Buying a car is a matter of trust. This also applies when everything is arranged online.
Buying a car at Tesla looks different than at other car dealerships, for better or for worse. In the Tesla premises you meet supervisors, not sellers. You arrange the order yourself online. The configuration is simple. Color? Drivetrain? Black or white seats? 19-inch rims? Trailer hitch? Winter tires? No symbolic discounts, no extras and no sales commission. The price is displayed on the screen.
No trade-in cars, please!
Tesla does not accept trade-in cars. Instead, one can post pictures of their vehicle for professional buyers. The solution lacks the option to provide additional information, such as for example that the car has just been in for a major service, or has new winter tyres. Tesla promises that you will receive an offer within 24 hours. We didn't get any offers for our 4-year-old trade-in car. Fortunately, we were able to sell it quickly on Finn.no at the assumed buyer's price. If the new car arrives before the old one has been sold, many may have problems with providing equity. Buyers know how to exploit this.
Don't trust Tesla's trade-in solution. Sell the car yourself!
Funding and registration worked well
Both parts are carried out on the providers' own websites. We used DnB, and they delivered offers quickly. Vegvesen.no has become a super solution for arranging everything to do with the authorities. Both services are well suited for online shopping. Tesla's ordering system signed off by ticking off both financing and registration as "completed" on the list of things that must be done in the ordering process. Good!
The list that just disappeared
Our last unchecked item on the list was trade-in car. Since we sold the trade-in car ourselves, we ticked "no trade-in car". Then the point list disappeared from the screen! We could no longer see what had been done. The point list was replaced by a general information document. The same information was sent in repeated messages on the mobile with the message that everything had to be carried out as soon as possible. Had we to do old again? We felt thrown into no man's land.
Had Tesla lost our data? Had we pressed the wrong key? Had Tesla's website been hacked?
Amateur landing
In 2020, systems – such as Tesla's booking system – can automatically check payments, find out if a vehicle is registered and retrieve insurance information. The Norwegian service is adapted for integration with external systems. Customers should not need to be reminded about things that have already been done. Tesla has obviously chosen a shortcut to avoid developing software that integrates with Norwegian players. I have read that for a long time Ryanair offered a substandard booking system to save money. I suspect Tesla is following the same strategy.
You can cancel during the entire process
Should you get cold feet towards the end of your Tesla order, you can cancel the whole thing. The only thing you lose is the 1000 kroner you were charged for when ordering. You can actually withdraw within 10 days after the car has been collected. Legally speaking, the Tesla sale may be considered an online purchase - and must comply with the legislation for this, with a cooling-off period and right of return.
Conclusion
Currently, car buying online is not very widespread. This limits the possibilities for comparing services between different actors. We have therefore compared Tesla's "online shop" against normal person-based car sales. In the future, all cars will be sold online, but this requires reorganization and the development of new procedures and services. New brands such as Tesla and Polestar have the advantage that they started with "blank sheets". I suspect that Tesla chose online sales only to save costs, not to give customers a better experience. System-based services must, like personal service, create trust through the purchase process. Tesla's system for ordering and buying a car starts promisingly, but fails seriously in the final phase. At no point in the process should the customers feel that the sales company has lost their data. For us, the solution was to contact a supervisor at Tesla. The personal service worked excellently at Tesla throughout.
Vegvesen.no and DnB have very good online solutions. They open up opportunities for more actors to sell cars online. Like, for example, Polestar. Hope their solution is better than Tesla's.
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