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Elon Musk Cancels Stewart Alsop's Tesla Order Over Complaints About Launch Event
New submitter umafuckit writes: Blogger Stewart Alsop wrote an open letter to Elon Musk following a supposedly badly run launch event for the Model X. Alsop complained that the event started almost 2 hours late and was unable to test drive the car (for which has put down a deposit). In response, Musk cancelled Alsop's pre-order saying "Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention." Alsop, who is known not just for his prolific blogging but for his role as a founding partner at VC firm Alsop Louie Partners, compares his treatment by Tesla to that of BMW, about which he's also said some unflattering things as a customer.
Surprise, surprise. Being rude to a company results in bad service from that company. Hardly news except that it was Tesla that was the victim. Maybe the blogger has learned his lesson, but probably not.
I think it's good that he got his order canceled. If you are going to complain in an "open letter", you are pretty much just attention seeking. If you wanted to help the company out or support it in a positive light, you would have kept your issues between you and the company. I also agree that it must be a slow news day.
Quick, Elon Musk needs a safe space!
If that's his definition of a rude customer, then... fuck Tesla.
If he can't get satisfaction at Tesla or BMW, I suspect this is an impossible person to deal with. Musk saw the writing on the wall, and cut this guy loose before he bought the car and made claims against the company for all kinds of ridiculous and petty shit.
Not really. It looks like a dick move on Elon's part. I like Elon, but it looks like Stewart was in the right here and Elon's looking kind of petty, making an overly harsh personal response instead of addressing the issue with the man like a decent human.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You know what; as long as this "critic" was refunded his deposit, then I am all in favour of this.
Ray Crock's principle of "The Customer is always right" is great until the customer comes to believe that this should be the case every time. As soon as that's the case it is an unrealistically high car to set on a customer service experience, because instead of "errors are always in the customers favour" the customer views it as, "if a mistake was made, I am due a large payout or extra swag" leading us to a society of complainers form the start.
If someone has a customer service problem, take it through the right channels, then, if it is unresolved, by all means, take to the twitter with your complaints. Unfortunately, I think a great deal of people skip over the middle step.
These people are the worlds assholes, and unless they are fired as customers, their behavior is only emboldened.
Stewart lead with an "overly harsh personal response" and was met with a prompt ending of a business relationship. He equated this with BMW not asking for the car back, but then, he was already their customer. Elon headed him off at the pass and cut this "potential" nightmare customer off from the beginning. Selling him the car would only have opened the floodgates of whining.
Negative feedback is important to understand the areas of opportunity where your business might be improved. I think setting the precedent that you'll be stung by Tesla if you complain isn't sending the right message.
From a marketing perspective, free advertising!
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
It may or may not be a dick move, but this guy Alsop is a pretentious, whiny douche, so let's just call it karma.
Thats an insane price for that car. Its all just a marketing fad.
Personally I think musk did him a favour and he's better off without it.
What a refreshing change from companies who are willing to destroy their employees to save a sale
This is just getting blown up into a bigger deal than it should be because one crowd is eager to defend Tesla Motors against any negative press, while the other is eager to make Musk look like an arrogant jerk (a la the late Steve Jobs).
The way I see it though, Stewart Alsop didn't really bring up any complaints that weren't valid. He's right... Who starts a product launch event over an hour late and doesn't even acknowledge they ran behind? And really, it's poor planning at best to promise participants a test drive when you clearly have too many people signed up for one than you can accommodate. (He said he had number 1,344? Come on! You might not get through that many people in an entire day at an auto show -- much less an event at night that already started an hour late!)
If Tesla wants to cancel his pre-order, fine. Maybe that helps send a message that they won't be pushed around by people making a lot of demands, and that will help them eliminate some problem customers. But I think it also shows some of us that their leader isn't very good at taking criticism. That's unfortunate because the ability to do so helps make a better product and improve customer service.
Ever been to Disneyland on a holiday? If so, did you "rage quit" the place when you weren't first in line to ride your favorite ride the one time that day, and didn't want to wait 2+ hrs to get on it, and then demand to get your ticket price refunded back to you?
Stewart lead with an "overly harsh personal response" and was met with a prompt ending of a business relationship.
I'd be inclined to agree with Racemaniac that it didn't come across as overly harsh. Nor did I consider it overly personal.
Was this the whining of an entitled rich guy? Perhaps a little- I won't entirely dismiss the possibility, but I'm not entirely convinced; it was undeniably critical, but he still obviously had enthusiasm for the product.
But regardless- and correct me if I've misunderstood your intent here- your response comes over as a variant of the "people exercising their rights in a free market == no right to criticism".
Musk is- of course- entitled to cancel this guy's order (i.e. end the business "relationship") for pretty much any reason not prohibited by law, but that doesn't excuse him from being criticised for doing so, especially if it appears petty to some.
In all honesty, Musk comes across as no better than, (and just as entitled as), the guy making the complaint. He knows he can afford to be dismissive of a few of his rich customers for somewhat petty reasons if they say something that stings him personally, even if it's somewhat justified. He's got a product with a lot of buzz surrounding it, for which there's likely to be more demand than availability in the foreseeable future.
The fact that Musk can get away with being dismissive and petty doesn't change the fact he's being dismissive and petty, though!
He doesn't strike me as "one of us but with more power" telling a spoilt rich customer where to go (to the cheering of the crowds enjoying their vicarious revenge.) Rather, he comes across as someone stung by (not entirely warranted) criticism, prickly enough to take it even more personally than it was and in a position where he didn't have to take that sort of crap from some uppity customer, then dismiss it with mild contempt not-really-masquerading as feigned disinterest.
(Disclaimer; if anyone is going to take this as a defence of entitled rich tossers, you don't know me very well. I'm just not buying that the customer was quite as bad as he's made out nor that Musk is any better.)
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If Justice, it would be direct normal justice.
Poetic justice is where the persons own actions come back to harm them in an unexpected way, that would not have been Just if it had happened intentionally, but was totally their own fault. It also generally requires the lack of direct justice.
In this case there is none of that. At all. There is cause, and direct effect.
Assholes of the world need to be prepared for when they encounter another asshole. If you said mean shit about him, or complained about his product, he might refuse to sell it to you. Your money just might not spend the same. If you want to be an asshole to somebody, buy you covet their product, make sure that you're an important customer and that the other guy is more greedy than asshole. If you're just a regular customer, with a larger platform to be an ass, and he's also an ass, he's going to take that battle and win it. On your chosen terms. No more name-brand cheesypoofs for you, sucker.
As a consumer my thinking is, if you don't like it, don't covet it. And if your time was important, you wouldn't be hanging out at a product launch event and complaining that you had to schmooze for 2 hours before the event started; you'd have had something better to do even if it had started on time. People who are into that stuff sleep outdoors in single file waiting to get in, if it is an interesting enough product. I'd understand being upset about a 2 hour delay if the event was "lunch, today." But a product launch?! Newsflash, that is not a serious event with a strict time schedule. Most of the people there are at work, and most of them are doing that event for their whole workday. So unless it ran late, nobody should care. I think this guy was in the same boat, but he likes to cheat and leave early because he typed out n words already. So he was mad his all-day assignment took the same amount of "all day" that it took for everybody else.
And no test drive? Dude, there is a waiting list for this product, and you were on the waiting list. Stop pretending you're special. You're not. Now you know. I'll bet all the "regular Joe" rich guys on the waiting list are really happy to see that; needy journalists don't need to be in front of them in line. Bad PR to the 99%, perhaps, but what percent of them are on the Tesla waiting list? Good PR to rich guys who are quietly letting their money sit in line for them.
So if Musk has any reason to believe based on this guy's behavior that this guy will be harassing his employees, he actually has a legal obligation to kick this guy to the curb.
Yeah... no. I don't honestly see anything so far to indicate it was coming anywhere near that, let alone approaching the point where it would become a legal issue.
Can't predict what the guy would be like in the future, but a bit of slightly (at most) and not entirely unwarranted entitled-rich-guy criticism doesn't suggest that so far.
Let's be honest; Musk responded that way because he could get away with it, but it doesn't mean he was doing it for legal (or noble) reasons, just that he was in a position where he could afford to do that in response to something that obviously got under his skin.
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The most ridiculous part is to be one of 1300+ people in line for a carnival ride that seats 5 and also thinking you should be one of the people that gets to ride... combined with needy complaints about sticking to a schedule. If he likes schedules, he should instantly see that nobody on a schedule should even approach the ride line or expect to get a test drive.
Why is he more deserving of a test drive? It seems to me that those who were willing to wait patiently for something they might not get to do are the ones who deserve doing it, if they get the lucky number or wait long enough.
Musk could have played along with this sort of ruse, or just flipped him off. So he flipped him off. Brinksmanship is a game the rich can play.
That was kind of my point, though. I just see another rich and powerful guy who took some not-entirely-unwarranted criticism very personally (#) and being in a rich and powerful enough position, took his petty revenge against another sort-of-but-nowhere-near-as-rich guy. I appreciate that it's sometimes nice to see the stereotypical "arrogant BMW driving tosser" get their comeuppance and that Musk's fan following might be inclined to see it that way, but I'm pretty sceptical.
There's nothing to indicate that he was doing it for the reasons you gave nor protecting his employees from the customer from hell as others suggested.
On the contrary, it sounds like he knew he had more than enough fawning customers to fill his order books such that he could get away with this- and I suspect the endless adulation may have made him less tolerant to any form of criticism. But that in itself doesn't make Alsop the entitled-customer-from-hell as some seem to think.
(#) If the criticism was taken as personal, it was as much because Musk presents himself as the "face"- as well as the owner- of the company. I don't see that the criticism was excessively personal beyond that.
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And yet, so did everyone else that was there, and they weren't doing the piss-and-moan. Why is this guy special and deserving of better treatment than everyone else?
Fuck him and his entitlement complex.
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Elon Musk basically said, "No soup for you!" which is his right.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nope. It boils down to supply and demand. My company sells megaprinters. If your company wants to buy one, you prove to us you can do what it takes to provide power, operators, finances, and safety. If you can't do any if this, or otherwise piss off the powers that be, you can go to our competitor, and we'll go to yours.
Right of refusal is a pretty big deal in ultra high end markets.
His Tesla post was clearly a personal attack on Elon. Run the numbers and it's obvious. His BMW post used about fifty I statements (as in "I noticed..., "I feel...", etc.). It used about only eight BMW statements (as in "BMW insisted...", "BMW tried...", etc.)
His Tesla post used about twenty five Elon statements (as in "Dear Elon, you should be ashamed...", "You should have...", etc.). But it used about only twenty two I statements ("I was excited...", "I was angry...", etc.)
In other words, his Tesla post singled Elon out three times more than BMW in the BMW post. At the same time, he used "I feel" and similar statements only half as much. As you can see, Stewart's post was clearly much more about Elon the person ("You screwed up") than about Stewart the customer ("I drove...", "I feel...").
Not really. It looks like a dick move on Elon's part. I like Elon, but it looks like Stewart was in the right here and Elon's looking kind of petty, making an overly harsh personal response instead of addressing the issue with the man like a decent human.
Actually Elon is looking good for doing this. A little bit of schadenfreude. The blogger looks like a complete idiot for:
1. Thinking he's the king because he put down a 100% cancellable deposit.
2. Thinking he's the king and writing to Elon Musk.
3. Thinking anyone agrees with his silly little blog.
Elon Musk (who I'm actually a bit critical of) did the right thing here and it is his prerogative as a business owner. I can sympathise here because when I ran a business, often it was smarter to throw out the whiny, complaining, arrogant customers because they would monopolise my time with their irrational complaints. You think this is no big deal, but in a small store with only one or two staff (including myself, the owner) one person taking up my time for no good reason means that customers, paying customers walk out the door for a very good reason (getting no service). So early on in my business career I learned that is was smarter to cut a toxic customer than to keep them. Sure they'd leave shouting "You've just lost a customer, you'll be out of business in a week" however in reality, I'd be making money by serving other customers and they'll be back in the very next week buying something else. Only 3 people received a permaban from my store, I'm a harsh businessman, but also a fair one.
Elon is in the same boat. The number of people who want a Tesla far exceeds the number of people who pay attention to this guys blog. The guy was hoping to take advantage of the Streisand effect, but instead the Streisand effect turned on him and just got more positive press for Musk and Tesla. I take it you're the kind of person who's never run a business and believes that "the customer is always right". I can tell you've never run a business because you think that most customers are:
a) right.
b) decent human beings
c) rational.
You couldn't be more wrong on all counts. Customers are, by and large, irrational, arrogant, insufferable beings who are almost never right and if you disagree with this statement then chances are that you are one of those customers.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.