We bought this in the SFO airport. We checked the incentives and realized that we needed to get a car in July to get 0% financing and $10,000 off. The available vehicles has a nice set of filters, and we entered what we wanted to see if this would work.
We found a car with the options we wanted and then some. Power and sound were in it and it was a price we were happy with. The page lets you pick “available in 2 weeks”, which means those cars that are built, but not in your area. None really in Denver, so we ignored that setting.
We were on our phones, both looking and checking out options. We picked a low $90k car and clicked the “Continue” button. That informed us there was a $1k deposit and a transfer fee of $4k. We weren’t getting around that, so we clicked through and paid the deposit.
We used my email, since I’d scheduled the demo drive and things were linked to my account. I was expecting an email, but in the 30 minutes before our flight took off, I didn’t have one. We were slightly nervous, but there’s always a cancel, and there were plenty of other cars. If we picked a different one, it might cost a few thousand more, but we’d get more options.
Tia had a button to click on her phone, but when we went there, it was the wrong car. There was one that was $110k, which wasn’t ours.
When we landed, I had the order confirmed (in Junk of all places. I had checked there before).
Completing the Process
Like Telsa, when I logged into the site, I had a portal now. My order was there, and it asked for things like insurance, driver’s license, etc. All paperwork stuff.
However, when I went to the finance app, the thing that wasn’t there was the $10k discount. I also had a price that was a little higher. I thought that might include the transfer fee, but things didn’t add up.
I had gotten an email from the salesperson, and a note from the sales manager. I emailed both, asking them for a call as I had questions. Within an hour the salesperson called and I give him my questions. He said he’d look into things.
He called me back in an hour and said he had two cases open. One with his team that was trying to reconile the pricing. The other was with the corporate finance people about the discount.
By the end of the day, he called around 630p my time (530p CA) and said the discount should not appear, but the pricing was about $400 off and he was investigating. It was likely some paperwork/documentation fee, but he’d get it working.
The next day I went into the online finance app and saw the discount. I completed the app, which was minimal, and submitted it. I didn’t get a confirmation, but I checked a few hours later and saw it approved.
No other info in the portal, and no dates, but the salesman responded in email and let me know he was still checking on the exact figures and dates and would let me know. He was quite responsive for a salesperson and I loved the updates.
Overall, this was almost as smooth as Tesla, and much smoother than any dealer purchase I’ve made in person. I don’t know why most companies can’t sell cars this smoothly and quickly, but it does make me want to buy more cars from companies like Tesla and Lucid. I don’t know if this is the future of car buying, but it should be.