is out to get you. Maybe we should share part of the guilt.
These people didn’t send them new money, they got people working at Tesla to properly deal with money they had been given months ago.
Legally Tesla committed grand theft.
PS: It’s an important distinction as people often want to get out of contracts, saying we didn’t deposit the check therefore the contract isn’t valid isn’t allowed.
They could start by not losing their customer's check, and then blaming the customer for it?
A payment by cheque is legally made when the cheque changes hands (like when notes/bills change hands). This is only reversed if the cheque bounces (and banker's drafts don't bounce anyway, that's the point of them).
They shouldn't go after people based on bad information. A poor internal process is not a license to do whatever you want. They made up a lie, believed it, and used it as justification to hurt someone.
No, they accepted payment at the point of sale, lost the payment instrument after accepting it (and apparently without recording the fact of acceptance), and then took property that had legally been transferred to the customer with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the posession of the property.
> Obviously inconvenient and not ideal, but what should Tesla have done differently?
Administratively, they should record the acceptance of payment at the point of sale. To avoid inconvenience to themselves, they should probably better keep track of payment instruments. In any case, they should not commit what certainly seems like grand theft auto, barring a rather extremely broad view of what constitutes a reasonable mistake of fact.
When you buy a car and put any amount of money down, including full, the amount and method is documented.
It’s patently clear that some Tesla agent saw that a car was not paid for for some reason and didn’t bother to spend more than a second of time investigating before blaming the customer and repoing their car.
The remote control an tracking features should be in the hands of the owner, not Tesla. Tesla should be forced to contact the owner and get a secret password before they can even track the vehicle, let alone bricking it.
Incorrect. Vehicles are never handed over to customers until they're paid for. (A vehicle that is financed is paid for upfront by the bank, and the customer pays back the bank over the loan term.) The price of vehicles (especially Teslas) is such that it would be negligence, malpractice, insanity for the manufacturer or dealership to hand a vehicle over without full payment. It's always sorted out beforehand.
OP is going to have a field day in court, I hope
Hmm why exactly did the title have [BANK] on it instead of their name in the first place if they paid in full up front? I'm not sure I'd accept anything other than my name on a title after forking over that kind of cash.
My guess is the OP did not in fact fully legally own the car at the time of towing. Which is further supported by him not having the title and financing having to change the name on the pending title
This looks more like a bank’s fault than Tesla’s fault though of course Tesla has a responsibility for the banks it chooses to affiliate with
Also, as the Reddit post says, "Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed."
Thus, nothing remained to be settled. Everything was fully paid by the time the vehicle was delivered.
Are you claiming that mistakes are never made? Clearly a mistake was made in this case. From the Tesla representative: "I am having the team fully post the funds of the cashier's check. I am redrafting the documents and title/lien to your name instead of [BANK]."
Of course, "fully post the funds" is a meaningless load of garbage. (What would it even mean to "partially post" the funds from a cashier's check?) Tesla is admitting that they had the cashier's check the whole time, and cashier's checks don't bounce, which is the whole point of a cashier's check from a bank.
The remote lockout is really lame and attention-getting, especially for the tech crowd, but any auto finance org would have repossessed in that situation. And I'm sure every auto finance org has experience with deadbeats who don't pay and ignore all communication attempts until the repo man comes.
That wasn't the situation. The vehicle was already paid for upfront with a bank cashier's check, which the Tesla representative admitted that Tesla had the entire time. There was no missed payment. You never get your car repossessed if you never financed it in the first place. That's probably why the emails sounded like a scam.
Most Teslas are ordered online and delivered directly to the customer. There are very few Tesla showrooms that can sell onsite.
no title, no ownership.
I purchased a new Honda at a dealership a couple months ago, and my title was still sent in the mail later. The title is issued by the state government, not by the vehicle manufacturer or dealership.
The form also directs the state the send the title to me, not the dealership. This is official notification to the state that the car was sold, with no lien or claim, and they should send me a the title.
Int he case of a loan the same form is used to direct the state to send the title to the lien holder but the title is still in my name.
Your full sentence was "If I paid cash for a something, I am walking out with the Title, or the paperwork that the dealer/tesla filed the title paperwork in my name..." But there is no "walking out" in this case, because as I said in an earlier reply, "Most Teslas are ordered online and delivered directly to the customer." The paperwork is filed from Tesla's office, wherever that happens to be, far away and out of sight of the customer.
Of course this kind of error is much less likely to occur in a dealership, where the buyer sits down with the seller, and they go through all the paperwork together.
Then you selectively edited my comment so if you want to post the full comment then post the full context, as I clearly said for a Tesla " if I went to buy a tesla and it was not delivered with a title I would not accept delivery."
thus if the delivery driver shows up and does not have that paper work, either title or application of title, then i am not signing for the delivery to accept the vehicle
Which is fine, you don't have to buy a Tesla. However, I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork, which they won't.
However Ford, GM, and many other Manufacturers have expressed the desire to move to a more Tesla style sales for their EV's, Ford for example reorganized the entire company into 2 divisions to support some of these sales method changes.
>>I actually doubt the claim that you would order a Tesla and then refuse it on delivery if the driver isn't carrying the paperwork,
I absolutely, 100% would, as I would have insisted that I have said paper work before delivery, and the transaction would not have proceeded with out said assurance so if we got to the point of delivery and I still did not have the legal paperwork then I would not take delivery as I would have no proof of ownership.
They really should invest in some accountants.
Edit: oops, forgot how cashier's checks work.
Tesla then never cashed it. That’s on them.
A casihiers check debits the money from you account on issue. As soon as the bank gives you the check, the money is out of your account. A cashiers check cannot bounce for this reason. Its why it or a wore transfer are the required payment type for large purchases of this type.
from the post
From the post:
> The car was paid for with a combination of card and CASHIER’S check. Cashiers check means the amount of money is withdrawn from the bank when it’s ISSUED not cashed. so no, we did not notice extra money sitting in our account because it had already been withdrawn.
These days, I go out of my way to tell people: DO NOT BUY TESLA.
In the early days, service was wonderful. Over the years it steadily eroded. Now it's the worst customer experience I am forced to go through. Far worse than Comcast, various airlines, cell providers, county permits, etc.
The only reason I still have this car is my desire to a) not be wasteful and b) find a non-Tesla 3 row electric SUV.
This story is outrageous, but not at all surprising. The rudeness and disorganized nature of Telsa is deep in the company DNA. I have experienced it many times in recent years.
Most recently, I arrived to pick up my car (after $4k of service!) at 8am, when their website said they opened. About 20 employees were there, playing corn hole and talking in a group. A dozen people walked by me with a cockeyed look and when I finally asked if I could be helped, they said: "oh we don't open until 8:30am, we hold daily team meetings at 8am now". I told them their website said otherwise and they should update it... I got a literal shrug.
I just checked: the website still says they open at 8am. So even my polite attempt at helping them fix their website error went ignored.
I can't even with this company.
I haven't been offered a Tesla loaner in years when I take it into service. I don't even ask anymore.
They also don't wash your car. After spending $4k on service and waiting for 30 minutes for them to "open", I was told to go out into the side parking lot to find my car (using the location feature in the app), which led me to the car being parked underneath a tree, collecting sap. I also then had to come back in because they still had my key.
It's a shit show.
The 3 and Y are way to cheap to sustain such a high level of service.
However that doesn’t excuse this theft or other examples of truly bad service from this thread.
This is in Scotland.
Source: owner of a Model 3 SR+ 2023 MiC
See my car wash story I just shared in another comment.
Last week had to fix the instrument clusters, door handle, and a couple of recall issues. My 100k warranty ends in 400 miles - so needed to get it done.
This was my first time in the shop. Got a loaner for 4 days, problems all fixed, no cost. They communicated everything going on.
Really fantastic- I feel like a valued customer. Only thing I’d suggest is they wash and vacuum - but that’s just a nice-to-have really.
Emailing that you are "very dissatisfied", after they locked you out of your very expensive car, erroneously and illegally repossessed your car in front of your boss, yelled at your father, and dug in their heels?
Careful, your path of unhinged aggression might someday escalate as far as a sternly-worded letter!
> we have been talking about getting an attorney or at least taking this to small claims court
Attorney.
“That’ll be $4500 up front for me to even look at this, billed $300/hour against that. Of which I will take 4 hours to “review your case” and another 2 hours to write a letter. Oh, you have no damages besides time/embarrassment? I won’t say that your chance of getting anything is basically 0%, at least not until I’ve spent all of that retainer deposit. Oh, you want to take them to court? That’ll be another $20k deposit please.”
Pricing is between you and the attorney, and some will go on contingency for it
Also, given the facts of the case as presented good effing luck getting a lawyer to “take it on contingency”. They only do that in the states if there’s potential for a six-figure payout
(And your great example doesn't even take into account that e.g. the letter they wrote is literally a free download they got from somebody's blog, and they left the example template's case details intact...)
Don't get me wrong; scaling is essential. But the danger lies in when companies forget what made them loved in the first place. The on-the-fly service appointments and tech-forward ownership experience is what differentiated Tesla, much more than just their battery technology.
At the end of the day, it's a classic lesson in not forgetting your roots. A company can have the most cutting-edge technology, but if it can't maintain the human side of business, its reputation will eventually erode. Elon's always been about "first principles thinking," but sometimes, the first principles of business are just good old fashioned customer service, something a lot of tech companies just don't Believe in with this fixation on relentless optimization of everything
- aggravated theft, due to the previous lock out of my vehicle;
- commercial fraud;
- slander.
A copy of the complaint to my lawyer, and all media I know, stuffed with proof of payments. In the civil process following I'll ask for full refund for anything paid to them so far, legal expenses of course, compensation for slander and fraud, around 500.000€.
Next time Tesla will learn the difference between cloud slaves and Citizens. I do not know much about the legal systems in the US, but I'm pretty sure the same path is very possible. The issue here is in the formal owner behavior, trying to explain instead of directly respond aggressively and politely to the substantial owner, witch as facts prove Tesla.
I'm not sure what you'd go after them for, but the fun part of owning a Tesla is that you're only renting the software so you're going to be dealing with them in the future, and you're probably setting yourself up for future headaches and maybe just getting cut off at some point.