At the end of September, popular YouTube channel Wham Baam Teslacam, which is run by a big Tesla fan, tweeted that it had received a tip that “none of the Tesla-certified body shops in Phoenix will take @GEICO customers because GEICO will not pay what it costs to repair a Tesla.” According to Tesla, that is not correct.
Rather than having PR people reach out to the Tesla fans at Wham Baam Teslacam as well as Tesla-focused site Teslarati and CleanTechnica to correct this rumor, Tesla’s legal team has sent out cease & desist letters. Doing our best to provide to you exactly what Tesla says regarding this story (just as we would do if a Tesla PR team reached out to us), I’m quoting from the cease & desist letter here regarding an article we published on September 30 about this story and have since retracted:
“This article is false, and it misleads GEICO-insured customers of Tesla vehicles in Arizona into believing that they must pay for their insured vehicle repairs out of pocket as a result. We accordingly respectfully demand that you immediately cease and desist further dissemination of this false information and publish a correction.
“Your September 30, 2022 article is based solely on a false (and since-corrected) tweet from Wham Baam Teslacam that ‘none of the Tesla-certified body shops in Phoenix will take @GEICO customers because GEICO will not pay what it costs to repair a Tesla.’ Wham Baam Teslacam confirmed that this tweet was based solely on the uncorroborated allegations of a single individual. We have further confirmed that this tweet is false and that all of the Tesla authorized collision centers in the Phoenix area continue to service GEICO customers. Our records further show that the Tesla authorized collision centers in the Phoenix area continue to record dozens of Tesla vehicle repairs that have been paid by GEICO, contradicting the allegations in your article.”
Our apologies for publishing a rumor that was apparently unfounded. Naturally, we would have loved to reach out to Tesla’s PR team about this story when it came out — and even now for more clarification on what happened — but as far as we are aware, Tesla still doesn’t have a PR department that we can reach out to regarding stories like these.
As a longtime Tesla owner (and shareholder), I’m happy to see that Tesla owners in Phoenix who carry GEICO car insurance don’t have anything to worry about if they need their cars repaired. Again, apologies, for the apparent misinformation we published previously.
To close, I’m also including Wham Baam Teslacam’s retraction/statement on this matter and a good little meme in response to the experience:
that Tweet, this information is false. What we should have said is that one of our submitters TOLD US that was true. According to Tesla’s legal department, “Tesla-authorized collision centers in the Phoenix area continue to service GEICO vehicles.” (2/2)
— Wham Baam Teslacam (@WhamBaamYT) October 5, 2022
Bad Luck Baam pic.twitter.com/SzpPkUSXhM
— Wham Baam Teslacam (@WhamBaamYT) October 6, 2022
Featured photo by Zach Shahan | CleanTechnica
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