Buying a Tesla has to be among the strangest experiences in my car purchase life.
When I placed my order, I had not seen the car in person or driven one.
I talked to some current Tesla owners and researched the heck out of the vehicle.
Mike, another firefighter, has owned a Model 3 for a few years and loves it. Well, I think his wife might love it even more if that’s possible.
Mike’s years of ownership experience convinced me to take the plunge, and the purchase made sense for all the reasons I wrote about here.
I used Mike’s Tesla referral code to get 1,000 free supercharger miles when I placed my order. He got 1,000 miles as well.
If you’d like to get 1,000 free supercharger miles when you place your order, click here to use my referral code. I would be very grateful.
Without visiting the dealership, I went to the Tesla website, selected the car and configuration I wanted, and click; the order was placed.
To reserve the vehicle, Tesla required a $100 order fee credited to the purchase price.
I’m not sure if the vehicle was already manufactured or the order caused the car to be assembled. I know that the time before delivery was about a month and that the Model 3 was coming from Freemont, California, the home of the Tesla Model 3 factory.
I opted for the low-interest rate Tesla financing, and that was just a few entry fields and clicks for approval.
The most challenging part of the purchase process was getting the vehicle added to our car insurance policy using the VIN assigned. That part took about 20 minutes of effort.
I later received a text message from Tesla, letting me know my car was on the way, and it had a URL that took me to a page to schedule the day and time of my pickup.
Picking up the car in the middle of a raging pandemic is a challenging experience. After going back and forth with the concerned family, we came up with this process for a covid careful delivery experience.
While waiting for the car, I learned how to operate it from videos since I could not have the salesperson delivery experience—darn coronavirus.
Tesla Model 3 tutorial videos were a great introduction. But for bonus instruction, I turned to plenty of other videos on YouTube.
I also prepared for delivery by purchasing accessories from Amazon. These included floor mats, trunk and frunk mats, screen protectors, and a console storage bin.
The Most Difficult Part of the Tesla Purchasing Experience
The kind staff at our local Raleigh, North Carolina dealership were all very helpful on the telephone. But it was hard to get a response by text or email. They are exceedingly busy with deliveries due to demand.
I’d have to rate the Tesla buying experience a 95 out of 100. But then again, I’d give the traditional car-buying experience a 60 out of 100.
There was no negotiating, haggling, finance office to deal with. The entire car selection and financing experience took minutes once the car configuration was settled on.
If you want to know what car we purchased, click here. You’ll find out which extra charge was a surprise. Look for the destination charge.
