Elon Musk personally cancels blogger's Tesla order after 'rude' post

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/03/elon-musk-blogger-tesla-motors-model-x

by mattmanser • 10 years ago

80 103 10 years ago

calibraxis• 10 years ago

For all the boring blather about Musk I keep bumping into, this is the first that says something good about the guy! Perfectly fine response to that disgustingly entitled venture capitalist.

vixen99• 10 years ago

Perfectly fine response to a rude customer.

tempodox3• 10 years ago

As the owner of a business you're entitled to do as you like, but this still makes him look like a pansy.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Sorry, not impressed with the idea the boss can just cancel your order because you are critical of his work. However since he has loads of fanboy cash and karma to burn he gets a pass.

Tesla was woefully late in delivery, they made no attempt to apologize as stated, and honestly I don't think they really care. Not a shining example of why the manufacturer direct model is better, if anything it shows people exactly why the dealership model will survive.

bradleyankrom• 10 years ago

Wouldn't the delivery issues have been exacerbated with a dealership middleman involved?

dsp12346• 10 years ago

Reading the twitter comments at https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/694802955170553861 is super depressing. The mob cheering for blood.

It's a bad review of an event that was poorly executed. Turning around and cancelling a preorder is just childish.

I honestly hadn't realized that he had such thin skin.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

My worry, seeing this, is in what he might feel entitled to do to a current owner who pisses him off.

forthefuture• 10 years ago

He can't do illegal things. It's perfectly within his rights to deny someone service beforehand.

fennecfoxen• 10 years ago

I'd like to hope that if I'd somehow ended up in a similar situation, I'd have expedited this guy's Tesla order out of spite, not cancelled it.

samastur• 10 years ago

That's the spirit. Award asshole customers at the expense of those who can wait. </sarcasm>

usaphp• 10 years ago

I completely disagree. That would give other people a reason to be rude and receive their order faster. What Musk did will now make people think before being rude I guess.

varjag• 10 years ago

It's petty revenge and tantrums that give our industry leaders a human dimension.

dhimes• 10 years ago

I almost spit out my coffee laughing at this!

taf22• 10 years ago

I would do exactly the samething. When pre-releasing an early product which is what tesla is doing with model X - it's looking for people they can trust to provide not just a great car but really the first set of product testers. It's the best way to build a new product. Find devoted customers and work with them to build a great product for them. Now if one of those customers decides to turn this into negative press, they need to be fired because they are not the customer that will make such a process work. Buying a model X at this stage is more like paying to get the car early and be a QA team member. The perk, is you get to play with the new and shiny first.

Keep in mind at this stage the guy got his 5k refund and just lost his place in line. A real first world crisis...

ghaff4• 10 years ago

Wow. Just wow. Now a $100K+ car is just a buggy beta product--because Elon Musk? And, if they didn't get that memo, fire them as customers?

dsp12346• 10 years ago

from the follow up post[0]:

"I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post, “Dear @ElonMusk: You should be ashamed of yourself”, was a personal attack on you. I also hear that you are not comfortable having me own a Tesla car and have cancelled my order for a Tesla Model X."

The thing that jumps out at me is "you are not comfortable having me own a Tesla". There certainly is no concrete indication on whether that's a lifetime ban or what since it's a paraphrase of a conversation we didn't get to hear.

"Find devoted customers and work with them to build a great product for them."

It's clear from his posts that he was a devoted customer (his recent post even praises Telsa the company). That doesn't make the disappointment in the how the event was run any less. They invited those devoted customers to an event, and then ran it poorly. Someone calling Tesla out on that, and pointing out that Tesla is treating those devoted customers in a negative way could be handled in a less heavy handed fashion.

[0] https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb

ghaff4• 10 years ago

Tesla seems to have a pretty well-established track record in which criticism is dealt with by going full-on attack mode. One can argue about how fair or unfair the criticism was in individual cases--running out of juice, ruining batteries by letting them de-charge, etc--and those cases have been debated at great length with nothing to be gained by rehashing them. Nonetheless, for better or worse, more sane PR would typically acknowledge any valid criticisms/lack of education/etc. and move on. Tesla's mode is to essentially universally go on the offensive.

[EDIT: To just add, as someone who is not "in" PR but deals with PR in various ways regularly, sometimes an aggressive response is indeed called for. But it shouldn't be the default response.]

rplnt• 10 years ago

I honestly hadn't realized that he had such thin skin.

Just few weeks back there was this Blue Origin pissing contest about nothing.

gvb2• 10 years ago

The skin has always been thin. This is the same company that had a three-year (losing) libel battle with Top Gear for a bad review.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/05/top-gear-tesla-...

aedron• 10 years ago

Don't forget the whole debacle with Tesla's original founder Martin Eberhart. After he was fired, the first edition Tesla he was entitled to was given to a C level executive instead. Then the car they gave him instead was somehow badly damaged during delivery. See a pattern?

beeboop3• 10 years ago

"Bad review" is misleading. They sued because they outright lied in the review (saying the battery died when it did not). Not really any different from NBC rigging the Chevrolet truck explosion back in the 90s, in which NBC lost tons of credibility and was sued by GM for libel (and settled for $1mm). Both were journalistic bullshit, but everyone loves Jeremy too much to call him on it.

kozukumi• 10 years ago

A rather over the top response IMHO. Not sure why Musk got so worked up about it. Negative reviews happen, just deal with it.

tempodox3• 10 years ago

In case anybody needed a practical demonstration that power corrupts, here you are.

setra• 10 years ago

It a modern fallacy to say that power corrupts. Asymmetrical power, and responsibility corrupts.

gjm11• 10 years ago

The saying goes back to 1887, so (whether or not it's a fallacy) it's not all that modern.

[EDITED to add:] It occurs to me that the original saying runs as follows: "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- which is amusing, at least if you're as easily amused as I am, because your objection is precisely that it's only relative power that corrupts :-).

hyperbovine• 10 years ago

What's corrupt about choosing not to sell somebody something of yours? dickish perhaps, but not corrupt.

edem• 10 years ago

I'm not sure how should I interpret this. I guess that we are missing some context to put this in perspective. Maybe something else happened which is not in the tweet/article what made Musk cancel the order. If there is no missing context then I'm somewhat disappointed by Musk's response. I've read the actual criticism written by the other guy and I wouldn't be offended in Musk's place. There was nothing inherently evil/discrediting/etc in that post.

ballooney• 10 years ago

Elon Musk could start an energy company which renders down baby seals and burns the blubber and HN would say its usual thing like 'Actually this is a really smart move by Elon' (everyone here seems to be on first-name terms with him). This place would be greatly improved by some perspective.

He's built a very cool rocket company, but on HN people take the CTO title at face value and assume he's a genius rocket scientist. He's built a cool car company, and is right to focus on battery technology and solar being better than biofuels etc etc. I admire him a lot, but i think a lot of people project their ideals onto him as a sort of symbol of the primacy of the Valley Way, which they're staking their twenties and thirties on. Whilst taxonomy doesn't really achieve much, I sort of think of him as more Henry Ford than some sort of Tony Stark/Einstein hybrid that is often seen here.

Like I said, there's a lot to admire, but he's just a guy still. Petty, tantrums, lots of SpaceXers i know (current and former) talk about how really you have to go to Gwynne Shotwell for some sober leadership and patience when he jumps the shark a bit, and she can speak truth unto power and figure out a way forward. She never gets mentioned from from what one hears in this industry (I'm in it to) she deserves a lot of credit.

dsp12346• 10 years ago

'Actually this is a really smart move by Elon' (everyone here seems to be on first-name terms with him)

Except the majority of the comments so far imply that's it's actually not a good move. Also, no one in the thread has yet mentioned him by first name (there are only 3 occurrences of 'Elon' in this thread with 2 being by full name, and then your hypothetical HN commenter being the only that uses it alone)

lumisota• 10 years ago

let's not let the facts get in the way of a good rant

DougN7• 10 years ago

I don't think the poster is referring to only this post.

romanovcode• 10 years ago

You could say exactly the same thing about pg

forgottenpass• 10 years ago

...and that wouldn't be wrong, either.

pg's cult of personality is unbearable at times. If someone reads Hackers and Painters and doesn't see that they're getting hustled, they're a fool. Or they see it and are just sycophants, which is even worse in my book.

smcl• 10 years ago

The familiar/first name thing bothers me more when people refer to "Zuck", like they're old pals who go way back.

tamana6• 10 years ago

Zuck is a handy abbreviation

youngtaff• 10 years ago

Musk has done a lot but the other thing to remember is how much his current businesses actually depend on billion in taxypayer subsidy - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

mcv• 10 years ago

That's just because these are technologies that the US government wants to stimulate. Musk is doing an excellent job of that. You'd better be worried about the subsidies received by harmful industries.

castratikron2• 10 years ago

Musk's companies are doing the job of the government anyways (developing a space program and technologies that fight global heating). It makes sense that they get government money.

I would bet that a dollar of tax money goes farther at SpaceX than it does at NASA, though.

tryitnow• 10 years ago

Yes to this. Musk is brilliant, but more in the Henry Ford sort of way than the Einstein/Tesla sort of way.

And that's not to diminish him. To the contrary, we need more visionary industrialists than scientists/engineers. Visionary industrialists can provide jobs and funds to brilliant scientists/engineers.

tamana6• 10 years ago

It's just bizarre that people think he actually invented the SpaceX rocket design while on an airplane flight, and he designed the Tesla engine, and no one else could figure out a workable design.

melted2• 10 years ago

Dude has started THREE iconic companies, two of which are in hard-ass, "real engineering" fields that were previously believed to be impenetrable. This is most certainly not a fluke. Henry Ford is nothing to be ashamed of, if you can pull it off.

What have you done with your life?

tn134• 10 years ago

Musk is no Henry Ford. Henry ford success is that he built an extremely profitable company that changed the way people travel. I am sure PR investments had less to do with it.

Musk is a guy who spends money to promote himself everywhere. Tesla is a rich people's car subsidized by poor people's tax money and the company is not making a profit and is unlikely to make a profit in future either. Even if it does there is nothing groundbreaking about it that Toyota or Ford can not replicate without much efforts.

SpaceX is good company but hey it isn't profitable and has not achieved anything major that NASA or Blue Origin could not have given the investments.

An hyperloop is going to be a regrettable experience for everyone involved.

All three of his companies are piggybacking on government money and have not made our lives better than the alternative.

logicallee• 10 years ago

All I got from the reference blog post is "I'm rich and important. I'm not paying for safety here, I'm paying to be rich and important![1] Also, you gave us food, but not billionaire food. I want your attention and a reference to me."

[1] the referenced blog post ACTUALLY says that! direct quote : "you shuffle out on stage and start with a slide show — an amateur slide show at that — all about how safe the Model X is.\p Yup, you lead with safety, like that’s why we’re all spending $130,000 or more on this car"

bossx• 10 years ago

TSLA is down 14% today, coincidence?

martinko• 10 years ago

Yes.

aaron695• 10 years ago

Musk is cool and doing some amazing shit for the world, so I'm happy for an occasional pass.

Dear @ElonMusk: Thank you for reaching out to me. I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post...

Did he personally ring and say fuck off to a potential customer/medium blogger? Cause that's a CEO I'd support.

Willing to get dirty with customers... I'll give that a shitload more cred than most CEO's who just hand it over to hitmen or cowardly marketing.

pwdis_password• 10 years ago

Rich guy complains about richer guy. Where's the news?

anjc• 10 years ago

Musk's seemingly consistently-bad attitude will only be 'cool' for so long. I've seen many complaints from disillusioned employees, several reports of tantrums, and several reports from customers who've been fucked over.

If I was an investor, I'd very much like to know what his suppliers think of him and how much seller's power they have in that supply chain. As the company grows he may start to become a liability.

pfortuny• 10 years ago

If Musk gets irritated by that, then he does have a problem... I mean. A problem.

argonaut3• 10 years ago

This was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist publicly complaining about Tesla, not a random blogger. So there is almost certainly a different social dynamic at play that we are missing.

Silicon Valley is a relatively small world; venture capital is even smaller and more incestuous. While most people here have not heard of Stewart Alsop, Elon Musk almost certainly knew of him, even if they've never met. Elon Musk may have been insulted because venture capitalists in SV are generally not expected to so openly criticize other SV companies (especially those funded by rivals?), and when they do criticize companies, they certainly don't insult founders. You can't deny that "you should be ashamed of yourself" is insulting to Elon.

onli3• 10 years ago

Course you can deny that. It is nowhere near an insult to call someone out on the behavior described in the article, and to tell someone he ought to feel ashamed is also not an insult.

argonaut3• 10 years ago

You are missing the human aspect. An insult can be true but still insulting. If a random person calls me on the phone and tells me that I was incredibly lazy this weekend and I'm just a lazy, lazy person on the weekends, that would be true, but it would also be insulting.

xbmcuser• 10 years ago

  You should be ashamed of yourself is an insult  specially if you are writing a public letter to Elon Musk.
  It was meant to be insulting had he written just a normal blog post on a badly managed Tesla event he would not have gotten such a response. If you are going to insult him publicly Elon can say fuck off in public or he can show you how to fuck off. He chose the more picking reply.
   This open letter bullshit is annoying write a blog post or article on something but don't post open letters if you don't want a reaction good or bad.

ddingus• 10 years ago

This guy was looking for drama, and found it.

Musk, is running balls out to actualize his vision for the future. He has also shown himself to be rational, able to handle failure with candor and trust, and emotional about what he's doing.

That last bit is important. How else does one find the motivation to work that hard?

Had that guy actually not tried to invoke drama, I suspect Musk would have responded differently.

But he did.

Frankly, I believe Musk will find that sort of thing as offensive as it is irrelevant. Rewarding the guy means validating drama, not enabling a meaningful conversation, which Musk has demonstrated he will have eagerly.

If the potential for drama goes away, Musk will sell him a Tesla too.

Rude isn't the right word here. Musk understands rude, and sometimes is rude as are the alphas on his teams. (Mostly all alphas anyway)

No, rude isn't the issue. It's drama and how inconsiderate that use of precious time is. Musk is very keenly aware of time, and values it highly enough to be very seriously annoyed at such an egregious attempt to waste it.

Secondly, all that waste does is raise the profile of someone not yet ready for it.

Musk will take on a lot, and he's hard core too. Just don't attempt to burn his time to ride on his coattails, and it's likely all good.

And I am not saying the intent here was nefarious or anything. What we are seeing is a clash in values and priorities. Sometimes, we feel like we know people, when we really don't.

That is what happened here.

rubberstamp2• 10 years ago

I thought Mr.Musk had more integrity. Am not his fan anymore.

Mr.Alsop was just complaining about the way the launch event was organised. Even if just one customer showed up for the event its just bad on Tesla's part to keep them waiting that long without even owing an apology for that long. Half hour delay is within normal limits for a big event. On top of that cancelling a pre order was very very childish. Look who's treating their customers badly.

Now people will think again before paying him for a trip to mars. Better not annoy him or ...

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

What does integrity have to being a customer is already right yes man? Sometimes the customer is wrong. And sometimes you need to fire a customer. He did it in a fine way. Its not like Musk posted to twitter. He just quietly cancelled the order. I would have done the same.

rubberstamp2• 10 years ago

This is someone who pre ordered paying $5000, i guess 2 years back, so that he could get a car ASAP. Canceling a pre order because a customer complained he was kept waiting at a poorly organized launch event? If he was so offended by it he should have organized better launch event. Inviting someone to an event and then giving a poor experience was bad. Blogging about poor experience resulting in his pre order is only tainting reputation of Mr.Musk. No response to the blog would've been a much better response.

tehwebguy• 10 years ago

Sounds like a PayPal customer experience

smpetrey• 10 years ago

Personally thought he had more integrity than that.

But then again, no one ever said that great men are good men.

kamaal• 10 years ago

From the tweet..

>Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention

Just saying. Rude customers are nothing new. As somebody who worked as a tech support guy for a call center, for a major US computer company, if anything a rude customer was treated as a opportunity. I would receive any where between 10-12 extremely rude and inconsiderate calls. Many would be very intimidating. And a lot of times, I have managed to get them to understand our side of the story, followed up on their issues, taught them how to use the internet, worked with their ISP's to fix their issues(sometimes people think, no internet is the computer's problem, not ISP's) and some times even given tuitions to customers on how to use their computers. None of that needed to be done, but doing it built very strong relationships.

I can't even remember how many times our customer interaction coach would talk to us telling delighting a rude/irate/inconsiderate customer many a times mattered more than the very quality of the product. Because strong relationships bring people back, they help in word-of-mouth of marketing and helps build brand value.

You do not look at your customers as your enemy. No matter who you are. Especially CEO's need to realize this more.

Would you like to business with a company whose CEO/Employee(s) fights with its customers? It doesn't take much common sense to understand this. If this is the experience pre-sales, how do you expect to be treated after you've purchased the product.

tamana6• 10 years ago

Aslop isn't a rude customer. He is a billionaire dbag playing social signaling games with Musk. This isn't really a vendor-customer dispute.

brudgers• 10 years ago

On the scale of possible obnoxious behavior, at least Tesla didn't ship the car and then shut it down over the air later. But along those same lines, this is precedent setting. Complaints in an enthusiast forum or a poor review in Road and Driver Weekly could result in similar bans.

It also probably supports the case in favor of the state level auto dealership laws Tesla finds so troublesome. That's one reason why negative comments about BMW don't prevent someone from buying one.

kunai• 10 years ago

Alsop is an asshat. But Musk decided to stoop to his level and prove him right. This doesn't really bode well for his reputation, and might call into question his bold assertions (especially for SpaceX) and how much water they might hold if he can't even handle someone being petty towards his launch event.

The man's obviously brilliant. But there are a lot of other brilliant men and women who don't get the credo and also don't get their flaws overlooked because of celebrity. Hopefully this is a sobering reminder that it's good not to take anyone's personality at face value until you get to know them well.

tn134• 10 years ago

Elon Musk is number one reason why I have never purchase Tesla shares. I think he is too childish and tries to sell snake oils to other people. This sort of incident confirms it.

He probably spends millions of dollars to keep himself in news with "Musk does this cool thing" type stories where in reality his Tesla or Space-X hasn't made any serious progress disproportionate to the money people have put into it.

This move is petty, brings bad PR to Musk and his company and gives more exposure to this one customer who did not like the company. This shows that Musk's PR team (and he) is incompetent to the extent that they have let emotions and ego take precedence over smart business decision.

tn134• 10 years ago

Is this a warning to other honest reviewers and media houses that Elon Musk will go after their throat and hurt them in all possible ways if they don't strip and do a cheerleader dance for him?

Elon Musk personally cancels blogger's Tesla order after 'rude' post

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