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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.
Poetic justice.
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.
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.
No coup for you.
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.
Why am I not surprised that he's also a BMW driver/customer? He might as well get "stuck up, rich douchebag" tattooed on his forehead.
I watched the video of it and Musk may well have held it in a monkey enclosure. I've never seen an audience react like that, hooting and howling over every word he said. The car is nice I guess but the audience reaction was ridiculous.
Gee, not one, but two companies with waiting lists to buy their luxury cars declined to go out of their way to pamper your spoiled ass?
Notice a pattern here, Stewart?
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.
Companies generally reserve the right to refuse to serve customers who are causing a disturbance.
This individual caused a disturbance prior to receiving his product. Refund his deposit and have him go elsewhere.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If you think about it, preordering a product is a financial transaction. You're exchanging money (the $5000 deposit) for a place in line. While the amount the deposit costs doesn't usually change over time, the earlier you preorder, the bigger the risk you are taking because the promised product may never arrive. So in return for this transaction, you get an earlier place in line. Tesla gains money and a large number of preorders has a "signaling" effect to other buyers, increasing interest in the product.
In actual monetary value, Stewart's preorder slot is now worth more than $5000. If he could auction the slot off, people would be willing to pay a premium so they can have their Model X sooner.
Anyways, by canceling the order, Tesla has deprived Stewart of his property, and he might be forced to turn to the courts to be made whole. I'm not a lawyer, I know the property loss is true in real economic terms but no doubt the actual interpretation of the law is a different story.
One of the things about harassment is that you as an employer are liable for 3rd parties harassing your employees because you have a duty towards your employees.
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.
I blog, therefore I demand. When I don't get, I blog even more.
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.
Corporations are not people and should not ever be offended
Corporations are staffed by people who routinely are (and often should be) offended by rude and self important customers. There is no such thing as being rude to a corporation because corporations as you rightly point out are not people and you can only be rude to people. If you interact with a corporation you are interacting with the people who work there and it is quite possible to offend those people with your behavior. If you think it is acceptable to be rude to someone merely because they are a representative of that company then you are a jerk.
Being rude to a company should not affect the way the company does business or whom it does business with.
Clearly you have never had a business relationship. Most people are fine and when they have issues they can be reasoned with. Some small percentage customers cannot be pleased no matter what you do. Sometimes the right thing to do is to (figuratively) fire the customer. I've had customers of my company that were excessively difficult, demanding, expensive and sometimes extremely rude. I once fired a customer for making lewd remarks to one of my female employees. One of the dumbest things ever said in the business world is that "the customer is always right". Believing that is a great way to go out of business.
And in this case, negative feedback is perhaps providing an important feedback to the customer: If you're being difficult and attention-seeking, perhaps it won't work out how you had planned.
Of course since the response seems to be more attention-seeking, I suppose the lesson was NOT learned.
Alsop's "open letter" is from Sep 30, 2015. The order cancellation happened now?
He sounds like the typical asshole customer that loves to invoke the threat of lawyers on the smallest of whims every time something does not go their way.
People like that and the lawyers that take their money deserve exactly what's coming to them. Don't like the service that you're getting: do it your own damn self.
If your outlook and ability to run a company is so much better build your own damn car, fix your own electronics, do your own work.
No amount of money is worth a shitty customer.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
It'd be interesting to know how many people here who are flaming Tesla actually know Stewart Alsop from his heyday in the '90s. Likely not many. The guy was used to throwing his (considerable) weight around the tech industry for a long time, expecting his every whim and complaint to be kowtowed to by the industry because he controlled a powerful industry trade rag. Now, as a print media has-been, he is frustrated because he can't snap is fingers and have a company leap into action. So, he pitches a petulant rant online and expects Elon (who was surely on the short end of Alsop's rants in his PayPal days) to leap up and do his bidding. Screw that! I applaud Musk heartily for shutting down the troll. As a happy Tesla owner, I sure wouldn't want to see an unending stream of attitude spewing forth into the Tesla forms from this guy.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
Corporations are not people and should not ever be offended. Being rude to a company should not affect the way the company does business or whom it does business with. It is just Musk being a douche, because he's becoming arrogant.
When you are rude to a company, you are rude to the employees. Good managers and owners cut off shitty customers from the start to avoid that kind of shit from happening (which can have terrible consequences down the road - I have witnessed this. The customer is not always right.).
I am not saying this is exactly what happened in the story. I'm simply giving you a counter-argument to the above statement of yours.
Microsoft even tries to punish non-customers. Back in `99 they sent me a free pre-release copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server blahblah, trying to get me to sell it to my clients. (I was a linux/unix database consultant at the time)
Awesomest coffee coaster I ever had, it lasted years. Those cheap AOL cds start flaking after just a couple years. Windows Server provided a stable platform for my coffee for almost a decade, with no downtime.
The one time I'm really glad I didn't read the manual, I just dove in and implemented the solution in the most obvious way. Disaster averted!
You can do a high quality DIY conversion with similar range for under 15K, using all new parts. No, they don't have $30k in batteries. But yes, the batteries cost more than a brand new Kia.
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...").