Tesla currently provides Comcast levels of customer support
twitter.comMy cousin’s Tesla, costing over 100k, is reliably unusable for half the year.
Everyone I know who owns a Tesla is using other cars a significant amount of time due to the repairs issue (they also break down a lot more).
However, the cheerleading leading up to the purchase, and the fact that no one else is talking about this publicly, leads many to not talk about it.
It’s way too much like a cult.
Owning a Tesla is like joining a cult. The sunk cost of having bought one and the loss of face after all the bragging leads many to carry on denying that they have bought the promises and ended up with a lemon.
Perhaps there is a opportunity in creating a 12-step program / detox.
I'm sticking with my 6 year old car. It goes where and when I want it to. No smart ass computer on wheels that thinks it knows better than me.
And I really think that it won't fly for those who don't make purchase from fandom. And that will at some point start to affect the consumer perception for general public.
Not sure what you’re talking about. I own an X and have no issues. Never experienced a breakdown. All service center activities I had were done within a couple of hours. Certainly never had to fall back on another car. We still own an ICE (a Mercedes), and that one is in service about three times as often as the Tesla.
How many miles do you have on the X?
66k
As a comparison data point - I have a 2013 Scuion/Toyota/Subaru that has 95k and has had no issues. I also have a big diesel F250 that bias 50k and also, no issues whatsoever so far (knock on wood). Before that inhad an F150 and put 220k on it before any issues arose, had a civic that was similar.
Not sure these are apples to apples comparisons. Model S, 3, X and Y are not only a new platform, but an entirely new category of vehicles, made by a company that has started from zero and has been scaling volume production aggressively. Building a thing well that has been produced in volume for more than a hundred years, by lots of companies, with an entire ecosystem of established suppliers, is quite another story.
They are. My Scion was an entirely new platform as well, I did what you weren't supposed to do, buy one of the first 10k cars produced. It was a totally new drive train, engine, and platform at the time. I would argue that by the time the X came out it was no longer a new class of vehicle, many evs had been out for years prior to thr Xs release.
That's pretty low, even a poorly built Subaru will still be on its first head gasket, meanwhile a Fiat 500e will be above 85% battery health at 70k miles.
Many Tesla owners also own Tesla stock.
How could this be? They have so many fewer moving parts!
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It's not the mechanical parts that are the problem. It's the software. The Tesla owners are not only software beta-testers but also the crash test dummies.
But software has zero moving parts! It must be so reliable.
I sold my Tesla 3 weeks ago, primarily because I couldn't get condensation in my taillight fixed after 4 cancelled appointments and a no-show. I was getting tired of things breaking, and the no-show put me over the edge. I'll let the dealer I sold it to deal with it.
I absolutely hate the franchise dealership model, but it does provide some level of checks and balances.
Dealers can exert far more pressure on a manufacture to fix things than an individual owner.
Owners with a bad dealership experience can go to a competitor within the same brand.
Manufacturers hate stepping in between dealer and customer disputes, but it is a possibility.
I think direct sales can be superior, but Tesla is proof that it is not inherently better.
I'm always surprised at myself for buying into "disruption". When Tesla did ~DTC I thought it was absolutely the future, and everyone should do it. Boy how wrong I was.
I had a brand new car break down after about a month, I was in the shop getting essentially a tear down in about 48 hours, the dealer covered my repair and rental, and I was back in my car in about a week.
Are direct sales still superior? I think you're right, we need someone to go to, after-sales is too critical for the consumer, and I think Tesla treats it like SaaS, which... maybe it really is lol
I'd never buy a Tesla.
I want a car I own.
A Tesla-style model, I paid for a car which, in any real sense, Tesla owns and lets me use.
Sounds like they've gotten better!
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/form...
That is a terrifying read. I work with orgs that produce similarly poor quality software, but that software isn't controlling "two ton death machines".
To be fair, I've always gotten good service out of Comcast. The secret is to sign up for business service, never residential.
You want to do this even if the installation is for a residence. The guy who hooks up your modem DGAF, and the tech support people are both better informed and more inclined to believe you when you tell them that yes, in fact, you did check to make sure the router was plugged in, and yes, in fact, you did try restarting it after leaving it powered off long enough for the capacitors to discharge.
The last couple years they've been way better as well, somehow that massive "we're fixing customer service" push kinda worked
I’ve always been too cheap to do this but it sounds like a valid plan.
The trick I've found to getting good Comcast customer support is to go to one of their offices. Even before they opened Xfinity retail stores they would have some office where you could go to exchange equipment, pay bills in person, make service changes, and so on.
The people at those offices seemed to be better informed and more capable and given more power than the people on phone support.
When I had Comcast for internet, cable TV, and phone I'd go to their nearest office every time my current contract was expiring and my rates were about to go way up. I'd tell them what channels and internet speed I actually wanted/needed, and tell them I didn't really want to pay more than I was currently paying.
They would always find some new bundle that would cover what I wanted and with the discount for a new one or two year contract be the same or cheaper than what I had. Sometimes the new bundle would have things I didn't need, such as adding their security service. I had that for two years and never once armed it--but it saved my about 20% for that two years. The only thing I actually ever used in the security system was the camera. I'd long wanted some way to remotely check my home temperature from work, and so I pointed the Comcast camera at a thermometer. :-)
Comcast customer service doesn't seem so bad? I've been using their cable TV and Internet service for 10+ years and it's been pretty reliable. When I had intermittent Internet connection failures a few months ago they sent a technician out the next day and replaced the faulty gateway.
> "You can only text them in the app. Nobody will give you a number to call."
Why does this person not go to one of their service centers and talks to someone in person? I've done it and the staff were super helpful.
Because he is in this uncomfortable position of being well enough to afford a Tesla and even additional FSD, but not wealthy enough to be able to stop working and allocate time for an appointment or have someone on the payroll doing errands for him ... but still feeling entitled.
Running errands during working hours is not a function of how much you earn.
That's darn good compared to the Industry Incumbents, though. They do CenturyLink levels of service.
What are you talking about? The situation in the tweet is insane and absolutely unheard of with incumbents.
I've owned multiple brand new Toyota's and have never had an issue that needed fixing under warranty in the first place, let alone a failure to fix it.
You realise there's an excellent chance that the "industry incumbents" have been aware of the switch to EVs and hybrids, and are just biding their time before Tesla's circus show collapses?
It's been pretty obvious for a while to a casual observer of incoming government regulations (at least, in the EU) that ICE car production will literally be banned very soon. I'm sure the companies that form the backbone of the economy of a major country in the EU have had even more notice. In fact, I suspect they will do very well out of this transition.
Maybe after enough of these stories become common knowledge, we'll hear less of the "EVs have fewer parts and are therefore more reliable" argument.
Reliability is largely a function of design and engineering choices.
EVs should by design be more reliable, since they have fewer wear&tear parts (no ICE).
If Tesla were to make an ICE car none would function the year out because their manufacturing quality is horrendous.
Reliability and simplicity goes hand in hand, but it doesn't make the simple thing immune to failure if the quality is crap.
>EVs should by design be more reliable, since they have fewer wear&tear parts (no ICE).
It's possible to make perfectly reliable software, and an unreliable screwdriver.
>Reliability and simplicity goes hand in hand
True, but modern EVs are only simple in concept. In practice, they rely on the precise operation of legions of components with nm-sized features, that are bumped and shaken continuously throughout the vehicle's life.
Also the automakers and supply chains have decades of experience making ICEs very reliable. Actually quality and reliability we now have for reasonable prices is not bad at all. On average they just work.