Devils advocate here. Does the action of the customer service person (and maybe their manager) reflect the real mission of the company? Could it be employees (for whatever reason) not realizing that leaving the full range unlocked is in the best interest of the company?
Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
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Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#22How can a potential buyer verify that a used Tesla they are considering purchasing is not subject to some sort of pullback like this? I feel like there's an information asymmetry between the used car buyer (who has likely never owned a Tesla before, and certainly doesn't know the history of the vehicle he's considering purchasing), the seller (who may specifically be aware that the car appears to have functionality t…
>What are the right questions for a buyer to ask in order to ensure they're not left in this unfortunate position?
Just a few spit balls for you:
Do you have another used car for sale that is not a Tesla?
Does this Tesla have any features currently enabled that might be disabled when someone realizes I'm no longer the original owner or the current owner realizes their credit card is still paying for services they no longer use, etc?
In what ways will Tesla fuck me after purchasing this car?
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#23"I feel like this is more mundane on Tesla's part than many are making it out to be. A mistake was made years ago. An employee recently discovered and "fixed" it. Terrible communication and customer service, but nefarious? Nah." At this point I feel like terrible communication and service is an intentional business strategy for some companies who found that by making support so baroque as to be inaccessible or just e…
It certainly echos the approach of other tech companies like google and apple. Save money and reduce risk by not giving your employees any power or freedom to think on their own. Or not having employees even exist when possible. The customer suffers but the customer is also the sucker who used your service because it was the cheapest or free.
its all gross and unnecessary
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software locks themselves are nefarious. Is it the owner's car, or Tesla's?
I wonder if there is some nice fine print somewhere that they only sold a "licence" to use the car. Not the car itself... Kinda like software has...
Contracts and DRM are two sides of the same coin when it comes to chipping away at ownership. They want to segment the market as finely as possible, to capture all of the excess value of their product.
E.g. they don't want to sell you a general-purpose GPU, but a GPU that's good for one purpose only, and you have to pay extra to use it for anything else [1]. Tesla is leading the way [2], but I'm sure other automakers are also trying to come up with ways to restrict "personal" vehicles from being used for "commercial" activities.
[1] Nvidia’s updates EULA to ban the use of gamer-oriented GPUs in data centers - https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-bans-consumer...
[2] Don’t plan on using your autonomous Tesla to earn money with Uber or Lyft - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-an-a...
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#25I'll spare the moral judgements against Tesla for this: The real moral of the story here is that if your business plan and practices is creating occasional weird issues and huge cognitive dissonance in your customers, it's the wrong business plan. Also... the number of people this applies to is likely so low that Tesla really screwed up by not erring on the side of the customer. (They didn't buy from Tesla, but they'…
Well said, I’m potentially in the market for a car and this is like reason #5 I’m ruling out Tesla.
Care to share the others? I'm weighing my options as well.
Anything you are leaning towards buying?
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there is some nice fine print somewhere that they only sold a "licence" to use the car. Not the car itself... Kinda like software has...
If they want to *lease* the vehicles, that's fine. They need to make it explicitly known it is a lease for X term, and at Y cost per month of the lease. Modifying their property would be completely in the clear, or at least a hell of a lot less ethically ambiguous. But they're selling these vehicles. As in, transfer of title to the person they're selling to. Taxes are paid. Transfer is registered with the state(s). I…
All cars are doing this stuff, it isn’t EV specific
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#27I'll spare the moral judgements against Tesla for this: The real moral of the story here is that if your business plan and practices is creating occasional weird issues and huge cognitive dissonance in your customers, it's the wrong business plan. Also... the number of people this applies to is likely so low that Tesla really screwed up by not erring on the side of the customer. (They didn't buy from Tesla, but they'…
A year ago, I would have chosen a new Tesla, hands down (disclosure: I am probably not gonna actually buy an EV for as many years as I can eke out of my trusty Subie).
Nowadays, I have chatted with numerous folks that have purchased alternative EVs.
The Tesla owners still seem the giddiest (There's a lot of 'em around here), but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse from any of the other brands.
The one that brought the Rivian, is every bit as giddy as any Tesla owner I know.
I think that Tesla has managed to establish itself, and will last, but the free ride is over.
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#28"You'll own nothing and you'll like it."
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#29> Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer). It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range. When they bought the car from the 3rd party, did they buy it as a P60 or a P90? Did someone mis-represent the car when sold? Was it Tesla or the previous owner? Was the badge on the back changed to P90? That doesn't sound like a 'mistake' Tesla would make when making a warranty repair. Curial information here i…
I wondered that too. It'd be extremely unusual for Tesla to go as far as changing the badge.
OTOH, a car dealer along the way might do that if they noticed the discrepancy between the badge and what the software reported. It'd be hard to blame them too, since people do sometimes downgrade the badging on cars (eg, this "218i", lol: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/Kmm4AgbK/2016-bmw-m2 ).
It still leaves Tesla as the bad guy. The current owner bears no relation to the ones who did it, and there's really no reasonable process that could have allowed him to know that this might happen.
Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range
#30I'll spare the moral judgements against Tesla for this: The real moral of the story here is that if your business plan and practices is creating occasional weird issues and huge cognitive dissonance in your customers, it's the wrong business plan. Also... the number of people this applies to is likely so low that Tesla really screwed up by not erring on the side of the customer. (They didn't buy from Tesla, but they'…
Well said, I’m potentially in the market for a car and this is like reason #5 I’m ruling out Tesla.
I'd say this is a great reason to not a used one. Which Tesla doesn't care about at all and probably want to discourage.