Stewart Alsop:
Dear @ElonMusk: Thank you for reaching out to me. 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.
Really, Tesla? You cancelled his car order? Both sides should be embarrassed by this public back and forth.
Eh. It might be a little catty of Tesla/Musk, but Alsop was being such a whiney entitled brat (“wah, they didn’t serve me ‘real’ food even though it was what I would consider to be dinnertime!! Treat me like a special snowflake and let me drive a Tesla before the other 1000+ people at the event! And your powerpoint presentation was about features I don’t care about and was amateurish!!!”) that the schadenfreude I got from the news of the cancelation made me smile.
There is already a long list of people that truly want & will appreciate the X on the waiting list the bulk of which aren’t self entitled pricks like Alsop. He can always buy one when they are more readily available if he so chooses.
I can see Elon’s point—if this story it true. If it were my company, I would have banned this character, too. Though he tries to curry favor with his “dear readers”, he’s covertly, yet publicly, trying to put the screws to Tesla for this “grave offense.” Elon has a tough enough row to hoe without also having to pander to such obvious PR bullshit. Even if this guy’s grievance was in any way valid, he should not have broadly published his discontent. He could more than likely have gotten satisfaction with private and direct contact with the company personnel involved.
Good job Elon!
Arrogant guy makes comments about another arrogant guy, who then acts arrogantly.
You’re on your own on this one, Dave. This clown was acting like an entitled brat because he thought could get away with it without any repercussions. These bloggers and media need to be called out and put in their place some times (no offence to the good writers on The Loop!) and few have the ways or means to do so as much as Elon Musk does.
I’m a bit shocked at the comments I’m reading here. Putting aside this particular case, there’s no shortage of people who think they can write shit on the internet without any research or care to facts. Yet I bet hardly any of you would support companies banning them.
As evidence, just check out the comments here:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/02/03/about-walt-mossberg-and-apples-app-problem/
without repercussion? since when should we consumers fear repercussions from the manufacturers we critic? what’s next, goon squads?
there should be no negative repercussions to criticizing a consumer goods manufacturer.
I’m not sure I’d say it should never have consequences (and I know you didn’t say never), but certainly a single blog post about how potential customers were treated by a company shouldn’t qualify.
Let’s remember: He was not critiquing the product. He was not even critiquing the service. He’s critiquing this event, and phrasing it as an open letter. A CEO wearing his big boy pants should have been able to swallow that blow.
It’s one thing to criticize the company or the product, but this guy was kind of being a d-bag…that’s what sealed the deal, not the fact that he criticized Tesla.
You know that phrase “the customer is always right”? The reason we use that phrase (with tongue in cheek) is because we all know that the customer isn’t always right, but that they have to be treated like they are. It’s satisfying to see this guy treated like he deserves to be treated. Don’t like my company? Fine, I don’t need your business.
The tone is the difference. Expressing frustration with features or performance is fine, as Jim did. Entitlement is not. Tesla fired a customer. More companies should be so confident in their product.
To be clear, I have no problem with Jim’s post. I specified the comments for that reason, but I think I’ll go back and edit my post to make that even more clear.
The tone of Stewart’s post is mostly angry. Yes, he comes off as entitled, but does he have at least one legitimate complaint? I think he does. He waited an hour and forty minutes.
“Hey, we’re sorry about the hour and forty minute wait time.” Followed by “Something went wrong behind the scenes, and I should have mentioned that when I took the stage,” or “We’ll cut that down for future events” would have handled the situation nicely.
I don’t know. Maybe Tesla has a big file of email from Stewart being a douchebag. But what was aired in public wasn’t that bad.
He was free to leave at any time. No one forced him to stay for the press release. Does it suck? Sure. But whining about how entitled he is and that his time must be so important didn’t sit well with Tesla. They have other people who would gladly move up the line a spot who aren’t so entitled.
Clearly Stewart didn’t think highly of Tesla, so Tesla solved that problem for him. He’s no longer a customer and no longer has to subject himself to the tyranny of patience.
Chalk me up on the side of anyone who enjoys seeing publicly obnoxious, entitled VCs getting a bit of comeuppance. There’s legitimate criticism, and then there’s impatient caterwauling.
Let’s imagine Musk not having cancelled Alsop’s order for a moment. Let’s instead imagine—in light of how special he believes he is—what sort of customer Alsop might have turned out to be, over the period of time he owned one of these cars.
Well, I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy that. I’m just saying that after thinking about it, I think it disturbs me that Musk didn’t rise to at least “Well, that was a load of bullshit. But there was one good complaint in there that we’ll take care of.”
The post was addressed to Elon Musk, and said he should be ashamed of himself…that’s undoubtedly personal, and probably an attack.
That doesn’t mean Musk was right to cancel the order, but you can’t blame Musk for thinking that a personal attack on him was a personal attack on him.
He may very well have done so, in private. But he may have also felt that people like Alsop and Carl Icahn have never created anything intrinsically worthwhile, and so should publicly be kept at arm’s length by anyone who does.
That would be the best outcome, I think. 🙂
He shouldn’t have been surprised that such anger and criticality resulted in cancellation of his order. In general, I try to do the right thing by me own patients, but if they decide to be too much of a jerk to me or my staff, I send them a regretful termination letter and hope they get along better with the next doctor. Life is too short to deal with such people. It’s one lost sale. Move on. He wasn’t going to be a good customer. He’ll make as much problems as he can now, but he was going to do that anyway (and for far longer) if he’d actually gotten the car.
Bravo Elon!
Every business has the right to refuse service and I wish more businesses would stand up for themselves like this. The second that grievances turn to insults, the professional business relationship is over.
Alsop may have been justified in his frustration, but that doesn’t give him the right to air his grievances through personal insults in a public forum. He needs to man up, own his words, and reap the consequences of his actions.
Nah, fuck that guy.
IIRC Alsop isn’t some random blogger, he’s a venture capitalist that has a history of being at odds with Elon Musk.
you could say or write all this, yet it makes Elon looking like a tiny man with a tiny mind.
Alsop could be an entitled brat, yet I only read the first few paragraphs of Alsop’s critique and it sounded like a waste of time and Elon was late! And then seemingly denied this … so Elon has only diminished himself.
I think Ironman would have been on time!
Free to leave – next time you plan a “3 hour tour” and it takes 5 hours – see what happens! or if half your time is wasted (and I would imagine everyone on time to that event had time wasted.
Ironman would have been on time!
wow, Mo, you lumped Carl Ichan (burn this mo fo city down!) with Alsop?
Low blow, low blow.
Which one?
I guess there are plenty other $130K cars in the sea … some even good.
I agree with him. Fuck that guy!
For whom?
I love this story because it exposes a cultural divide.
If you were born and raised in the United States — like Alsop — you likely think “the customer is always right” and you think Elon Musk is being petty. If you were born and raised outside the United States — like Elon Musk — you likely think that Alsop was rude and deserved not to be invited back.
It is likely that all Alsop had to do was apologize and all would be forgiven. But I bet it never even crossed his mind.
Keep in mind that Musk is a self-made billionaire and Alsop is a spoiled brat rich kid. That provides a lot of context.
Elon Musk struck a blow for civility and equality. I want to go work at Tesla now.
When you’re Elon Musk, you’re never late, everyone else is early. Pretty soon we’ll all be setting our watches to EM time.