Tesla certainly takes a unique approach to customer complaints. Most would have a Customer Care team. Tesla has a Customer Deflection team! This is big news in the US but not a whisper from NZ’s MSM. Here’s the source report from Reuters.
About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.
AUSTIN, Texas
In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery.
He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect.
“We’re looking at the range, and you literally see the number decrease in front of your eyes,” he said of his dashboard range meter.
Ponsin contacted Tesla and booked a service appointment in California. He later received two text messages, telling him that “remote diagnostics” had determined his battery was fine, and then: “We would like to cancel your visit.”
What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible...READ THE REST
So what’s The Law doing about this? According to the LA Times:
“Whether Tesla’s range claims violate any marketing laws is unclear. The company is under investigation by the California Department of Motor Vehicles for calling its driver assist software Full Self-Driving, when the car is incapable of driving itself without human assistance. On Wednesday, CNBC reported that the California attorney general is investigating claims the company has made about its Autopilot software.”
Tesla created team to cancel service appointments, report says – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)