{"id":36868,"date":"2020-01-30T09:18:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T22:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=36868"},"modified":"2025-01-02T07:01:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T21:31:31","slug":"tesla-australian-consumer-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/tesla-australian-consumer-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla, Crap Customer Service And Australian Consumer Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tesla

A two year old, $150,000 Tesla has a failed headlight. Tesla are refusing warranty, and want more than $4,000 to replace it.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tesla\u2019s notorious customer support is on display again, with a Model S owner offered a repair bill of $4,000 for a headlamp that failed a little over two years after purchase.<\/p>\n

Our story starts, as it so often does, with the owner going public on Facebook. This is what appeared on the Tesla Owners Club page:<\/p>\n

\u201cHey everyone – just an update on my last post. Tesla has given me a $4,145 quote to fix the dead LED daytime running light on my 2 year old Model S. Does anyone know how\/what the procedure is to get this covered under the implied Australian Consumer Law Warranty? I have asked them about it and they’ve basically acted like they don’t know what that is. I asked to have this pushed up to management which they basically refused. The car was under 2 years old when the light failed and I told them about it. This doesn’t seem fair as it’s hardly of acceptable quality if the part fails within 24 months??\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We called the owner, who asked us not to share his name, and he confirmed the details of his Facebook post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe picked our Model S up late December 2017,\u201d he said, \u201cand the lamp failed in December 2019, it was less than two years old.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem is that he\u2019s driven the Model S a lot. In that two years, the owner has saved the planet a fair whack of petroleum-related emissions, since the vehicle has more than 100,000km on the clock.<\/p>\n

The Tesla manufacturer\u2019s warranty is just 80,000km, and that\u2019s what the company is using as its \u201cout\u201d. The Model S owner told us the Tesla service rep told him:<\/p>\n

\u201cour warranty is 80,000km, that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So for a failed headlight – a pretty straightforward item, he said, \u201cthis is just a simple LED reflection headlight\u201d, he got the repair quote below.<\/p>\n

\"Tesla

$4,000-plus for a headlamp. You read that right<\/p><\/div>\n

We asked Tesla to comment on this in light of the statutory warranties that exist under the Australian Consumer Law, and our contact at Tesla said they wanted the customer\u2019s name before they would discuss.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a stonewalling tactic I\u2019ve experienced before. We asked the customer if we could identify him to Tesla, and he quite appropriately declined. So SolarQuotes is at an impasse as far as getting comment from Tesla goes.<\/p>\n

In any case, the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) is clear on the matter. The table below is reproduced from the ACCC\u2019s guidelines document available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Extract

Extract from ACCC statutory warranty explainer<\/p><\/div>\n

The statutory warranty overrides the vehicle manufacturer\u2019s warranty, and \u201cacceptable quality\u201d also means a product has to have durability in line with the expectations of any \u201creasonable person\u201d.<\/p>\n

The owner also told us that the Tesla service rep he spoke to flatly refused to entertain the idea of escalating his complaint.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d say it\u2019s time to book a VCAT hearing<\/a>, then lodge an official complaint with Consumer Affairs Victoria<\/a> since they\u2019re the first contact for getting relief under the Australian Consumer Law statutory warranty obligations.<\/p>\n

A Butt-Call Buys A Costly Upgrade<\/h2>\n

As it happens, another story was going around the traps last week.<\/p>\n

As reported<\/a> on The Next Web, Tesla’s smartphone app has what\u2019s known in the industry as a \u201cdark pattern\u201d that let owner Nassim Nicholas Taleb buy more than $US4,000 of software upgrades (the Full Self Driving upgrade suite) by accident.<\/p>\n

Taleb took the reasonable-enough approach of asking Tesla to reverse the purchase, and said his request was refused (if it had happened in Australia, under the ACL a company cannot refuse refunds just because the customer made a digital software purchase). So he took to Twitter:<\/p>\n

\n

Elon @elonmusk<\/a>, your Customer Support at Tesla is even worse than I claimed last time.
It is an insult to your customers. pic.twitter.com\/3HZ2YSjigS<\/a><\/p>\n

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) January 15, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n