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Unfortunately, manufacturers' interests are often not aligned with retail customers' interests. For example, with Tesla, the company optimizes delivery numbers

Unfortunately, manufacturers' interests are often not aligned with retail customers' interests. For example, with Tesla, the company optimizes delivery numbers of cars sold by sacrificing quality control, and their service center model is anemic and almost an afterthought, especially when it comes to addressing the QC issues their customers experience. For every Tesla with 400k miles on them with a few thousand dollars in maintenance costs, there are a dozen cars that are delivered to customers like this one[1] from today on r/TeslaLounge, with 17 blatant issues upon delivery that QC should have caught early on in the process. There are stories on that subreddit about customers having to wait months, without a loaner car, for service centers to fix their cars or to even get service centers on the phone about the status of their repairs and cars. Dealerships act as an intermediary customer that can perform QC, repairs, customization, service, maintenance, reject deliveries etc that manufacturers choose to skimp out on. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/v3jkn3/update_my_brand_new_model_s_plaid_has_17/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/v3jkn3/update_...

skolos 4y ago
> the company optimizes delivery numbers of cars sold by sacrificing quality control How do you know this? Did you see their internal data? There are lots of anecdotes going around about Tesla's quality. However, with all the TeslaQ it is hard to believe that there is real correlation between anecdotes and data. Here are my anecdotes - I owned 6 Teslas over last several years. Not one of them had any QC issues. I had one service done because I hit tire debris and front break dust shield started making noises. Tesla fixed that for me quickly with no charge. As for the data - during earnings calls they mentioned that they do pay close attention to their customer experience data and they had period of time where service was lagging. But they started addressing this issue and saw improvements. The way they are growing I do believe they need to keep close eye on customer experience, but looks like they understand that themselves and use data to make sure they are on top of this. Unfortunately there's not much reliable independent data to have better understanding of this issue. Add: The intent of my comment was to ask if parent info is based on specific data or just anecdotes. As an example, I gave my own anecdotes and mentioned that they are not reliable correlation to the data. Somehow the responses I've got are all about anecdotes, mine or others, also some personal judgement of my ability to appreciate cars or judgment of my life circumstances that required me to have these many Teslas. Can we get back to discussing the main point I'm making - do we have data to make any of these judgements?
- alexb_ 4y ago
  >I owned 6 Teslas over the last several years. ??????? Why on earth would you need this many Teslas? Maybe if you are buying so many teslas then it makes sense why you don't need them serviced - you barely give them enough time to wear themselves out!
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If you buy the latest and greatest and continuously upgrade to the next greatest it’s not that expensive; often cheaper than leasing.
    - alexb_ 4y ago
      Maybe it's cheaper than leasing the latest and greatest, but not everyone has an unlimited pool of money all the time, and the assumption that this type of purchasing behavior is in any way typical or representative of anything is absurd and out of touch at best, and purposefully misleading for the benefit of Tesla at worst.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        It looks like you knee-jerked pretty hard at that line, because they didn't say anything at all about their purchasing behavior being typical. They just said the QC was good on the cars they got. And in general the issues I heard about were from-the-factory issues, so only having the cars for 1-2 years each wouldn't matter much.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      Do you have data on that? I thought cars lose a lot of their value as soon as they drive off the lot. And how long of leases are you talking about?
      - 4y ago
cuteboy19 4y ago
Dealerships are rent seeking entities that exist purely due to laws that force consumers to deal with them and only them. They are not in either consumer or manufacturers interest.
- refulgentis 4y ago
  This is an extreme absolutist position that seems immediately falsified by the detailed and nuanced post it is in reply to
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    If dealerships are so beloved by customers and so beneficial to them, why would they lobby so hard against customers doing business with manufacturers? They wouldn't need to if customers truly preferred them. Instead, Car salesman are despised even more than lawyers! Everything a dealer can do, a mechanic can do for cheaper. It's a ripoff and the law forces it to be a ripoff
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Because customers don't know what value dealers provide. They think direct would be better because they only see the negatives of the current situation and not the positives. Which is really true for pretty much everyone in this argument on both sides.
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        It's the lobbies that prop up the status quo because it has become very profitable, but it is easy to forget that the status quo exists in the first place as a series of compromises designed first and foremost for consumer protection against lemons.
- king-geedorah 4y ago
  I whole heartedly agreed on this point but have grown to see another side of the issue. I don’t want to over glamorize it but in the north east car dealers have done exceptionally well, and often were the wealthiest people in the towns they serviced. A dealership in Pennsylvania recounted to me how the founder of the dealership more or less built the town square and at one pointed owned more than half the town. Now this may seem negative but the founder is long dead and the dealership now employees a several dozen locals all making very strong salaries, all with minimal educational requirements (just a bachelors cause it’s in vogue). Overall I guess the point I want to make is even thought it is rent seeking (many industries are) this one seems to provide for so many communities all across America. I find it hard to believe that ford will pass up the savings to the consumers. We all know that profits will be returned to shareholders.
elif 4y ago
wow 17 borderline cosmetic opinions on a fully functional vehicle. how dare they sell that vehicle. Not to mention that when they bought it, Tesla gave the buyer the opportunity to reject it and have another specimen manufactured at no cost. they decided to keep it because it appears their vanity is literally only skin deep.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Those are issues that would be caught by any competent quality control process, and that particular example is just from the top of the r/TeslaLounge page from a few hours ago. At any point you can log into spaces for Tesla customers and find dozens of stories of just like that one, or worse, when it comes to quality control or service center service[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. And you make a great point about the importance of rejecting deliveries, which is exactly what a dealership would have done upon inspection instead of forcing layman retail customers to do it free and to their detriment. We even have Tesla customers asking why other customers choose to take deliveries at the end of the fiscal quarter[12], because Tesla has a reputation of pushing out as many vehicles as they can in order to boost delivery numbers, even if that means delivering cars in poor condition. When quality and service is consistently that bad, you can't blame the customer for accepting a delivery of the car they spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on. Also, your comment goes against HN guidelines[13]: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/u9v1mo/off_my_chest_my_first_24_hours_of_owning_a_tesla/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/u9v1mo/off_my_... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/rqie4g/gotta_love_teslas_delivery_experience_the_car_ive/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/rqie4g/gotta_lov... [3] https://twitter.com/aprildawn78/status/1481450029462212616?s=21 https://twitter.com/aprildawn78/status/1481450029462212616?s... [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/nurlbg/my_model_3_lemon_law/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/nurlbg/my_model_... [5] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/qzr5tx/how_is_this_acceptable/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/qzr5tx/how_is_th... [6] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comically-poor-delivery-experience-still-in-progress-tysons-corner-va.211591/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comically-poor-deliv... [7] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-first-model-3-experience-not-so-good.224989/#post-5441242 https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-first-model-3-exp... [8] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/took-delivery-today-but-experience-is-less-than-stellar.176543/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/took-delivery-today-... [9] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/j59ovh/so_teslas_quality_control_is_embarrassingly_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/j59ovh/so_tesl... [10] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/smettt/terrifying_model_y_shutdown_at_75mph/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/smettt/terrify... [11] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/l0ownx/my_y_has_been_in_the_shop_4_months_and_is_still/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/l0ownx/my_y_ha... [12] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/j59dp1/tesla_owners_that_take_delivery_over_quarterend/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/j59dp1/tesla_own... [13] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
concordDance 4y ago
Due to non-random sampling, anecdotes are not evidence when it comes to a phenomena at this scale. Even four randomly sampled entries are better than 100 posts of people complaining if the latter are more likely to appear in your feed than someone getting theirs with no issue. You need an actually random sampling of delivered Teslas to determine how extensive QC issues are and whether the average one can go 400k km with only $3k servicing. Also, they defects reputed to vary substantially over time (e.g. one model year might have 5x the rate of two years later).

skolos 4y ago

> the company optimizes delivery numbers of cars sold by sacrificing quality control How do you know this? Did you see their internal data? There are lots of anecdotes going around about Tesla's quality. However, with all the TeslaQ it is hard to believe that there is real correlation between anecdotes and data. Here are my anecdotes - I owned 6 Teslas over last several years. Not one of them had any QC issues. I had one service done because I hit tire debris and front break dust shield started making noises. Tesla fixed that for me quickly with no charge. As for the data - during earnings calls they mentioned that they do pay close attention to their customer experience data and they had period of time where service was lagging. But they started addressing this issue and saw improvements. The way they are growing I do believe they need to keep close eye on customer experience, but looks like they understand that themselves and use data to make sure they are on top of this. Unfortunately there's not much reliable independent data to have better understanding of this issue. Add: The intent of my comment was to ask if parent info is based on specific data or just anecdotes. As an example, I gave my own anecdotes and mentioned that they are not reliable correlation to the data. Somehow the responses I've got are all about anecdotes, mine or others, also some personal judgement of my ability to appreciate cars or judgment of my life circumstances that required me to have these many Teslas. Can we get back to discussing the main point I'm making - do we have data to make any of these judgements?

alexb_ 4y ago
>I owned 6 Teslas over the last several years. ??????? Why on earth would you need this many Teslas? Maybe if you are buying so many teslas then it makes sense why you don't need them serviced - you barely give them enough time to wear themselves out!
- bombcar 4y ago
  If you buy the latest and greatest and continuously upgrade to the next greatest it’s not that expensive; often cheaper than leasing.
  - alexb_ 4y ago
    Maybe it's cheaper than leasing the latest and greatest, but not everyone has an unlimited pool of money all the time, and the assumption that this type of purchasing behavior is in any way typical or representative of anything is absurd and out of touch at best, and purposefully misleading for the benefit of Tesla at worst.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      It looks like you knee-jerked pretty hard at that line, because they didn't say anything at all about their purchasing behavior being typical. They just said the QC was good on the cars they got. And in general the issues I heard about were from-the-factory issues, so only having the cars for 1-2 years each wouldn't matter much.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Do you have data on that? I thought cars lose a lot of their value as soon as they drive off the lot. And how long of leases are you talking about?
    - 4y ago

cuteboy19 4y ago

Dealerships are rent seeking entities that exist purely due to laws that force consumers to deal with them and only them. They are not in either consumer or manufacturers interest.

refulgentis 4y ago
This is an extreme absolutist position that seems immediately falsified by the detailed and nuanced post it is in reply to
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  If dealerships are so beloved by customers and so beneficial to them, why would they lobby so hard against customers doing business with manufacturers? They wouldn't need to if customers truly preferred them. Instead, Car salesman are despised even more than lawyers! Everything a dealer can do, a mechanic can do for cheaper. It's a ripoff and the law forces it to be a ripoff
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Because customers don't know what value dealers provide. They think direct would be better because they only see the negatives of the current situation and not the positives. Which is really true for pretty much everyone in this argument on both sides.
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      It's the lobbies that prop up the status quo because it has become very profitable, but it is easy to forget that the status quo exists in the first place as a series of compromises designed first and foremost for consumer protection against lemons.
king-geedorah 4y ago
I whole heartedly agreed on this point but have grown to see another side of the issue. I don’t want to over glamorize it but in the north east car dealers have done exceptionally well, and often were the wealthiest people in the towns they serviced. A dealership in Pennsylvania recounted to me how the founder of the dealership more or less built the town square and at one pointed owned more than half the town. Now this may seem negative but the founder is long dead and the dealership now employees a several dozen locals all making very strong salaries, all with minimal educational requirements (just a bachelors cause it’s in vogue). Overall I guess the point I want to make is even thought it is rent seeking (many industries are) this one seems to provide for so many communities all across America. I find it hard to believe that ford will pass up the savings to the consumers. We all know that profits will be returned to shareholders.

elif 4y ago

wow 17 borderline cosmetic opinions on a fully functional vehicle. how dare they sell that vehicle. Not to mention that when they bought it, Tesla gave the buyer the opportunity to reject it and have another specimen manufactured at no cost. they decided to keep it because it appears their vanity is literally only skin deep.

heavyset_go 4y ago
Those are issues that would be caught by any competent quality control process, and that particular example is just from the top of the r/TeslaLounge page from a few hours ago. At any point you can log into spaces for Tesla customers and find dozens of stories of just like that one, or worse, when it comes to quality control or service center service[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. And you make a great point about the importance of rejecting deliveries, which is exactly what a dealership would have done upon inspection instead of forcing layman retail customers to do it free and to their detriment. We even have Tesla customers asking why other customers choose to take deliveries at the end of the fiscal quarter[12], because Tesla has a reputation of pushing out as many vehicles as they can in order to boost delivery numbers, even if that means delivering cars in poor condition. When quality and service is consistently that bad, you can't blame the customer for accepting a delivery of the car they spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on. Also, your comment goes against HN guidelines[13]: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/u9v1mo/off_my_chest_my_first_24_hours_of_owning_a_tesla/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/u9v1mo/off_my_... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/rqie4g/gotta_love_teslas_delivery_experience_the_car_ive/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/rqie4g/gotta_lov... [3] https://twitter.com/aprildawn78/status/1481450029462212616?s=21 https://twitter.com/aprildawn78/status/1481450029462212616?s... [4] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/nurlbg/my_model_3_lemon_law/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/nurlbg/my_model_... [5] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/qzr5tx/how_is_this_acceptable/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/qzr5tx/how_is_th... [6] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comically-poor-delivery-experience-still-in-progress-tysons-corner-va.211591/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comically-poor-deliv... [7] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-first-model-3-experience-not-so-good.224989/#post-5441242 https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-first-model-3-exp... [8] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/took-delivery-today-but-experience-is-less-than-stellar.176543/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/took-delivery-today-... [9] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/j59ovh/so_teslas_quality_control_is_embarrassingly_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/j59ovh/so_tesl... [10] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/smettt/terrifying_model_y_shutdown_at_75mph/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/smettt/terrify... [11] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/l0ownx/my_y_has_been_in_the_shop_4_months_and_is_still/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/l0ownx/my_y_ha... [12] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/j59dp1/tesla_owners_that_take_delivery_over_quarterend/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/j59dp1/tesla_own... [13] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

concordDance 4y ago

Due to non-random sampling, anecdotes are not evidence when it comes to a phenomena at this scale. Even four randomly sampled entries are better than 100 posts of people complaining if the latter are more likely to appear in your feed than someone getting theirs with no issue. You need an actually random sampling of delivered Teslas to determine how extensive QC issues are and whether the average one can go 400k km with only $3k servicing. Also, they defects reputed to vary substantially over time (e.g. one model year might have 5x the rate of two years later).