Consumer complaint received 2023-08-18
Product: Debt collection — Auto debt
Issue: Took or threatened to take negative or legal action — Seized or attempted to seize your property
Company: Tesla, Inc. (CA)

I have had a horrible experience with Tesla and their team in the past couple of days. My family purchased our new car a couple months ago and was enjoying it up until a few days ago when I tried to get the car into gear and it demanded that I input the password. Having not set up a password previously, I contacted Tesla about the issue.

While I was waiting to speak with a representative, I noticed that my car was no longer linked to my account on the app, nor could I log into my Tesla account. After waiting on hold for two hours, I was finally able to get through to a representative who informed me that I needed to contact Tesla Financial about this issue. I called the number provided immediately but they did not pick up as they were outside of working hours.

Not a problem. I thought. Id call back again tomorrow and sort this out. I left my car in the parking lot at work overnight and had a family member pick me up and drop me off the next morning. While Im working the next day, my boss informs me that there is a tow truck outside to tow my car. Confused, I went out to the parking lot and was told by the towing company that Tesla is repossessing my vehicle. 

This is where my confusion grew. We had paid for the vehicle IN FULL at the time we picked it up from the dealership, but the towing company is just doing what tesla told them to do. so they took my car.

Shortly afterward, my father received a phone call from Tesla Financial and he asked them what was going on. They told him that Tesla had been trying to reach out to us multiple times through phone and email about a debt they have been attempting to collect on the car.

My father had been out of the country for the past couple months so any phone calls would not have reached him. He did not receive a single voicemail about this issue either. He looked through his emails and noticed that he did in fact receive only two emails on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, stating that we had not yet paid for the car and that the full cost of the vehicle is still at large. These emails went ignored as he believed them to be a phishing attempt because we had already PAID IN FULL at the dealership. He also believed that Tesla could not have made such a huge mistake like this. 

My XXXX  explained this over the phone but the representative did not budge. This Tesla representative was rude and unprofessional for the entire phone callgoing so far as to yell at my father over the phone. A different Tesla representative sent us an email that seemed to be a copy paste of what they had sent my
father back in XXXX and that this car is now being considered for repossession. I shot an email back explaining AGAIN that this car had been paid for in full already and that we have been very dissatisfied by how Tesla had been handling this situation.

Up until this point, we were under the impression that Tesla was repossessing our vehicle without any warning because the two emails they sent to us regarding this seemed to be a phishing scam. Again they left no voicemails about this either.
The Tesla representative then emailed back this statement : I am having the team fully post the funds of the cashier 's check. I am redrafting the documents and title/lien to your name instead of [ BANK ]. I have attached documents. Once funds post I can then restore access to the vehicle and release title/lien to your name. Basically saying that they had the check this whole time but due to some internal oversight had not cashed it. And they came after us, accused us of not paying, and repossessed our vehicle. Not only that, they incorrectly had the title of our car under the banks name rather than our own.
The next day, we received another email stating that the car is now back under our name and it can be picked up from the tow yard.

No apology. No restitution.

My father emailed them back saying he was glad the issue was resolved but was disappointed that there was no restitution offered, not even an apology.

They then emailed back the equivalent of saying well we did try to contact you about this.

I shot back an em

ail stating that we are frustrated because it seems like this was an internal accounting issue that we should not have been contacted about or been involved in, in the first place. Now we find ourselves carless for four days and will have to go out of our way to pick up a car that was wrongly repossessed. And still Tesla offers no apology, restitution, and no guarantee that they are taking steps to prevent anything like this from happening in the future. I have also found a reddit post from four years ago in which others seemed to recount having similar issues, which shows that this is a pattern they have not resolved.