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Tesla owners protest over drastic price cuts
- cbm-vic-20 8y agoIt must suck when your status symbol is now obtainable by the peasantry.
- magduf 8y agoIt's especially bad since Tesla's whole goal was to make EVs more accessible, mainly by starting at the top-end and working downwards. They were never trying to create some exclusive luxury brand not meant for plebs.
- natch 8y ago“Especially bad”? It’s not bad if more people can buy them. It’s good.
- magduf 8y agoYou're not understanding. It's bad that the Tesla owners are protesting price decreases, and especially bad that they're so stupid that they don't understand that this was Tesla's intention all along.
- natch 8y agoWell it’s a few Tesla owners. Stupid would be generalizing it to all Tesla owners.
- magduf 8y agoWho exactly is generalizing it to all Tesla owners? You seem to be making up a strawman. The discussion here is about "Tesla owners protest over drastic price cuts", the title of the article. The title and article say nothing about all Tesla owners, only the ones who are protesting over price cuts.
- natch 8y agoThanks for clarifying your view.
- itg 8y agoDid you read the article or are you going by the headline? They are upset because some of these buyers got their vehicles days before the price cut.
- ticmasta 8y agoIt's like a an airline ticket. You're happy to have one for the price you paid, but man, if you find out the person beside you paid $20 less, your fury knows no bounds!
- antris 8y agoSo what? You buy something if you feel it's worth the price. They bought it for the price, regardless what the price is after.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago>> Did you read the article or are you going by the headline? They are upset because some of these buyers got their vehicles days before the price cut. > So what? You buy something if you feel it's worth the price. They bought it for the price, regardless what the price is after. When I was a kid, my parents bought a TV at Best Buy. That model went on sale the next week, so my parents went back to the store that weekend and were refunded the difference. Obviously there are some limits to policies like that, but IMHO, they're the right way to treat your customers.
- zelos 8y agoSure, but for a car your cost of ownership is affected by the resale price. If that drops $30k overnight the car suddenly becomes much more expensive to own.
- lm28469 8y ago"He was alive and fine two minutes before he died" There is always a before/after an event. This argument doesn't hold anywhere outside of a schoolyard. Let's say they extended the price change to a 2 weeks period, the people who bought it at 15 days will complain just the same.
- raisedbyninjas 8y agoI didn't see this sentiment in the article. Buyers were angry that they paid an extra $30k buying the day before the announcement. Is Tesla offering any sort of price protection for recent purchases?
- plopz 8y agoI think there is a 7 day return policy?
- NullPrefix 8y agoI think that's only for the American market
- benj111 8y agoWell (most?) other regions would have better consumer protections anyway.
- makerofspoons 8y agoThe idea of buying a car as an investment that should retain value is totally alien to me. The thing starts to lose value as soon as you drive it off the lot. By the time you're done with it the car will be worth a couple hundred to a few thousand bucks. You agreed to buy at the listed price, and that's on you.
- berbec 8y agoWhen your back two tires hit the road outside of the dealership, the car is instantly worth 20% less. Cars don't appreciate unless they fall under the classics category, and the time frame involved is decades. Who's going to hang on to a car for 60 years in case its the next 57 Chevy?
- tudelo 8y agoThere are cars newer than 60 years old that appreciate :). Of course, they do not usually appreciate past retail, but they appreciate relative to the lowest historical cost.
- rootusrootus 8y agoAside from really terrible models and premium/luxury cars (and some edge cases like EVs), a new car should not depreciate 20% in the entire first year, much less the moment it rolls off the lot.
- oarsinsync 8y agoIn Spain, dealers struggling to meet their annual sales targets will register a car and give it plates in order to hit their targets, and those cars are known as 0km cars. They sell at a ~10% discount to new cars. They're a day old and haven't rolled off the lot yet.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoIs there a minimum price for new car sales? Just wondering why they don't just drop the price 10%
- foxyv 8y agoWhat? They didn't believe Musk's claims about price reductions when they bought them? I mean it's been a long time coming but he built a space program for heaven's sake.
- captainbland 8y agoThey bet on Tesla being the Apple of the road and bet wrong by the sounds of it.
- anilshanbhag 8y agoThread on r/teslamotors about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/awvsz7/kelvinyang7_the_price_drop_has_been_dramatic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/awvsz7/kelviny... Two good comments there: 1) "huh... i guess outrage over a price drop falls under the category of "there's no such thing as bad press"" 2) "The news accounts on weibo posted the news in a negative tone. But the comments are mainly against who demand refund over price drop. So I would say it's now viral without much backlash"
- Shivetya 8y agoConsidering how drastic the changes were overseas and built in demand Tesla not only garnered poor public response they gave up a lot of free money. hindsight is 20/20, they should have walked it down to the lowest price points over the course of the year while broadcasting the fact that they expect to cut prices continuously. This ain't to excuse some US customers but I am afraid far too many people here are merely looking for an excuse to be a victim so that they in turn feel important. Reddit is all over the place with pro and con comments. The sense of entitlement. that some people have is astounding. ps: if you want to see entitlement approach ridiculous levels just check out the crying in the apple sub that 5gb free cloud is pathetic, shameful, and outrageous.
- tlrobinson 8y ago> One of those markets is Taiwan, where the price of a Model S P100D was cut almost in half by Tesla’s latest price changes – resulting in about $100,000 in savings. When people complain about $100 drop in price on a iPhone or whatever I don't have any sympathy, but 50% on a ~$200,000 car is... significant.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> 50% on a ~$200,000 car is... significant It's a luxury car. It's not an investment. It's not a necessity. The money that was "lost" was already spent on hedonistic value. (In any case, Teslas can be returned within a number of days of purchase. The individual who bought five days before the price drop is almost certainly within that window.)
- freeopinion 8y agoIf they bought it 5 days before the announcement, there is nothing to return. They just have to cancel their order. Then re-order. Then wait an extra month to take delivery.
- lm28469 8y agoThat's the market, you can't buy premium cars, the epitome of consumerism and status symbolism, and ask for social justice when something happens. We're not talking about medicine, food or other basic human needs here, we're talking about a car that costs 100 times the yearly minimum wage of some countries. Luxury isn't a right. I'd like to see the same people reacting to a price increase, they'd probably be just as virulent on twitter, but boasting instead of complaining.
- almost_usual 8y agoThis isn’t Tesla’s fault. It’s the owners’ fault. When you purchase a Tesla you are making an extremely risky decision to purchase a vehicle coming from a brand new car company. The vehicle lifetime, maintenance, price, and service quality is all an experiment right now. Call me boring but I’ll be sticking with my Toyota for a bit longer.
- tomp 8y agoWhat does "new car company" and "vehicle lifetime, maintenance, service quality" have to do with price? Btw, this isn't just Tesla, it's Elon Musk. SpaceX also lowered their prices, and forced all other competitors (old companies) to lower theirs as well!
- almost_usual 8y ago>What does "new car company" and "vehicle lifetime, maintenance, service quality" have to do with price? What? What doesn’t it have to do with price? Why would anyone pay for a vehicle that had poor ratings for all of those things?
- tomp 8y agoI misspoke ("miswrote"?). I meant, what does it have to do with a price drop.
- almost_usual 8y agoIt's all in the same domain as a new car company doing 'new' things. Tesla is experimenting with every facet of its company process. Sales, maintenance, production, etc. If I were an owner I wouldn't expect anything to stay the same except the company's goals.
- jfoster 8y agoCan you explain what you mean about it being "extremely risky?" What's the worst that could happen, and how likely is that, even?
- tomp 8y ago> I’ve been saying it for a while, Tesla’s pricing structure makes them look like amateurs. Nice little passive aggressive completely unargumented quip here... As a consumer and a free (but fair) market proponent, I want "amateur" pricing structures. I don't have a lot of experience buying cars, but I recently needed some FX conversions. Compare TransferWise and OFX. TransferWise offers transparent pricing, they do the conversion at mid market rate and add a bit of fees on top (the bigger the transaction, the lower fees are in percentage terms). OFX advertises "no fees" but they offer wider bid/ask spread than the market does, meaning that they do charge fees, but they're hidden in the price you're being offered. In addition, they're happy to improve the price if you call them out on this! TransferWise are amateurs telling me "we offer a service". OFX are "professionals" who are communicating "we're trying to exploit amateurs with an opaque pricing structure that tries to disguise how much our customers are overpaying". I know which one I'll be using! Edit: a simple way to see how much you're actually paying, is to try a two-way transfer - e.g. first ask the service to give you the price for 1000 GB (say 1,160.29 EUR), then transfer that amount back to GBP (I get 992.78 GBP). Assuming symmetry, the fee for a one-way transfer then is (1000 - 992.78)/2=3.61 GBP or 0.361%.
- ltcoleman 8y agoI can empathize with the anger over a price reduction when you just bought a product. I bought a truck and a month later, the dealership had an additional 5k in rebates. Same happens when you buy an expensive tv, and a couple months later, the price drops by 1-2k. Technology products are constantly becoming cheaper through innovation and to satisfy supply/demand economics.. why is a tesla any different? If you bought a tesla for resale value, you are doing it wrong. Buying a tesla helps the environment, furthers innovation, and provides a status symbol.
- benj111 8y agoWhy? It isn't as if the $35k model 3 is a surprise. If you're willing to wait, tech things tend to get cheaper over time, should I be annoyed that had I waited instead of getting a 486 with 8mb ram, I could have got something orders of magnitude faster, for an order of magnitude less? These people for what ever reason didn't want to wait, they paid more, in return they got some extra months/years of use of a more exclusive machine. That's the early adopter deal. Plus as you say, if you bought a tesla for resale value, you are doing it wrong.
- natch 8y agoMany owners are not upset because they understand that with any tech product, prices drop over time. I would venture to say most owners, but over time the clue level will be diluted so it’s hard to say.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoDo people sell insurance against "buyers remorse"?
- rootusrootus 8y agoMany companies do, it's called a price match guarantee. If this causes enough bad press I wouldn't be shocked if Tesla does it.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI've seen "price match" from the actual seller, but not third parties? Eg "find it elsewhere cheaper ...", or "if we put it on sale within 6 weeks we'll refund the difference"
- benj111 8y agoYes, and for an extra $5 you can be covered against finding cheaper buyers remorse insurance. And for an extra $1 you can be covered against finding cheaper buyers remorse insurance insurance.
- Zoo3y 8y agoThe issue is not of value depreciation; anyone willing to drop a few thousand on a new car understands it. New buyers are pissed because they lost the opportunity cost game. They wanted their new toy NOW, and are crying because they're out thousands of dollars because they couldn't wait.
- freeopinion 8y agoSeems more like they wanted their new toy in 52 weeks, and now they have to requeue for 53-57 weeks or forego the price drop.
- jeffbax 8y agoSucks, but cry me a river. I'm more upset we've been tax subsidizing luxury car purchases by $7.5k for years. That should have only existed for the bottom economy models, not status symbols for the wealthy.
- antihero 8y agoIf the car was worth $200k to you when you bought it, great. If it was not, why did you buy it?