The Model S does not need to be brought to our
service center by the owner. Tesla will pick up
the car at a location of the owner’s convenience,
provide a Model S loaner if needed, perform the
work and bring the car back to the owner a few
hours later.
Canon, if you're a pro photographer. I assume Nikon has a similar support system for professionals. It's pretty amazing. Test/Evaluation loans on $15k lenses for weeks, emergency equipment loaners, dedicated support at major events (Superbowl, etc.).
The high end models of "regular" high end car manufacturers also get service like this -- at the Audi dealer I use for dealer service (Stevens Creek), they have 2 dedicated mechanics for R8s. If you have an R8, you get essentially the Tesla service -- it's picked up at your home or office, you're chauffeured in an A8L if necessary, etc. For my 7 year old used A4, I just get a free loaner A4, TT, or Q5 for as long as service takes, which is fine too. I still go to an indy shop (Advanced Autowerks in SF) for non-warranty stuff now that I'm out of Audi Care service period, though, where they just give you $4 for the 3rd St Muni roundtrip. I assume MB SLS and other similar cars get similar treatment. Although, outside of San Francisco (parking), it seems unlikely anyone who owns a $200-300k car only owns that one car.
> Canon, if you're a pro photographer. I assume Nikon has a similar support system for professionals. It's pretty amazing. Test/Evaluation loans on $15k lenses for weeks, emergency equipment loaners, dedicated support at major events (Superbowl, etc.).
Yes, but I believe you may need to be in a special "pro photographers club" that each of these manufacturers offer to get this kind of service. They don't do it for the average consumer.
Summary: you only get loaners and and such once you've purchased "20 CPS points" worth of stuff, which seems to roughly amount to $12-15K worth of gear.
It's a lot less than 12-15k for the Gold tier; more like a couple $1-2k bodies and $3k of lenses (which could be used), which is pretty standard for even the lowest end professional. The $100/yr membership at that tier is more of an issue.
For the top tier, it's probably $10-20k of gear, and $500/yr.
Strange that you mention the Audi A8L since I saw one for the first time a week ago in Monte Carlo. It's very rare even in Europe.
"The Audi A8 L is the first automobile in the world to be available with an integrated WLAN hotspot. A UMTS module provides the connection to the Internet."
It's worth mentioning since it's integrated. It's the same reason something like Pandora integration would be worth mentioning despite the fact that many people could use Pandora with an FM tuner or 3.5mm to aux input (not to say the Audi A8L has Pandora).
Its funny that you say "rare even in Europe", since I wouldn't call the A8L to be rare in the US (at least on the east coast). I see different ages of them all the time.
Yeah, they're pretty common in the Bay Area too. S8 are still rare, though.
It's weird how German cars are so much more expensive in Europe, for the same spec, than in the US. And yet the US only gets the high-end/luxury versions of cars (engines, trims) from BMW/Mercedes/Audi, so the entry price points are comparable. (obviously even worse in places with high taxes or other restrictions; in UAE BMWs were about 2x the US price, and Singapore has the 100% tax)
Lexus did exactly the same thing when their first US model required a recall. There were stories of them flying mechanics by helicopter to do work with customers. It was a very effective stunt for covering for the cock-up, and establishing them in peoples' minds as a genuine luxury brand rather than a badge-engineering exercise.
High-end luxury car dealerships frequently offer loaner cars, often times nicer than the car that needed servicing, and some of them definitely do pick-ups.
The Mercedes dealer I used to go to would give out Mercedes as loaners to owners of E & S classes. M & C class owners got Hondas from their other dealership. While I was there numerous times for problems with my ML (something broke on average every 8.5 weeks), the dealer always took care of me. And that's the only reason why I'd consider having another Mercedes.
Hopefully Tesla is able to maintain their customer goodwill through this by doing similar.
That's an awful dealership and you should never buy from there again.
Between my wife and I, we've owned several Mercedes, and I've never gotten a worse loaner than the car I dropped off. Also, an ML costs more than an E350 so that sounds pretty backwards.
At the time (1999) the ML was pretty entry-level. You could get a C class with a four-cylinder for less. The E class started a few thousand above the six-cylinder M class. Also, at the time, Mercedes had poor product quality (a friend with a W210 E class went through 5 window regulators in 3 years) so service loaners were in high demand. Not surprising then that some differentiation was done between the customers.
Yes, Mercedes has really turned around their quality in the last few years. My wife owned a W204 C350 for 4 years that was absolutely flawless. A couple minor repairs. Now she's in an X204 that is too new to judge but so far so good.
I heard the W211 had a much improved track record from the W210 but I don't have any personal experience.
"That's an awful dealership and you should never buy from there again."
Can you make that judgement without taking selling price of the car into consideration (discounts etc.?). Raising the dealers costs requires them to make it up somewhere. Now in a perfect world perhaps giving that level of service might get more business and they would make it up on volume. Or maybe not.
Not just high-end, at least in the UK. All the dealers I've used from Vauxhall (ie the old Saturn in the US) through to Saab offer courtesy cars, the option for the dealer to pick the car up for service, or to give a lift from the dealer to work.
Not just high end in the US either. My old Mini had some issues and they handed me keys to the closest thing they had available on the lot (another Mini).
I wouldn't consider Mini to be a high end brand... and I didn't exactly have the nicest car they made. But the dealers always seemed to go out of their way to ensure that any downtime was as pleasurable as possible.
You're most likely to find this service if the company in question is dealing with
1) Innovators/Early Adopters (their goodwill, word of mouth etc. is highly desired as is the feedback you can get)
2) High end stuff that is bought because it is high end (some level of service similar to this is standard for Porsche etc...also a good chance to sell you a new car :P)
3) Equipment that professionals use, it's basically an implicit insurance policy (cameras, lab equipment)
Porsche is actually known for NOT being helpful to owners when they screw up. They deny fault for many major recall worthy issues, go visit some Porsche forums and see for yourself.
Last summer a friend of my wife's was visiting from Japan. She spent a few days in Vegas, staying at the Bellagio hotel. Then she came to spend a week with us in Los Angeles. We went to eat one night, and she noticed she didn't have her sweater. "Oh, no, I left it at the hotel in Vegas" she said (in Japanese). From the parking lot at the restaurant, I called the hotel, gave my friend's name, room number, and dates of stay, and asked about the sweater, not hoping much. They had it. I asked if they could ship it to LA. They said yes, that it would take 3 days. My wife's friend was leaving for Japan in 3 days. I asked if they could ship to Japan instead, and that I would pay for the cost. They replied: "We'll ship it to Japan. There's no charge."
And most likely you all have a very positive impression of the hotel now, which will most likely come to mind the next time you need to plan a visit, or possibly even if you have a random conversation about Vegas, in which you have a chance to impress someone else. Here, you've recalled it from just a good customer service discussion.
Considering a Casino can make many times the cost of the room on a visit depending on the customer, this is very, very good business.
Hotels seem to be the last remaining bastion of the true service industry. You can ask most of them very nearly anything and they will get it done, possibly for a price.
I have had two similar experiences with my Amazon Kindle. (This is in the UK, in case it's relevant).
The first time, it broke. I called on a Tuesday at 6pm, they acknowledged the problem, and the day after I had a new one at 10am. I can't remember exactly how I returned the broken one, but I think I did it myself on the following days, to their freepost address.
The second time, I lost it. A couple of days later, they contacted me saying somebody had found it and called them. They shipped it back to me for free.
I had a similar experience. The screen had been cracked in my bag, they ran me through a number of questions to determine whether it was my fault or just simple bad luck, determined bad luck and had a new one with me in 2 days (only day I could be in to swap the broken one). Great customer experience, it's one of the reasons I recommend people to buy Kindles over the competition.
Hah those guys are the worst. My next car was an Infiniti and the closest dealer was in Marin. I was always given at least as good of a loaner and they'd even reimburse me for bridge tolls.
I had a lower-end BMW model from a dealer that also sold other luxury brands (and Honda).
Whenever I needed a loaner from the service department, I got a Honda. When I had the car in for service and the service rep could see I had more than 100,000 miles on the car, I still got a Honda. When I sold the car I bought...a Toyota.
Apple comes close, but from stories like smoke being considered a biohazard, I'd say no (they did offer replacement if you broke your screen on iPad IIRC). That said I don't consider that Tesla won't ever have a gaffe, but they are doing things perfectly so far.
IIyama, twice I've had an IIyama screen die on me, once within warranty (due to the high volume of electric devices dying I installed a surge protector, since then no problems) and once outside of warranty. Both times they send a courier service to pick up the screen at my house and deliver me a replacement one at no charge.
Had roughly the same experience with Logitech when my MX518 died. They asked me to email a phone camera pic of the label with the serial number and shipped out a brand new G500 right away. No hassle over troubleshooting, no wasted postage mailing back a broken mouse and waiting two weeks.
It's nice to be treated like a customer rather than a fraudster, and I definitely factor in warranty claim friendliness when I buy new hardware nowadays.
Amazon has replaced my Kindle like that twice. Once I definitely broke it myself, once I don't think I did (but had no evidence). They did ask me to return the broken one through.
I've bought a couple others (BMW & Porsche) and neither of them would dream of offering the service I get with Tesla. My guess it is because in the bay area there are far too many BMWs and Porsches to offer that level of service.
Maybe. I've never had to deal with a recall but, when my Alfa was serviced the dealership collected it from my workplace, dropping off a courtesy car (a better model than mine) for me to use.
I did need to drive to the dealership to collect it again, but I also had to be there to pay for the work done (giving me a chance to talk to the mechanic at the time).
Other manufacturers have a dealer network. Presumably the official Tesla service center is in California; a bit unreasonable to expect every owner in the world to be able to drive there. Likely they will have a local contractor do the work in various countries and far-flung states.
I live in Hollywood, CA. My local BMW dealership won't pick up my car but they'll give me a round trip complimentary shuttle service. I'll get a loaner if the service will take a few days.
Unfortunately they currently have 2 loaners, a p85 and 60, in the entire DFW metroplex. I took mine in for service and they gave me a Yaris from enterprise because the loaners were being used. I'm just glad I got something for free, although a p85 would of been fun. :)
any high end car dealer will offer something like this, especially if you have one of the nicer models.
when hyundai launched the equus, they specifically offered this feature as a selling point to people who couldn't afford a 7 series, and would other wise get a 5 series.
A bit OT financial advice: it's almost never worth it to buy a single share. The reason is the commission will eat you up. Assume a low $7/trade commission. That could possibly cost you $14 round trip (purchase/exit).
With Tesla ~$100/share, It'll have to go up 14% just to break even on the trade. Even if you just buy in single shares but exit in multiple shares to spread the commission, you still have to fade 7% commission. Not worth it.
If you're investing in the hundreds of dollars, you should look for low commission options such as CDs.
(Assuming this was meant as a reply to my comment) - I do understand that, I pretty much just bought a single share to say I had one, and see how it would perform, more as an experiment and out of curiosity than an actual business interest.
Yes. I would've reposted but it already got replies.
I can understand the desire to experiment, just keep that in mind for future trades. Commission can be a killer as you trade more, especially if you trade less than a few thousand dollars at a time.
"I pretty much just bought a single share to say I had one"
Depending on your social circle, this gets done with kids a lot, especially with an old fashioned issued paper share instead of electronic. Decades ago Disney used to have quite an elaborate paper stock certificate for this purpose and they obviously used their professional artists and graphics designers. My local electric company in comparison looked little better than a secretary hand typed it, which might be how they made it... Perhaps they still do this. Its hard to find a corporation worth endorsing to my kids like this.
Also during the first dotcom boom there were at least a couple people collecting paper certificates from dotcoms and they still trade among themselves to this day as collectibles.
Just some interesting ideas to think about / google about.
LOL more like my hippy anti-capitalist protestor friends probably would not find it funny to give their kid a share of GM or BRK.B, or give a share of BP to tree hugger's kids. If I had any friends who were hard core anti-gun, then a share of Ruger for their kid would go over about as well.
A lot of Green Bay Packer fans have shares of the team (they had another stock purchase some years back). It makes for a nice thing to have framed during football season.
At least with Packer shares you know in advance it's not a good financial decision, because they don't appreciate or return dividends. It's basically just a certificate of fandom.
Ah I see via some google that there are now trading companies set up for this, simply give them some money via CC and you get the cert in the mail already mounted in a frame maybe with an engraved plaque. This takes some of the "fun" out of it.
Keeping it on topic, you'll be out about $200 for a nicely framed paper share from Tesla Motors, at least from these guys.
Back in the old days, or at least in the 70s, this was a much more complicated manual process where you'd have to call your broker and pay a ridiculous commission and usually a relatively modest (compared to recently...) delivery fee, and then frame it yourself, and possibly engrave a plaque yourself, etc.
Also looks like paper shares are going completely away, which is really too bad, as they were a kinda cool gift idea. From a purely PR perspective you'd think the marketing dept would keep it on life support, at least at some companies, even if it moves out of the finance dept. Perhaps an attractive one page sign declaring you're a shareholder, as opposed to formal legal stock certificates. Maybe it'll all be "mozilla open badge system" instead LOL.
The dotcom collector guys are going to be sad that literally no facebook paper share certificates will ever be issued, for example. All electronic now via the DRS. I was in financial services industry about 20 years ago and I'm astounded it took this long to eliminate paper... Had to wait for the dinosaurs to die off I guess.
Presumably the advice should be "it's never worth it to only buy a few hundred dollars worth of shares", since buying a single share worth $10,000/share is a decent deal (with respect to the commission, at least).
There aren't many shares priced up at that point because there is usually a stock split so that the shares are then more affordable and therefore more liquid.
Also slightly OT, but Loyal3 (http://www.loyal3.com) provides fee-free stock trading - both entry and exit. Unfortunately they don't carry TSLA on their platform yet.
Loyal3 works with publicly-traded companies on creating a Customer Stock Ownership Plan or CSOP. In a CSOP, a company pays the brokerage fees on behalf of the investor because it might want to have more of a connection and more loyalty from its shareholders (in contrast to dealing with day traders, high-frequency trading algorithms or other types of activist shareholders). A customer that loves the company’s product might be more inclined to stick around during a difficult patch, for example.
Standard Silicon Valley business model - get as many people on the platform as possible, and then monetize later (probably as a marketing channel, but they also have some other monetization strategies in the works). They batch their transactions, and they are themselves a broker dealer, so their internal per-trade cost is extremely low.
Looks like they are some sort of stock re-selling business of sorts? You can buy partial shares apparently. I guess they work like a fond, that you buy into and pick your own portfolio, basically?
Very few exceptions. Even Google, at $900/share, is not worth the $14 round trip commission. And if your investing in hundreds, you're likely doing it through a bank or some other service will probably costs >= $20/trade. Ouch OP.
I'm not sure they offer it any more (I'm grandfathered in), but Wells Fargo PMA accounts have 100 free trades / year. You do need 50k in total assets with Wells Fargo to get it though.
Still, it's saved me at least 1k over the last 2 years.
I bought my first ever share - a single share in Tesla - two weeks ago. I saw the headline and my heart sank.
But if you have to deliver bad news, that is how you do it - proactively and efficiently. It answers every question a Model S owner will have whilst providing solutions to every problem. Brilliant.
It is only for cars manufactured in such a limited time frame. This is part of what it means to be a responsible auto maker. Tesla is growing up, and this is par for the course. I seriously doubt this will have any long-term significance in terms of its stock price.
Meh, it's not a huge deal. All car makers have recalls of some sort and many car model-years end up with at least one recall eventually. My car, a Corolla, is one of the most reliable on the planet but it has two recalls on comparatively minor things.
And it's good to remember that an automotive recall is very different from other sorts of product recalls. People bring their cars in and get them repaired.
This kind of recall happens all the time. Critically, it has absolutely nothing to do with the electrical/drivetrain systems, a similar (if not virtually identical) problem could have happened with any car at any manufacturer.
Tesla's going to spend a little money fixing ~1000-2000[1] brackets and that'll be the end of it.
[1](Last I heard, they're building about 2000 cars/month.)
Reading this actually made me feel better about Tesla as a company. For every new vehicle concept, I expect the manufacturer to find at least one safety-related design flaw after production begins.
If you are that manufacturer, you can save a little money by quietly telling your service centers how to fix it without informing the public. Auto manufacturers do this on a regular basis, even with serious powertrain safety issues like the ones found in Ford's 2009+ Ecoboost engine and Audi's 2002-6 CVT. Like Ford and Audi, you will probably get away with it. Your customers won't notice the pattern until their cars are well out of warranty, and then they'll blame it on age. If anyone dies as a result (and their family connects it to you) you'll just settle confidentially out of court.
As far as I can tell, that is not what Musk chose to do. Tesla will be fixing the issue at no expense to the customer, before the NHTSA or the class action lawyers force their hand. I truly respect that decision.
This is a beautifully crafted announcement. Very clear, matter-of-fact, and without that all too common feeling of spin. It certainly helps that they are doing right by their customers in fulfilling this recall, but as someone who has had to deliver bad news myself, I think they nailed the messaging and crafted a case study in how to communicate with customers.
Also, I love that it's attributed to Elon and signed with his first name.
Tesla deserves to be the leader in the future of car manufacturing, they're a company that understands what it is to create a great product, execute well, and to care about their customers. It's almost impossible to believe it's from the same background as PayPal who have one of the worst (anecdotal) customer satisfaction records I have ever seen. But, great news for Tesla.
They have to offer this level of customer service because other luxury makers do. I don't have a luxury vehicle (I own a 2001 VW Eurovan), but my mechanic, who services European cars, offers rides and loaner cars to his customers because that's what someone who owns an Audi or a BMW expects. Anything less than this would have meant lost sales.
It's not a big deal, unless there's another recall in quick succession. One vehicle recall may be regarded as a misfortune; two looks like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde)
I for one don't think an employee should get the blame or punishment for a production error like this; after all, he was taught by someone, was instructed by someone, was overseen by a foreman / manager, and his work was checked (possibly numerous times) by QC and seen by other employees.
this is true up to a point. really depends if this was a first time such mistake was made, was it a bad judgement or was she following company practice? It is extremely hard for a manger or QA to insect 100% of every employees work.
"[D]ue to body side alignment adjustments in the factory, the bonded section of the joint was compromised and the welded section of the joint was weakened in some cars."
Sounds more like the frame isn't holding tight enough tolerances for the body to be "right," so they are pushing or pulling the frame into position on the factory floor. The forcing of the frame into position is what broke the weld.
"We do not wish to cause undue alarm, so it is perhaps worth clarifying that:
The weld has not actually detached on any car
There have been no customer complaints"
Hmmm, I know someone who had this fail and brought it back to Tesla with a complaint. She was told this would be the beginning of the first Tesla recall.
Fight Club quote:
"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
"Tesla is building a fleet of top of the line Model S loaners. These will not be our basic model – they will be state of the art with all the best features and options." And it's available for immediate purchase, of course.
And, "customers in most markets will have the choice of taking home one of our Tesla Roadster sports cars when their car is in for service."
