There’s no excuse for bad customer service

I bought a fridge freezer (american style) from an auction and it looked brand new and worked for a couple of weeks. Anyway, it just stopped working and so I called the manufacturer, which in this case was John Lewis. Basically, this was around December 2016 and the warranty on the fridge was going to run out at the end of the month. The engineer cam from John Lewis and looked at the fridge and said that he though to fix it was too big a job and he was going to tell his employers to send a replacement.
I was really happy about this, but got no feedback from John Lewis so phone them back and guess what they were not going to replace it. They gave me a code and told me to contact the original sellers and they would replace it. This did not happen and the warranty has run out. Good on you John Lewis for the worst customer service.
In short if you buy a John Lewis product they will dodge their responsibility. Don’t buy a John Lewis product with the John Lewis product.

This April, I was sent a marketing email from Tesla inviting me to “Enhance your driving experience by maximizing the range of your current vehicle” by upgrading my Model S 70D’s battery from 70kWh to 75kWh.

This was to be performed via “an over–the–air software update”. The advertised cost was: “As of today, Model S … 70 and 70D [can upgrade] for $500.”

I went through the entire purchasing process, but I was informed only after completion that I had been charged GBP 500.00, not USD 500.00 as advertised. 
 
At the interbank exchange rate on the date they processed my payment, this equated to a price of USD 643.99 – an increase of over 22% on the advertised price, without any warning or notification.

So I complained to Tesla via email, using both the marketing email address and an email address given on their website. I received no reply. As a last resort, I emailed the salesman who had sold me the vehicle at Tesla Heathrow, saying that I would rather avoid talking to the Trading Standards Authority, and hoped that he could help me. Again, I received no reply.

(Strangely enough, of course, since then I’ve managed to receive various other marketing emails from them, including one from Tesla Heathrow!)

This was not the first time that Tesla has quoted one price and then tried to charge another, higher price – it happened to me when I originally bought the car.  I managed to successfully argue against this at the time. However, I had no such luck this time.

Because I had paid for the upgrade via debit card, I contacted my bank, First Direct, to ask them to help. I must say, they were great, and although they told me that there was no protection under the Visa scheme, they refunded me the difference between the GBP price and the USD price as a gesture of goodwill.

So I am, fortunately, no longer out of pocket. I’ve received the upgrade, and it works just fine. Nonetheless, I am still very angry with Tesla. This is unfair trading and “bait advertising” – advertising products at a specified price without disclosing that they have reasonable grounds to believe they may not be able to supply them or their equivalent at that price for a reasonable period or in reasonable quantities. 

I love the Tesla car; it really is an amazing feat of engineering, even though it has some bugs and flaws, as might be expected of groundbreaking technology. However, their customer service is simply dreadful. (I’ve had other issues with car servicing and charging and have been left with the impression that they are very uncoordinated.)

All the news stories about Tesla – and there are many – give an impression of a company led by a brilliant man – with, unfortunately, zero idea of how to run a business. I wonder how long Tesla will last?

I will certainly buy an electric car again. However, for my next car, I will be looking very closely at BMW or Toyota. They have the advantage of decades of honing their customer service. I know from owning other cars that I will never have such a poor experience with either of them.