San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tesla owners complaining about long wait for repairs
As Tesla ramps up its Fremont factory to escape what Elon Musk called “production hell” with its new Model 3 electric sedan, some customers are enduring their own state of suffering trying to get Teslas serviced.
Parts shortages, long repair delays and problems getting through on customer help lines have led to scenes of strife at Tesla’s service centers.
At the entrance to the company’s Dublin center recently, an agitated Model X owner was trying to drop his sport utility vehicle off for repair. A Tesla service agent said he couldn’t leave the car there because the facility was too busy. He could make an appointment to bring it in another time, maybe in a couple of weeks.
“But I don’t want to drive it!” said Kaushal Bhaskar, a software engineer from nearby San Ramon who complained he sometimes couldn’t get the passenger door to open, while other times the door would open up all by itself — including once on the Interstate at highway speeds. “This is a safety concern for me!”
Another service rep was assisting Mike, the owner of a red Model 3 with door-lock problems who declined to give his last name. He’d lock the car, walk away, and it would electronically unlock itself. That caused him to alter his vacation plans. “I couldn’t take it to Yosemite like that,” he said.
The agent said Mike would have to leave the car there a while: “The amount of cases I’ve got right now is unbelievable.”
Service complaints are common at traditional automobile dealers, of course, even for new cars. But weeks-long waits for basic auto repair are rare, and months-long waits for body parts are practically unheard of for all but the most exotic vehicles, because spare parts from automakers and after-market manufacturers are stocked in inventory.
Spare body parts for repair almost always are made by the original manufacturer, said Bill Hampton, editor of the industry trade publication Auto Beat Daily.
But, he said, it’s not surprising that such parts aren’t a top priority right now at Tesla. “When you’re making dramatic efforts to manufacture 5,000 (Model 3s) in one week, you sure can’t say, ‘Hey, some guy in Topeka needs a new hood. Too bad,’ ” Hampton said.
The parts shortage goes well beyond California. In Norway, the third largest market for Tesla cars after the U.S. and China, some customers told Norwegian media they have been waiting months on body parts for their damaged Teslas. Musk addressed the Norway problem on Twitter on July 5, saying “Norwegians are right to be upset with Tesla. We are having trouble expanding our service facilities in Oslo especially. Can solve quickly with Tesla mobile service vans, but awaiting govt permission to do so.”
Tesla declines to make a service executive available to talk about what the company is doing to improve customer service.
It plans to hire more customer support staff, the company said, and open a large new service center in Oslo this year.
Jeff Klein, a publishing executive in Southern California, said his wife’s Model S was damaged in a March accident. The car is still waiting for parts, while Klein makes monthly payments on the lease.
“The general manager said it could take several months, that Tesla didn’t seem to realize that their cars might get in accidents, and they had no parts inventory,” Klein said. “Their parts are made to order, just like their cars.”
On Tesla online forums, customers complain about long hold times on customer service phone line and waits of sometimes hours to check the status on a car delivery or repair, or to ask for a refund on a deposit. Some say Tesla doesn’t get back to them at all.
Service problems are not new at Tesla. In August, the company’s president for sales, marketing, delivery and service, Jon McNeill, said on the Tesla Motors Club forum the company had streamlined customer service “to make contacting the right person at Tesla easier.” Six months later, McNeill quit Tesla to become chief operating officer at Lyft.
In June, Karim Bousta, Tesla vice president of worldwide service and customer experience, left, as did David Erhart, senior director for reliability and testing.
Tesla’s sales and service approach differs
greatly from most automakers, which sell their cars to franchised dealers. Tesla owns and runs retail sales and service operations on its own.
The company’s 74 service centers in the U.S. are complemented by Tesla Rangers, a mobile service program that dispatches service workers to fix some cars on site.
The company also has pioneered software updates that are beamed to the car without having to bring it to the dealer.
A wide variety of Model 3 quality problems are reported on Tesla customer forums, including broken glass, bad paint jobs, body panel gaps, dead batteries, wind noise, dents, scratches and software problems including door locks and weirdly behaving touch screens.
But the same forums are peppered with praise for the cars and Tesla service. And auto reviewers are near unanimous in their praise for the way the Model 3 drives.
At the Dublin service center, Bhaskar’s service rep said a review of his vehicle’s operational data, captured on Tesla’s cloud storage system, showed the door never opened by itself. “But I have seen it with my own eyes,” Bhaskar insisted. (The Times called the Dublin center three times to ask the service manager for comment. No calls were returned.)
Bhaskar told the rep he’d take the car home and make an appointment, but wanted written acknowledgment of the door safety problem. “We’re not putting this on paper,” he was told. “Here, that’s not the way business is done.”
The issue was escalated, and after 45 minutes, Bhaskar was allowed to leave his car. He left in a Mercedes-Benz SUV loaner.
Russ Mitchell is a Los Angeles Times writer.