This photo of a production version of Tesla’s Model Y was included in the company’s earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2019.
Tesla
According to CNBC, Tesla has reimbursed customers who billed for new car purchases made at the end of the first quarter.
Refunds came after CNBC’s coverage of the double fees and a video review by Everyday Chris, Christopher T. Lee, on YouTube asking other Tesla buyers to use a cashier’s check instead of Tesla’s if they could allow you to debit your bank account directly.
Six customers in California and North Carolina who spoke to CNBC and shared records with CNBC found it took about a week to receive their refunds after initially complaining to Elon Musk’s electric car company.
These customers received their refunds on or before April 1, including payments for overdraft fees that triggered Tesla’s double withdrawals from their accounts.
This week, Tesla also extended the emailed apology from the concerned owners, giving them a $ 200 credit to spend in a single visit to the company’s online store. This comes from an email that several customers shared with CNBC. The credit must be used in a single transaction on shop.tesla.com, cannot be used on Tesla Tequila and will expire on January 30, 2022, the email said.
Today’s Tesla online store can buy $ 200 smaller items like Tesla branded clothing or a new keychain for a Model 3 or Model Y, but not premium items and vehicle accessories like a roof rack or a bunch of adapters that do so allow Drivers plug a Tesla into an electrical outlet to charge it at home or on the go.
Customers respond
A spokesman for the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) told CNBC that anecdotally unauthorized double charges for high-priced items purchased with ACH direct debit are unusual. NACHA manages the development and control of the ACH network.
Lee and two other California-based Tesla owners, Clark Peterson and Tom Slattery, who spoke to CNBC about the double fees in March, all said Tesla needed to improve its sales and customer service.
Peterson said, “While I’m glad the whole situation has been resolved, I still feel that the response time was inadequate. It took Tesla days to get any response and they held our significant funds on all along. And it took five minutes to get those funds out of our account. “
Slattery said the gesture was too little, too late. He’s already bought all of the accessories he needs and is currently in no mood to carry Tesla’s logo around like an ad, he told CNBC on Tuesday evening.
When the double charges hit his account, he went to another state to look at houses in hopes of bidding on one. Instead, he spent his time distracted, stressed out, trying to find out about a refund in writing.
Tesla paid it back on March 31, about a week after Slattery called and visited the company’s Burbank Service Center and showroom to find answers, he said.
After receiving the apology email from Tesla on Tuesday night, Slattery told CNBC, “Anything that was done reasonably quickly would have been perfectly fine. But I’ve learned that Tesla’s culture is that it is about the stock price and not worry about customers. “
When reading the news of Tesla’s record vehicle shipments in the first quarter, he said he wanted to be happy for the company but instead had a sinking feeling.
“I thought, ‘You had to get us out of the way even though you had these ridiculously positive sales numbers? How could you not stop to deal with people in need?'”
The problems weren’t limited to customers in California.
A former North Carolina bank clerk who asked not to be named for privacy concerns said it was inappropriate for a refund to take a full business week to complete.
That person was billed twice for a 2021 Model Y that cost about $ 54,000. He bought the car online and was charged twice with funds that were withdrawn from his account on March 25th.
It was his bank, rather than Tesla, that alerted him to the unusual activity, he said. It took him about six hours to make a series of phone calls to banks and Tesla in North Carolina and California to find out what had happened, and it wasn’t until March 31 that he received an email about an upcoming refund. In the meantime, he withdrew funds from a brokerage account to cover expenses, he said.
Although he’s overall satisfied with the car and has driven it a few hundred miles, he would only rate Tesla’s customer service with 1 out of 5. He said it was clearly Tesla’s fault, not the banks’ fault.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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