The Tesla Purchase Experience: Week 6 Plus One Day

Sunday

The last time I spoke with the delivery advisor, she mentioned that her workweek was Sunday to Thursday, so on Sunday I was waiting for the written confirmation that my trade-in quote was actually good for 1,000 miles or 4 weeks, not the 500 miles or 2 weeks the paperwork said. Sunday night came and I hadn't heard anything, so I sent her an email asking for confirmation.

Checking the weather forecast, it looks like there is a slight chance of rain next Sunday when I am due to pick up the car. I hope it's not raining because I'd like to give the car a good once over. But, it's a week away and weather forecasts usually aren't all that accurate that far out anyway. And for all I know, the delivery place might be indoors or have covered parking. I should probably check it out on Google Maps...

Thinking of the weather also got me thinking about floor mats. It rains so much here, I definitely want some all weather floor mats so I don't ruin the standard mats. (I did the same thing with my Prius.) So I ordered these OEM floor mats. They are made by WeatherTech, the same people who made the ones I bought for my Prius. It looks like they are $35 cheaper if you buy them from WeatherTech, but they charge $33 shipping whereas Tesla doesn't charge shipping at all, so it works out to about the same. Plus, if you order directly from Tesla, you get the Tesla logo on them, which you don't get ordering from WeatherTech.

Monday

I received written confirmation of the longer time frame for the trade-in quote. The advisor asked me one last time if I wanted her to go ahead and submit the final paperwork. She had been holding off submitting in case I needed to resubmit with a different mileage. I told her to go ahead.

Shortly thereafter, I received my (second) delivery appointment confirmation. Hopefully, this one will not be postponed! The email said to check my Tesla account for payment information and instructions.

I logged in to my Telsa account and had a bit of a shock. Instead of the "6/6 Tasks Complete" image (like above) that I had seen the last several times I logged in, I saw this one:

I seem to have lost 2 tasks along the way. One of the steps now gone was the trade-in step. I can't remember what the other one was. But I also now had a payment section:

Goodbye, money!

When I spoke with the delivery advisor, she said I could submit the payment details at any time. Of course, I want to hold on to my money as long as possible, so I asked her if I could wait until Friday night, even though ACH payments are not processed on weekends. She said yes, that even if the funds have not actually transferred, they can see the payment is in process. So I'll probably submit the transfer Friday.

There is one other issue I just thought of: In Washington, as I was told by a Tesla employee back when I placed my order, the trade-in value of my old car can be offset against the cost of my new car when it comes to calculating sales tax. (I verified that here.) This should result in about a $505 tax savings for me. As you can see in the image above, it's not clear that happened. I emailed my delivery advisor to confirm this was calculated correctly. I asked for a line-by-line accounting of the totals.

Tuesday

I received an email from my delivery advisor regarding my tax question. She said she passed the request on to the contract team for more information.

Wednesday

No response yet, so I sent another email.

Thursday

My all-weather floor mats arrived today. Still no response regarding taxes. Stopped off at the gas station for what I hope will be the last time ever today!

Friday

Had some heavy rain early this morning, but it's stopped now. That's the first heavy rain in a couple months. Forecast for Sunday is 67% chance of rain, with 64% chance in the 10 AM hour and 61% in the 11 AM hour. My pickup appointment is at 11 AM.

No response on taxes. At this point, I need to initiate my payment, so there's nothing I can do about this. Truthfully, I don't have any leverage to force them to address the issue. It's not like I'm going to cancel my order and lose my $2,500 deposit over a $505 tax discrepancy. Likewise, I'm not going to delay taking possession of the car because there's a good chance a new trade-in value calculation will drop the value of my car by more than $505.

The Sales Tax Issue

I decided to take another look at the documents available to me in my Tesla account and I found the purchase agreement, which contained a breakdown of the purchase costs, including taxes.

Try as I might, I can't figure out how they arrived at that tax figure. It seems to be more than what I should have been charged, but less than I could have been charged, so I'm going to go with it.

The sales tax rate in Bellevue, where I am picking up the car is 10%:

If they charged me tax on the whole purchase price, I should have been charged $14,870. If they charged me tax on the purchase price less my trade-in (which is what they should have done), I should have been charged ($148,700 - $5,050) * 10% = $14,365. If they messed up and charged me the Seattle sales tax rate (where their other pick up location is located), which is 10.1%, I should have been charged either $15,018.70 or $14,508.65.

The actual tax rate I was charged is $14,795.96 / $148,700 = 9.95%. Go figure. So the difference between what I think I should have been charged and what I was charged is $14,795.96 - $14,365 = $430, in their favor. But they charged me $74.04 less than the flat out 10% tax rate I think they might have charged. It's not worth raising a stink about, in my opinion, so I went ahead and made the payment.

If only that were true, Tesla. If only that were true...

On the positive side of things, I timed this purchase just right for my existing license. The current license for my Prius is due to be renewed exactly one week after I get the Tesla, so that saved me $150 or so in licensing fees.

Saturday

Less than 24 hours to go!

I took a look at the pick up location on Google maps. It's a Tesla showroom as well. Still a 61% chance of rain at 11 AM tomorrow.

Spent some time getting my paperwork together (I need to bring my title, registration, and proof of insurance). Also cleaned out my old car. Then I spent about 2 hours watching You Tube videos from the Teslavangelist.

Too bad my weekly posts run Sunday to Saturday. You'll have to wait for next week for the big delivery!







Just kidding!! I wouldn't do that!

Sunday

The day is finally here! It was overcast, but not actually raining - yet. The clouds were definitely thinking about it though.

With my wife and daughter, I drove out to the Tesla service center in Bellevue. It was a pretty big building with a parking lot on two sides filled with Teslas. The building functions as a showroom, delivery center, and service center. We were greeted by an associate holding the door open for us and, when we entered, it looked like we were the only ones there. We were about 15 minutes early for our appointment, so the associate had us wait in a little lounge area, which had a big screen TV displaying a football game, a Koering coffee machine with a selection of flavors, and two big jars of Life Savers candy. The overall color theme of the place was white and the whole building had an Apple Store vibe to it.

After about 10 minutes, an older couple came in and started waiting as well. They were also there to pick up their Tesla. After another few minutes, a different person came in an introduced himself. He said they were just finishing up detailing my car and, while they were doing that, we could finish the paperwork.

He first asked for the keys to my trade in and went out to check it out and get the mileage. When he came back, he had a couple forms my wife and I needed to autograph. We had to sign over the title to our trade in, then a couple of papers giving Tesla power of attorney to file paperwork for the car on our behalf, then some ownership transfer papers.

The next group of papers were for the new car. One was for the loan, another was for the registration and license. The last piece of paper we were given was a cheesy little award that looks like it was made from a Microsoft Word award template and printed on regular paper, not even card stock. I mean, it didn't even have a facsimile of Elon Musk's signature, just had a tiny "Tesla SoDo" down where a signature might be. I'll forever be wondering what that means.

And that was it! It was really painless and we did it all right there at a little table in the lounge area in about 5 minutes. There were maybe 15 pages in all to sign. Based on what I had read online, I expected the process to be entirely electronic, but maybe the state of Washington doesn't allow electronic contracts yet.

We had to wait about 5 more minutes for the detail work to be done, during which time a family of four came in to pick up their car as well. Finally, a woman came and escorted us back to our car.

The Reveal

There were two cars parked inside the building in the back part of the showroom. This was obviously where they delivered the cars to their new owners and went over the brief demonstration of how to use some of the features. The woman had my wife and I sit in the car while she walked us through the basic controls.

I had read the manual many times and had watched lots of videos, so there wasn't really anything she told me that I didn't already know. One thing I did find out was that the Auto Pilot and Auto Steer functionality isn't enabled until the car has been driven at least 50 miles. This, she told me, was to allow all the sensors to calibrate themselves.

She told us how the key fobs operate (they look like little Teslas) and went over the charging adapters that come with the car. She also explained how to plug the charging cable into the car and how it locks and unlocks to the charge port. I then checked out the car to make sure everything looked fine, which it did. Finally, we got in and drove off into the sunset! Err, sunrise.. Well, high noon, partly cloudy sun, actually.

Our first stop was just 5 miles down the road to get some lunch. On the way, my daughter told me to "punch it," which I gleefully did. Holy crap! Everyone screamed at the surge of power. And that wasn't even in ludicrous mode!

We made it safely to the restaurant, where I parked and took some pictures.

We hit a little bit of rain on the way home, but for the most part, the sun shone on my new car all day!

First Thoughts

Wow. The car really is amazing! It takes some getting used to because when you take your foot off the accelerator, the car really slows down with the regenerative breaking. The first dozen or so miles, you can easily get nauseous because you have to learn how to moderate your foot pressure. You don't take your foot of the gas and coast before stepping on the brake like a gas car. In fact, you very rarely have to step on the brake at all!

One thing that really feels weird is there is no ignition or even an on / off switch. Being a Prius owner, I was used to no ignition key, but I still had to push a button to turn the car on and off. Not the Tesla. If you've got the fob in your pocket, you just get the in car, sit down, and put it in drive. When you arrive at your destination, you put it in park and just get out and walk away. It will shut itself off and lock all on its own. If I ever have to drive a regular car again, I know I'm going to just walk away and leave it unlocked and running....

When we got home, I spent the next couple hours playing with all the various settings in the car and doing things like connecting my phone, programming my garage door opener, connecting the car to my WiFi network, installing the all-weather floor mats, etc. The car notified my that there was a pending software update.

During software updates, you can't drive the car or do anything with it. I had the option of scheduling it to install at night (it estimated 1 hour and 40 minutes to install), but we were getting ready for dinner, so I told the car to go ahead and install it now. I was worried that if I left it to install overnight, I might wake up in the morning to find the update failed and the car unable to be driven. (Can you tell I'm a Windows user?) Later in the night, I got a notification on my phone from the Tesla app saying the update was successful.

This post is already running long, so I'll end it here. Next time, I'll talk about my first week of driving.

The Tesla Purchase Experience: Week 5

Wednesday

Monday was the Labor Day holiday. Not much going on so far this week. Truthfully, I expected some sort of information, as I consider the "very beginning of September" to be the first week of September. But maybe that's just me.

My daughter started high school today. I was hoping I could drop her off in the Tesla, but I guess that will have to wait now. She was dropped off with my Prius. All her friends say Prius drivers are horrible and she has made it quite clear that when she starts driving, she does not want a Prius for a car. She may change her mind once she has to start paying for gas.

Delivery Scheduled!

Well, that was serendipitous! Forty-five minutes after writing that first paragraph, I got a call from Tesla to set up my delivery appointment. I get my car Sunday at 12:30 PM!

Things Start Moving Really Fast

The Delivery Scheduler who called confirmed my car color and wheel type (which seem to be random things to confirm out of all the options on the car, but OK) then said my Delivery Advisor will be contacting me to go through the loan and trade-in paperwork. Minutes later, I got an email confirming my delivery appointment.

I logged in to my Tesla account and filled out the online loan application. It's a bit confusing when a married couple is applying for the loan. It asks each person what their mortgage payment is. Should I split the amount between me and my wife? Enter the full amount for each of us? The full amount for one and zero for the other? I don't know. I entered the full amount for both, figuring if they did an automated check with a credit bureau that would be the most likely match.

The application also lists the price of the car and asks what percentage I will be putting down. This defaults to 10%. The price does not include tax, license and delivery, so you'll need to keep that in mind when figuring out how much you want to put down. Honestly, it would be easier if they let you enter a dollar amount for a down payment.

The first time filling out the application, I hit Submit and got a spinning wheel that said "Processing" for 10 minutes. A Google search indicated this is a common occurrence for many Tesla buyers. I guessed it may or may not have been related to my ad blocker, so I disabled that and filled the application out again. This time it submitted successfully and told me I should have a response in 24 hours.

I also entered my trade-in details. Just as I finished that, my Delivery Advisor called me. She confirmed my loan application was received and it had a status of "Manual review," which is normal. They are in the process of matching me up with a lender. She said not to worry about the mortgage amount thing. If there is a question, the mortgage specialist will give me a call.

For the trade-in, she said I needed to complete a self-inspection. I told her I was good looking but was carrying a few extra pounds. J/K! The self-inspection is for my trade-in and involves taking several pictures of the car. She suggested it be done during daylight hours. There's a couple of hours of daylight left, so I'm off to the car wash to make the car all shiny.

While at the car wash, I get an email from Tesla financing. Our loan has been approved! (It's been a total of maybe 1.5 hours since I submitted the application.) The email includes the bank who is providing the loan (Wells Fargo), the interest rate (1.74%, as quoted the day I placed the order), my estimated monthly payment, and the amount I need to bring when I pick up the car.

The amount we have to pay at signing is a bit higher than I expected. Turns out, taxes and fees are not included in the loan amount. That's not what I remember being told when I put my deposit down, but it seems like that's how it's been with other car loans I have gotten. Thinking back on the application process, that kinda makes sense too. However, it would be nice if they gave you an estimated tax amount during the loan application process so you can figure that in when determining your down payment percentage. Luckily, I have some funds in reserve that can cover it. This also means my monthly loan payment will be lower than I planned. And the amount quoted does not yet take into account my trade-in.

Timing-wise, it's going to be tight. I have to sell some stock to get the additional funds, The market has already closed today, so my order won't get executed until tomorrow, Thursday. The trade has to settle, then I have to transfer the funds to my checking account. If I need to provide a cashier's check, I'm screwed. But since I'm picking the car up on a Sunday, I don't think they will ask for that, considering banks will be closed. Monday is also a payday for my wife, so I should be OK riding the float for a day or two.

Self-Inspection Process

The self-inspection asks for photos of the following:

• Title
• Tires (using penny to show tire depth, Lincoln's head pointing down)
• VIN Plate
• Left side of vehicle
• Right side of vehicle
• Front of vehicle
• Rear of vehicle
• Seats
• Dash
• Odometer

Shouldn't be too hard. They say I should have a quote back in 48 hours. That's cutting it close to the delivery date. I took pictures and uploaded everything in the evening. I had to resize all the images because the site (which was a third party site) cannot accept more than 25 MB of images. My phone defaults to image sizes of about 4 to 5 MB each and I had 18 to upload.

In addition to uploading pictures, you also have to answer questions about the condition of the car, provide the VIN, year, make, model, etc. They ask if any warning lights (check engine, tire pressure, oil change, etc.) are lit on the dash. They say the Tesla delivery person will verify that the condition you report matches the condition of the car when you turn it in. They also only asked for pictures of one tire, so if you bought your tires at different times, photograph the one with the most tread.

Wow.. It's 8:20 PM and I just got an email from my Delivery Advisor saying she got all my photos and information and they are just waiting for a price for the trade-in. She's based in Nevada, which is the same time zone as me, so she's working late!

Seriously, this has been a hectic last 6 hours. Things are changing literally as fast as I type them up here.

Thursday

After the commotion of yesterday, today seemed like nothing happened. I did not receive any calls or email. Just for the heck of it, I decided to log in to my account and see if anything had changed. It had!

The value of my trade-in came back at $5,050. As I discovered two weeks ago, that's near the middle of the Kelley Blue Book trade-in range of  $4,400 to $6,200, although a bit towards the low side. To be fair, I did specify (truthfully) that there are a couple spots of chipped paint on the hood, so that probably lowered the value. I'm comfortable with that amount. I could probably get a bit more selling it myself, but I'll go with the trade-in just to make things easier for me.

I had to accept the value and answer a couple more questions - was I making payments on the car, etc. They asked me to upload a copy of my registration and the title. This is now the third time I have had to upload a copy of my title. That's seems a little ridiculous to me and is the only place for improvement that I have found in the whole purchase experience.

After that, the final step was to indicate acceptance of the final details. I had to mark five check boxes confirming: I was trading in a car, I was getting Tesla financing, where I was picking up the car, who my insurance company is, and how I want the car to be titled. Once I did that, all the steps were complete! Now I just have to wait for Sunday to pick up the car!

Or not.

I got a call at 8 PM from my delivery advisor. She tells me my car will not be delivered on Sunday. The truck transporting it will not arrive until Monday afternoon. Then they have to charge it and detail it, so the soonest I can pick it up is Tuesday. Unfortunately, since my wife is on the loan and registration, she has to be there to pick it up with me and she is not available during the week. So the delivery has been moved back one week to the 16th. (If you haven't figured it out by now, these posts are not quite real time.)

The delivery advisor asked if I had received a confirmation of my delivery date. I checked my email and I did receive a confirmation - I received it yesterday. She said that, unfortunately, there is a second team handling the delivery schedules and, quite frankly, they don't quite know what they are doing. Gee, that's great to hear.

This raises a couple of issues. My trade-in quote is good for 2 weeks or 500 miles, or so I was told. That's what my documentation says. The delivery advisor says that has changed and it is actually good for 1 month or 1,000 miles. She claims "everyone" within Tesla knows this. Nevertheless, I asked her to put that in writing, which she said she would do. I shouldn't go over 500 miles in a week, but I want to cover myself just in case.

She tried to make me think this was no big deal and that if I went over the mileage, they would just re-do the trade-in estimate. That's all well and good except for the fact that I'm sure the value would drop and I'd end up paying more. She had no answer to that.

We also talked about payment, which no one has mentioned to me before this. She admitted that was her fault. Payment is made via automated clearing house (ACH) transfer - just like paying a bill online. If the amount due is $10,000 or less, they will accept a personal check.

So the delay actually makes things a bit easier for me. I don't have to worry about stock trades settling and funds being transferred in time. The extra week gives me time for all that to settle.

Still, I'm disappointed I have to wait another week. And didn't I just type that I only saw one place for improvement in this process? I see lots of room for improvement now!

The Tesla Purchase Experience: Week 4

Monday

Getting impatient now that delivery is supposed to be sometime next week.

Wednesday

Got an email from my electrician saying my permit inspection has been requested and that it may take up to 72 hours to get scheduled. Hmm. I requested the inspection be performed tomorrow. The email gave a number to call that turned out to be for the Washington State Licenses and Inspections Department. According to the person I spoke with, the inspection was requested this morning to be performed tomorrow. I guess the way the process works is the inspectors call in each morning to see where they need to go that day. So I don't actually have an appointment, per se. Great.

The email also stated the inspector will call me to give me a time s/he will show up. The call will be from a restricted number and they will not leave a call back number. So I'm sure if I miss the call, the inspection will be delayed at least one day.

Thursday

No phone call all morning, so I was expecting the inspection would not happen today. Then I got a call around 1:00 PM from the electrical inspector saying she was on her way over and was about 15 minutes away. I'm glad I can work from home some days!

Once she arrived, she took the cover off the electrical panel and looked inside, checked out the two grounding stakes that were put in outside my house, and the water pipe bond - the connection between the grounding wire and the water pipe. The whole inspection took about 10-15 minutes and most of that time was spent unscrewing and then screwing back on the electrical panel cover.

I spent some time reading about other Tesla buyers' delivery appointment experiences. Most recommended really going over the car when it is delivered for things like paint scratches, loose panels, etc. You could get the impression that the cars are in crappy shape when they are delivered, but I realize people who post to forums usually do so because they have some sort of complaint. Rarely do people post online that everything went swimmingly. Nevertheless, I will make sure I do a pretty thorough inspection when my car is finally delivered.

Friday

Start of the long Labor Day weekend! My wife's twin and her family are coming up to visit. We'll be renting a boat and tooling around on Lake Washington on Sunday and just hanging around the other days.

Logged in to my Tesla account today and noticed they updated the Owner's Manual in the Documents section of my account. The one that was available before was posted as soon as my deposit was accepted and was dated March, 2018. This new one is dated August, 2018. I'm hoping the update means my car will be delivered soon!

Saturday

Took another trip to the Tesla store to show the in-laws what I will be getting. Someday.

The Tesla Purchase Experience: Week 3

Sunday

My parents made a surprise visit to see me for my 50th birthday (which was actually yesterday). We took a trip to the Tesla store so they could see the color and model I bought. I got a handmade card from my daughter in the shape of a Tesla, complete with a functioning door. I wish I could draw as well as she can!

I'm either 50 or 100. Or, god forbid, 50^50. Either way, sprinkles make a party!

Wednesday

Electricians came today and installed the new electrical panel and Tesla wall charger. My power was off for about 5 hours while they did the work. Here's the new panel:

Plenty of room for expansion

And here's the wall charger:

Now I just need something to plug this into

I just realized that I've been calling this thing a wall charger all the time, but officially, it's a wall connector. Wall connector sounds stupid to me, so I'm sticking with wall charger.

A city code inspector will be stopping by next week to make sure the work meets city codes.

Thursday

Good news! I got an email from my Tesla Delivery Advisor saying my car has started production and the ETA is the "very beginning of September!" Once the car is on its way to the delivery center, they will start the loan approval and trade-in process. I guess they aren't too worried that someone might not get approved for a loan.

Friday

I decided to check out the Kelley Blue Book site and see the rough estimate of of what my current car is worth. Wow! Mint.com is way off on the value. Mint values my car at $9,000. The Kelley Blue Book value is between $4,400 and $6,200 for trade-in value and between $5,800 and $8,000 for a private party sale. For sale by owner ads on Craigslist show my model with similar mileage selling for $7,400 to $9,000. This is strange because Mint says it gets the car value from Kelly Blue Book.

It turns out Mint was still using the mileage I put in for my vehicles when I first added them to Mint several years ago. When I updated the mileage to the actual value (which was about double what was in there), the value dropped back down to what Kelly Blue Book said it was worth.

Friday night, Elon Musk backtracked on his plan to take Tesla private. Now he said it will stay a public company.

Goal Update: End Of August 2018

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of August, 2018
Current value: $51,680
Change from last Month: +$3,271
Percent of Goal:  Undefined

Events Of Note Last Month:

The big news, of course, was I bought a Tesla! Not sure what I'm going to write about here each month now, besides continuing to track my net worth. As I mentioned before, I'll likely start counting down until the loan is completely paid off. Right now, however, I'm in a bit of a holding pattern. I've placed an order for the car, but I don't have it yet, so there's no loan. I'm posting all the details of the Telsa buying experience, so you can follow along at home.

My savings took a big jump this month because I've adjusted my budget to be as if I already had my car payment. Instead of sending those funds to a loan, I'm making payments into my savings account. I'm also including in this figure the $2,500 deposit I made when I placed my order.

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $70.99 of income. My courses on SkillShare earned $37.32. All my Tesla savings are in cash right now, so no changes in value due to the stock market. I'm less than $100 away from hitting $11,000 in lifetime earnings on Udemy for my online courses. I hit $10,000 last November and next month I should reach $11,000.

You wouldn't know if from looking at the data below, but I've sped up my credit card payments this month in preparation for the car loan application. I typically pay off my credit card in full each week, but I schedule the payment to be made 3 weeks in the future. This gives me the maximum time for my money to stay in my checking account earning (a pitiful amount of) interest before paying off the credit card without getting charged any (insanely high) interest.

This has the side effect of making it look like I always carry a balance when I really don't. Outstanding credit card balances are reported to credit bureaus at the end of each statement cycle. Therefore, this month I'm making payments within days instead of weeks so it appears my outstanding credit card balances will be low when Tesla pulls my credit report for the loan application. I'm not worried about being turned down for the loan - my credit score is over 800 and I'm making a down payment of about 33%, so there is no way I'd be considered a credit risk. I just want to make sure I get the best rate possible on the loan.

Net Worth Update

Our net worth hit another all-time high, rising $36,098 to $912,595. Our investments rose by about $21,000 and our house went up by about $5,000. Getting close to the one million dollar milestone!!

I'm not sure we'll get there this year. I've got the car purchase coming up and we're approaching the holiday season, which is always expensive. On the other hand, in September, my wife will hit the income cap for social security withholding, so her paycheck will see a big increase which will last for the rest of the year. My plan is to funnel that extra income into paying down the car loan. So who knows. The same thing will happen to me, but in December.

I can't say getting to a net worth of one million dollars was ever a stated goal of mine. It just sort of happened as I started to take control of and manage my finances more. You can draw your own lesson from that factoid.

July 2018

August 2018

Our credit card balance went up, but that was due to the electrical work I had done for the Tesla wall charger. I've got the cash to pay for that and it will be paid before this post is published.

I hate that red dot next to the credit card entry. That means Mint was unable to connect to an account to update it. In this case, the account is our Gap card, which right now has a $125 balance on it. (Back to school shopping, don't you know.) That will be paid in two weeks.

I know our net worth will drop next month at least a couple thousand. While researching the resale value of my current car, I noticed that Mint was valuing it much higher than the Kelly Blue Book site does. More on that in my second post today!

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!