Polestar lease experience
My tesla lease was coming up and I really did not want to get anyone for ideological reasons (I was honestly pretty happy with the car itself). I shopped around for cars and quickly realized why I got a Tesla in the first place. It wasn't really the supposed self driving or green washing, I just strongly disliked car dealerships. I hate haggling and having to pretend that exact car in that exact color is not exactly what I want despite me researching it online beforehand and selecting that dealership because they have the car I want.
In the time of internet I do not see a reason to talk to a dealer apart from requesting a test drive (which feels awkward when I don't want to buy the car). I got constantly called and messaged by a Subaru dealership for months after I test drove their car. Their website promised a gift card for test driving their EV, but I did not get any despite repeatedly asking for it.
Now we chose and test drove a Polestar 2. It has a similar dealership model to Tesla where the people are Polestar employees instead of independent sellers. Our closest dealership is in a shopping mall which is kinda cool. The first test drive was nice, we went downstairs, got the car for 35 minutes and drove around without any supervision. However, when we returned we got immediately pressured into leasing or buying it, because the car would be gone in 2 days.
I strongly dislike these sales strategies, maybe because I spent over 10 years selling things in my parents store. We backed out and waited a week just to spite the agent. Now, we liked the test drive, we needed a car soon and we had positive sentiment towards EVs. This is the most straightforward case of just shut the fuck up and wait for the money to come. I don't really understand why the agent had to push us so much.
One week later, we booked the car and picked 4:30 pm timeslot. We waited 20 minutes for the agent despite having the timeslot booked and literally no one else was in the store. The same agent again pushed us to get leasing protection. This seems like something I would usually go for since I prefer convenience, but again, we were pushed so hard we just pushed back to not to have to deal with it. The agent made it sound like the moment the car leaves the garage it will have wear and tear they will charge us for. It almost seemed like they threatened to rip us off later unless we sign up for lease protection upfront.
I wonder if it was some reverse psychology to make us opt out just so we pay more when we return the car.
After waiting 20 minutes and haggling lease protection, it took over 1 hour and a half to go through all the documents and sign them for the lease despite it being 7 signatures on our side. I definitely felt this could have just been prepared, because we were probably the only customer closed that day. They then spent 20 minutes setting up the temporary license plate and overall lit took over 2 hours for something we booked beforehand.
If nothing else, I quite fondly remember my Tesla lease experience, where I ubered to Fremont, went to the office, signed 2 papers and just walked to the car. I still remember the exchange:
"Have you driven this before? Do you need anything?" "Nah I test drove it before and I liked it." "Yeah, it's cool, I got one myself."
I drove it home after 20 minutes. Now I get a lot of increasingly desparate messages to buy a new Tesla, but I do remember thinking that shopping experience is simply awesome and the way things should be. Polestar is definitely not it.