Tesla hikes solar roof price on contracts signed over a year ago
Yeah, that&#x27;s been my experience as a prospective Tesla Roof customer. For the record, I cancelled my order before this price hike was sent out, but man, Tesla&#x27;s service and sales process is probably one of the worst experiences I&#x27;ve had from a price per service point of view.<p>FWIW, I own and have owned several Tesla vehicles and even though the economics of the Tesla solar roof + Powerwall didn&#x27;t quite work out, I was willing to overpay a bit for the supposed ease of integration into the Tesla ecosystem. It was also a hedge against rolling power outages that California&#x27;s been struggling with in the past few years.<p>I also have experience that Tesla customer service + sales support is pretty atrocious, but again, they were first movers and their product is legitimately pretty decent, so I was willing to take the hit. I was prepared for bad service, but what I got was legitimately awful.<p>I initially put a deposit down for a few Powerwalls (to be used to arbitrage power rates in CA and as a hedge against rolling blackouts). Over the next 3 months, I spoke with and was called by 6 different sales reps who told me that:<p>-- I could install the Powerwalls standalone and integrate it into my house<p>-- I needed to buy a Solar Roof otherwise the Powerwalls wouldn&#x27;t work<p>-- I needed to buy a Solar Roof otherwise the wait time for a Powerwall was greater than two years<p>-- Even if I bought a Solar Roof, I could only buy one Powerwall<p>-- I could only buy one Powerwall. If I wanted to buy more than one, I would need to buy a Solar Roof as well.<p>-- They were not selling Powerwalls and the only way I could get a Powerwall was to buy a Solar Roof.<p>Obviously, they wanted to sell Solar Roofs. Fine. My house could probably use a new roof anyways, and the economics weren&#x27;t <i>that</i> awful.<p>So I asked them what the next step was if I wanted to buy a Solar Roof (and some Powerwalls) and they said that they&#x27;d estimate my roof area from some satellite shots. They said that it&#x27;d probably take a few days.<p>About two months later, I get an email from Tesla letting me know that they had done their math and my quote was ready. The final price for just a Solar Roof (one Powerwall) system that output just 9.5kW? $60,000. Adding another Powerwall bumped it by $8,000. For what it&#x27;s worth, I got several other quotes for a comparable roof replacement + solar panels and average pricing was around $40,000.<p>Tesla&#x27;s proposal didn&#x27;t discuss timing, didn&#x27;t break down the cost of parts vs labor, and basically asked me to pay up and let them putz around till they decided to get to me. I asked for more information, got a call back about a month later. After our conversation, got an email with the breakdown of literally &quot;roof = $xxx.xx&quot; and &quot;labor = $xxx.xx&quot;. Timing was cited to be between 3 - 9 months depending on supply.<p>Every single person I spoke with was different every time. There was some continuity on the email side, but honestly, it seems like Tesla couldn&#x27;t be arsed to actually build or sell this product in a competent manner. I just wanted to put a few overpriced batteries in my house to keep the fridge running but Tesla turned this into a year-long debacle. Even after I canceled my order with Tesla, I still occasionally receive phone calls and emails from them asking to schedule my install date.