Phones4U billionaire John Caudwell has claimed his £90,000 Tesla Model X broke down on the day the warranty ran out.
Caudwell – who is worth £1.58billion – posted an enraged rant on LinkedIn about his car.
The 72-year-old fumed: ‘Tesla really needs to up their game to survive, let alone prosper.’
He opened the post by asking in all caps: ‘What kind of appalling customer service is this?
‘My Tesla Model X broke down the day the four-year warranty expired. Or possibly just before.
‘While still under warranty, we charged it overnight, and by morning – despite being fully charged – it wouldn’t move. You’d think this would be straightforward to resolve, but not with Tesla.’
The billionaire complained that he had to go through the app and couldn’t speak to a person for assistance.
He added: ‘Frustrated, my security drove (in another car) over an hour to the nearest Tesla dealership, only to be told the earliest available appointment was three weeks away.
‘Otherwise, I’d have to arrange a costly, specialised transport to get the car there because the Model X requires a specific loading method.’
The ‘mobile phone king’ as he was once known – courtesy of the device that made his fortune – said the X’s main high-voltage battery, which powers the car, has its own eight-year warranty so, if the problem was with that, the repair would be covered.
But if it was the 12-volt auxiliary battery, that’s part of the expired four-year overall warranty and he would have to pay.
He continued: ‘Up to now, I’ve generally loved my Tesla and its many innovations. It’s a pleasure to drive – despite autonomous control’s occasionally dangerous brake-slamming – and I love that it’s environmentally-friendly.
‘But all of this has really disgusted me and soured my experience of the brand.
‘In light of the lack of customer service, we worked on the car ourselves and found, as suspected, the critical 12-volt battery discharged
‘After externally charging it, all was good, though we still have no idea why this catastrophic failure occurred.
‘Given their recent reduction in sales and the Chinese onslaught in the EV market, Tesla really need to up their game to survive, let alone prosper.’
The Tesla is just one of the cars stored in the eight-car stacking system in his double basement house – bang in the middle of Mayfair – which also houses a private cinema, spa and nightclub.
At 45,000 square feet, the house, as Caudwell cheerfully writes in his published autobiography, was the most expensive private home in London in 2022 – and twice the size of the Royal Albert Hall.
There’s a vast formal dining room – the largest after Buckingham Palace – and even an indoor stream, stocked with tropical fish, which snakes through his more intimate and very beautiful dining area.
While the small section of stream under the dining table is under glass, guests have to navigate little wooden stepping stones to reach the safety of the solid dining room floor.
It’s all a very long way from Caudwell’s roots in working-class Stoke, the son of an engineering products salesman and a mother who worked in a post room to make ends meet.
Caudwell abandoned his A-levels to become an apprentice at Michelin, and worked for several years there as an engineering foreman while gaining a HNC in mechanical engineering.
While working at Michelin he also ran a corner shop and started a mail order business selling clothing to motorcyclists.
In 1987 Caudwell registered Midland Mobile Phones as a mobile phone wholesaler, initially taking 26 Motorola mobiles at £1,350 each.
It took eight months to sell these 26 phones to local plumbers, taxi drivers and television repairmen at a price of £2,500 each. The company made a loss every month for the first two years of operations..
But then the business became the Caudwell Group, which included an independent mobile phone network service provider called Singlepoint and high street mobile shop Phones4U which he sold for £1.5bn in 2006.
When the chain began to collapse 10 years ago, Caudwell blamed this on its mobile network suppliers and private equity owners.
contacted Tesla for comment.