Within spec. That’s what the Tesla delivery representative said after showing him an alignment issue with the driver’s side quarter panel of the Model Y Performance assigned to me. While you were waiting for me, I tried to convince myself to take delivery of it for the better part of 90 minutes but couldn’t get past that imperfection. Spending more than $52,000 USD on a brand-new car with a visible issue wasn’t acceptable. Your mother shared the same opinion. It was as if the car had already been in an accident.
After the compulsory two-week waiting period, which is levied on buyers that didn’t take the first delivery of a car, Tesla assigned us another Model Y Performance with the exact same specifications for the exact same price. Noticing that Tesla was lowering the price of their cars and offering more incentives, I decided to forfeit my $250 order fee by not acting. It also gave us our first real opportunity to look at other options first-hand from different manufacturers, such as Lexus, BMW, Toyota, and Honda. We really didn’t have the motivation to do so previously. You can blame that on me.
One month and $500 USD worth of order fees later, we had another Model Y with our name on it. This one was priced aggressively considering the inventory discount and supposed incentives. Regardless of any minor panel issues, we would have taken delivery given the price, but Tesla wouldn’t honor an additional discount that it had publicly offered to qualified buyers, including us, until, literally, an hour before our scheduled delivery time, which was impossible for us to make. The Tesla dealership wasn’t close by. Knowing what might happen given Tesla’s overall ignorance, I only complained about its exclusion almost every day for a solid week to multiple Tesla representatives by e-mail, phone, text message, and Tesla app chat. That was my last straw.
Tesla eventually assigned us another Model Y with the exact same specifications but not the same price. It was over $6,000 USD more expensive and still didn’t honor the additional discount. Tesla’s system is a joke, and its representatives are no better. They tried to force my hand knowing their shortcomings. And now some Tesla representative keeps leaving messages asking if I’m still interested in buying a Tesla.
I still like Elon and respect what he’s been able to accomplish with Tesla. But, if I’m ever in the market again to buy a car, anything Tesla will be one of my last options. Tesla is not focused on making a quality product. It’s cheating buyers. It cheated us. We weren’t going to be patsies.
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