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Had this been "Elon took my car and told his company to give me a heavily discounted one in exchange" then presumably this article would have been filled with p

Had this been "Elon took my car and told his company to give me a heavily discounted one in exchange" then presumably this article would have been filled with praise for their customer service. What a missed opportunity. Instead of feeling like you are gambling on a potential upgrade my perception is now I'd be gambling on a potential loss / failure-to-deliver if I bought a used car from Tesla. It's only one datapoint, but it's the only data point I have.

orik 11y ago
Seriously. They should have given him a even nicer car for the same cost as he agreed to initially.
- serge2k 11y ago
  Obvious answer is give him a new one for the same price. You have to eat 20k, but it saves the customer and a bunch of bad press about how your customer service is awful and Elon Musk might decide to take you car for reasons. How do they not have a dedicated test fleet?
jjoe 11y ago
Had this been "Elon took my car and told his company to give me a heavily discounted one in exchange" then presumably this article would have been filled with praise for their customer service. What a missed opportunity. Were it the case, we'd have never heard anything from this customer. Happy customers rarely make the news.
- spott 11y ago
  eh, REALLY HAPPY customers frequently make social media like reddit and here. There are all sorts of stories of "company I love screwed up and really came through!" Hell, apple gets all sorts of these comments when they do some out of apple care thing.
mikeash 11y ago
At least it wasn't a loss, besides time and mental anguish. But yes, it's extremely weird that they didn't just immediately apologize and offer him a nice discount on a different car.
FireBeyond 11y ago
Yeah, they lied to him, stalled, avoided him, in the end told him "he could spend an extra $20K for the car he wanted", after he'd put down a deposit. At least after that, they "agreed" to refund his deposit.
zem 11y ago
never mind that, had it been "sorry, that car turned out to have some experimental hardware in it and is not certified road safe; here's a refund of your advance" the customer would have been disappointed but not pissed off, and that would have been the end of the matter. despite the hyperbolic title, the real issue is not that elon musk "stole" his car, but that tesla people deliberately ignored his calls because they didn't know what else to do(!)
vonklaus 11y ago
At first, I was pissed about the hyperbolic attention grabbing headline, Elon Musk isn't a moniker for Tesla... ...then I got to the part where (allegedly), Elon Musk literally took his car, never delivered it, and pretty much just fucked Kevin over super bad. Elon seems like a pretty smart guy, he must realize he is quite famous, so if there is any way this can be corroborated, it will play negatively all over techcrunch for the next few days. edit: I accidentally implied fact checking and corroboration are important factors to Techcrunch when publishing.

orik 11y ago

Seriously. They should have given him a even nicer car for the same cost as he agreed to initially.

serge2k 11y ago
Obvious answer is give him a new one for the same price. You have to eat 20k, but it saves the customer and a bunch of bad press about how your customer service is awful and Elon Musk might decide to take you car for reasons. How do they not have a dedicated test fleet?

jjoe 11y ago

Had this been "Elon took my car and told his company to give me a heavily discounted one in exchange" then presumably this article would have been filled with praise for their customer service. What a missed opportunity. Were it the case, we'd have never heard anything from this customer. Happy customers rarely make the news.

spott 11y ago
eh, REALLY HAPPY customers frequently make social media like reddit and here. There are all sorts of stories of "company I love screwed up and really came through!" Hell, apple gets all sorts of these comments when they do some out of apple care thing.

mikeash 11y ago

At least it wasn't a loss, besides time and mental anguish. But yes, it's extremely weird that they didn't just immediately apologize and offer him a nice discount on a different car.

FireBeyond 11y ago

Yeah, they lied to him, stalled, avoided him, in the end told him "he could spend an extra $20K for the car he wanted", after he'd put down a deposit. At least after that, they "agreed" to refund his deposit.

zem 11y ago

never mind that, had it been "sorry, that car turned out to have some experimental hardware in it and is not certified road safe; here's a refund of your advance" the customer would have been disappointed but not pissed off, and that would have been the end of the matter. despite the hyperbolic title, the real issue is not that elon musk "stole" his car, but that tesla people deliberately ignored his calls because they didn't know what else to do(!)

vonklaus 11y ago

At first, I was pissed about the hyperbolic attention grabbing headline, Elon Musk isn't a moniker for Tesla... ...then I got to the part where (allegedly), Elon Musk literally took his car, never delivered it, and pretty much just fucked Kevin over super bad. Elon seems like a pretty smart guy, he must realize he is quite famous, so if there is any way this can be corroborated, it will play negatively all over techcrunch for the next few days. edit: I accidentally implied fact checking and corroboration are important factors to Techcrunch when publishing.