Hurman became flummoxed as the $13,000 never turned up. There was no animosity or disagreement over the sum he said. The money just did not appear in his bank account as the months dragged on.
And on the rare occasions he did get through to (seemingly junior) local staff, promises to sort the payment came to nothing. Several times, he was asked to supply proof of the bank transaction, which he did.
At his wit's end, he posted his story to LinkedIn.
As it went viral, Tesla finally stirred into action.
Hurman told the Herald this afternoon: "I had a call from them this morning following the post, assuring me that they'd get on to it. But it literally took that post and John Hunt linking in Robyn Denholm - Tesla's chair to get a response."
In a separate thread on Facebook, Tesla owner Peter Karl said he had been waiting for payment on a $32,000 trade-in since September 25. He had been told four times that it was under action, he said.
Tesla has been asked for comment.
In terms of post-sale difficulty in contacting Tesla, Hurman's experience mirrors that of Stokes Valley man Tim Philips who suffered 20 days without the $26,000 Tesla Powerwall home battery setup powering his home after difficulties trying to reach Tesla's support operation.
Herman's LinkedIn post (see the original here):
A super weird story about Tesla
This is a super weird story about Tesla.
We bought a new Tesla from the Auckland dealership in August.
We traded in an older car with them, which they valued at $13,500.
They took the car, but they didn't take the amount off the Tesla purchase – we paid them the full ~70K for the Tesla, and they promised they'd refund us the $13,500 within three weeks.
The money never showed up, and so I started trying to enquire about it about eight weeks in.
I called a couple of times – and found they often don't answer at all, even the sales line which you'd think would be picked up during normal business hours. You can leave a message but my messages haven't ever been returned.
So I emailed the generic email which is oddly the only email address in all the documentation from the purchase. I eventually got a response from someone there, who said they'd follow up.
They came back to me a couple of weeks later and said they'd need bank proof to process the refund, and that it would take a further three to five weeks once they had the bank proof. This was now 10 weeks in.
I'd already send the bank proof right back at the start - and asked why they hadn't asked for the bank proof earlier if they thought they didn't have it. But resent them the proof anyway.
Then the line went dead.
No response from that email address since, after many requests for an update.
So I tried calling again. Again, usually no one picked up the phone, but occasionally someone would, and they said they didn't know who they needed to speak to, but they promised to have someone call me that day.
This happened three times, but no one ever called back. In the last calls I'd asked to speak to someone senior, or have someone senior call me who had the power to sort it out. There are only four people who work at Tesla in NZ on Linked In – all obviously very junior people. And no information on the website of who the GM or similar is. Basically they've made it impossible to find out who to contact when there's an issue like this.
At this point I was feeling pretty bewildered – they'd taken our car and our money, and genuinely seemed like they were just not going to pay us.
I'll note at this point that there was never a disagreement, an argument, any animosity that would give them reason to not want to call me – we'd bought a car, paid in full, and then the line went dead.
I kept calling and emailing with no responses. At one point I realised I'd been called by the salesperson/account manager who had been managing the sale, and I still had his mobile number in my phone. I called him – no answer, and a voicemail message that said not to leave messages. I texted the number asking him to call me back – no response.
Eventually, 12 or so weeks in, I had a call from a young guy who said he was picking up the issue and that they still needed bank proof (which I'd already provided). I asked him could he please get someone senior to call me as he was just the messenger, and didn't have the ability to put me on to anyone who could actually sort it or who I could ask what on earth was going on. But he promised to sort it out.
I supplied the bank proof again – this time a strange story that the bank account needed to be the same one that we'd paid for the Tesla from, not the one that we'd given them for the refund (just a different suffix). So I got them that, and the young guy promised he'd get it sorted, but I could hear in his voice that he wasn't really sure what, if anything, would happen, and he obviously didn't even know who would follow up or who I could contact.
And again, the line went dead. No follow up, no calls answered, no emails returned.
They took our car in August. It's now mid-November.
At this point I don't have anything left to do, and it seems super bizarre but I really think they're just not going to pay us for the car they took, which is a really creepy feeling.
The Tesla is one of the biggest single purchases we've made, and hands down the worst, and strangest, customer service experience I've ever had.
I'm not really sure what to do next. What do you do when a global company takes $13,500 from you and just refuses to give it back?
If anyone knows anyone senior at Tesla, or what the right legal recourse is for something like this, could you let me know?
And my advice to anyone buying a Tesla in NZ is to tread carefully – there's obviously something pretty dodgy going on with them.
