> It's not like the guy was making it up, they had clearly-detailed logs of the problems and the car was provably misbehaving.
The fact that problems exist says nothing of what caused them. I don't imagine it would be difficult for a competitor to intentionally damage a Tesla in a way that they could make a blog post like this about it. I'm not generally conspiracy-minded, but I feel like this is something worth considering when you're reading an article that seems to be put up on a throwaway LiveJournal account by somebody that doesn't link to any of their other social media accounts or websites.
But that's precisely why they should have done a recall-and-replace. Funny error message? Intermittent fault? No worries, give it a thorough looking over. Find nothing. Okay, give it back to the customer. More weird error messages followed by a persistent fault? The prudent thing at this point is to instantly swap out the car, and this time go through it with a fine toothed comb.
Now you're not just looking for a dodgy cable. You're looking for one of three things:
1) An as-yet-unknown design flaw, which needs to be documented for maintainers and fixed in future revisions.
2) A manufacturing defect, which should be investigated by quality control and again documented in case it reoccurs.
3) Malfeasance, in which case you want to preserve any possible evidence, finger prints on parts, damaged tamper seals etc.
It's not just about good customer service, it's about finding out exactly what happened.
> Funny error message? Intermittent fault? No worries, give it a thorough looking over. Find nothing. Okay, give it back to the customer.
Well said. This might be a problem, in a state of mind way, when you think of your car as a computer but not so much a car. Have you tried turning it off and on again? No? Well, do so and the errors will go away. Not really a good attitude for a car manufacturer.
Don't worry - I guarantee if this is a hit piece, and even if not - Tesla will make a blog post listing specifics from the vehicle telemetry and so forth to paint the (ex-) owner in a bad light.
The fact that problems exist says nothing of what caused them. I don't imagine it would be difficult for a competitor to intentionally damage a Tesla in a way that they could make a blog post like this about it. I'm not generally conspiracy-minded, but I feel like this is something worth considering when you're reading an article that seems to be put up on a throwaway LiveJournal account by somebody that doesn't link to any of their other social media accounts or websites.