No one likes having their car repossessed, but if you fall behind on your payments the true ‘owner’ of the car has every right to take it back. However, one Tesla driver claims the automaker electronically disabled his car remotely and then sent a tow truck to recover it despite him paying for the EV in full.
Writing on Reddit, u/hmelon explained that a couple of months after he and his dad had purchased a new Tesla he found that the car was immobilized and was demanding a password when he tried to select a gear. He also noticed that he couldn’t log into his Tesla account and that his car was no longer linked to the app on his phone. Unable to get an answer as to what was going on via calls to the automaker outside of working hours, the owner left his car at his own workplace presuming he’d be able to sort the situation out in the morning.
But the owner says that while he was at work the next day his boss informed him that a tow truck had arrived and was attempting to repo his car. He claims that his dad, who had been apparently working out of the country for a couple of months, then received a call from Tesla Financial during which they told him they had been calling and emailing about a missing payment on the car.
Related: BMW Driver Destroys His 5-Series To Avoid The Repo Man In New York
This appears to be true because the Reddit poster’s dad had received a couple of emails from Tesla asking for full payment to be made. But he’d ignored them thinking that they were phishing emails because he’d already paid for the car in full via a combination of bank card and cashier’s check.
So you might be willing to lay some blame on the dad…until you learn that Tesla appears to have suddenly discovered that it had already received the payment, but had not cashed the check. The father and son were subsequently told to pick the car up from the tow yard, but they claim that Tesla offered no compensation or even apology for what appears to be an internal balls-up.
We should bear in mind that we only have the poster’s side of the story, but if it’s true, that’s some shoddy customer service, and probably the last time Tesla will get any custom from this family.
H/T to Tire Meets Road