Well supposedly, there's a delivery center in White Plains so the snub to upstate isn't quite as bad as you make it out to be if true.At the time I ordered in February, Tesla's website promised, as an absolute worst case, nearest service center.
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For me, that is Henrietta/Rochester. In the event that I wasn't an "eligible customer" for Tesla Direct (since there is no way to determine this without placing an order, "all eligible customers" is not "all customers"), I verified that this was logistically feasible. I have a lot of friends who are RIT or UR alumni, and plenty of people were willing to give me a ride up to Rochester in exchange for dinner at Dino BBQ. In addition Ithaca is halfway so I could use it as a staging point for logistics as an alternative.
I placed my order, and was immediately shafted over to Mt Kisco. The only other option was Brooklyn. Both of these involve 6-8+ hours of Megabus + subway + Metro-North Railroad for Kisco.
Paramus, NJ is in New Jersey. A different state, hence you can't go there to pick up a vehicle. If I had the ability to pick up in New Jersey, I would've arranged for Springfield as my parents live less than 30 minutes away and we could have done some vehicle shuffle logistics. But since it's a different state, you can't pick up there.
I tried for 72 hours to try and reach anyone at Tesla who could find a viable logistics solution (spending a day on Megabus, then getting a hotel because I'd likely arrive after Kisco closed, then trying to get to the showroom from the hotel was NOT viable), and all I got was a useless "good luck, you're f*cked" email from my DSS, and a bunch of people parroting that the DSS who was not picking up the phone or answering any emails was best suited to help me. My sales guy stopped answering the phone or emails the moment he had my RN. At the time, their website indicated a further $500 penalty for any changes to an order including cancellations once submitted to the factory. I tried multiple times to have someone agree not to levy that fee if I gave Tesla past the 72 hour initial "holding" period, but no one at Tesla would allow that to happen and thus I was forced to cancel and file a credit card dispute over their bait-and-switch. (Which I won).
Tesla has updated their website documentation slightly, they now say "delivery center". JUST enough to not lose another credit card dispute, but do note that there is no way (or at least, was not as of the last documentation update I saw) to determine what actually constituted a "delivery center".
It's unfortunate that what most likely was a single point of failure being your sales advisor either overworked, under trained, or bad attitude resulted is not just a lost sale but you telling 4 times as many people about a bad experience than a good one is much worse. This isn't a knock on you, it's human nature, and it happens to all manufacturers.
Even though my experiences with Tesla have been good, and the logistics were similar, I found them to bend over backwards to accommodate my delivery at my convenience. They paid for the train ride and Uber. Communicated all required paperwork timely via e-mail, text, and phone calls. The transfer of signing papers, handing over the check, and 10 minute overview of the car had me on the road in 20 minutes after arrival. The only glitch was a delay on delivery which required rescheduling the pick-up. Annoying and frustrating certainly as you get excited for the big day and end up disappointed. I'm sure you went through the same emotions and I probably would have reacted the same way.
There are numerous examples such as yours that still cause concern and are slow to remediate. You certainly get more people airing grievances than accolades and with the shear number of BEV's they sell as a percentage of issues, it's difficult to tell if they are any worse than the others or if Tesla being under a microscope adds to the drama. I don't think it's fair though to assume because of your bad experience the entire company is a sh!tshow. Imperfect, definitely, but they have the most satisfied customers in the industry as well as the most compelling, advanced, efficient, safe, etc. cars on the road.
There's a reason everybody is compared to and gunning for Tesla and not the Bolt. Have you heard of any foreign manufacturers sending a Bolt overseas to reverse engineer? Has any other company used the Bolt as a benchmark or aspiration? Are design centers in Munich and Tokyo focusing on how to build a better Bolt? GM has a team dedicated just to disseminating everything they can about Tesla, the car, and Tesla, the company. I'm only using the Bolt as an example here, it could just as well be a Leaf.
The point is, when you spend as much time behind the wheel of a Tesla, you tend to accept the trade-offs when judging the entire experience. That panel gap doesn't seem so significant when you're making a road trip from Phoenix, AZ to St, Cloud, Mn with 4 1/2 hours of charging vs 12 1/2 hours in a Bolt.
The panel gap issues while real and resolvable, had people bringing micrometers to their pick-up. Certainly overblown due to the click-baity nature of all things Tesla but somewhat deserved.
But from all appearances, Tesla's biggest deficiencies are:
- Communication
- Communication
- Communication
- QC
- Service Centers
It's probably a combination of all three. They probably won't become their top priorities until demand starts to diminish unfortunately.