LEAF in Kansas City

Kathy - I received a very nice email from the Nissan LEAF customer service folks today saying that my LEAF has indeed been loaded on a train for transport. It should arrive no later than May 31st. I strongly suspect that other Kansas City orders are probably being shipped in the same car(s) also (I was not told that, but it would make sense from a logistics standpoint). For privacy reasons, I can't check your order as they verify your name, address, etc., but you can check where the vehicle is by contacting the online LEAF customer support on the LEAF website and giving them your VIN #. It appears that once a customer has a VIN #, LEAF customer service is able to probe a bit deeper. Let us know what you find out.

I definitely have to say that Nissan LEAF customer support (online and phone) has been absolutely fantastic. They are very friendly, helpful, effective, and have exceeded my expectations in every possible way!! For most companies, the term "customer service" is really over used these days, especially with large, faceless corporations. So called "customer service agents" today seem like they operate strictly from scripts, are not empowered to do anything but the most trivial tasks, and simply don't care. It's hard to find "customer service" that actually meets my expectations, let alone exceeds them by leaps and bounds. My experience with Nissan LEAF customer support has been a completely refreshing experience. I intend on writing a very flattering letter to Nissan thanking all the customer service agents once my LEAF arrives, especially those who have been particularly helpful, Pam and Jocelyn.

ERIC

Thanks, Eric, just thought you had an insider in the shipping biz finding your car. Will ck Nissan and see what they say.

OK so I went to Nissan chat and that was useless! Asked Maria if she could locate my LEAF with the VIN and her answer was my delivery date of June 4. When I asked for specific whereabouts she said it was in transit (duh!). Asked her for city, train, date to dealer and she finally said there was nothing showing other than that generalization of a due date. Maybe mine's still in a port? If I call, I might get better service.

eclecticflower said:

OK so I went to Nissan chat and that was useless! Asked Maria if she could locate my LEAF with the VIN and her answer was my delivery date of June 4. When I asked for specific whereabouts she said it was in transit (duh!). Asked her for city, train, date to dealer and she finally said there was nothing showing other than that generalization of a due date. Maybe mine's still in a port? If I call, I might get better service.

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I bet it'll arrive when my does. There are only a couple more weeks left.

<giggles> I have a date!!!! Jun 29 +/- 2 weeks. So that means it would be between summer camp #1 and summer camp #2. The downside is that means my wife gets to drive it for 10 days while I'm at camp since I can't figure out a way to make it to Lowry City without driving 35 mph and dealing with the hill climb at the end of the trip. Glad to hear you two are getting yours soon. McCarthy Nissan was in final prep to deliver one when I visited last week. The wife kinda was kinda embarrassed when she asked me what color interior I picked out. I told her the only one there was =)

Hurray, Tom! Maybe you can let your wife take over the 2nd camp thing for you? Glad you finally got the date - beats that vague "month of XXX +/- 15 days" story they give you. :roll: Now you get to watch how many times they move it. You'll be be doing the happy Date Dance when they move it up, too!

I just want to get my LEAF and give Mom back her extra car (it's my late father's '93 Mazda 929 she's held onto since he died in Dec. '94). I'm using it for a couple months since my ICE car is dying (lower engine knock, $4000 fix, $3000 car). I made the 929's odometer roll to 45,000 miles this month (about half of what's on my 2001 Grand Vitara!)... Dad's probably giving Mom the "are you crazy lending my car out" look, from up there! I feel bad that it looks so dusty and needs a wash. She'll get it back soon, all shiny & with a full tank (thanks, Mom).

We'll all be scotchguarding the light interior. No chocolate in this car! :lol: My 3 Chihuahuas will go in the well BEHIND the back seat, if they go with me. Tom, don't know how you'll handle dirty little campers (I remember camp - rain, mud, marshmallows, barf, sister wet the sleeping bag...). Get out the tarps?? :lol:

So, pardon my ignorance, but the Leaf login now offers an option to create an account on the My Nissan site but it says my ID is already taken. Does this tie into the Leaf login site in any fashion?

<insert> 5/21/ noon
So Nissan's slow. It's working now.

Only about one more week remaining until the LEAF arrives!!

YES (at least that's what they're making you think)!! I hope you get it when you expect it, maybe even before me. I'll be looking for a LEAF in the wild! Good luck!!

Counting down to "week of June 4th"....My electrician is (finally :shock: ) coming Thursday to upgrade my service and install my EVSE (!!!). Was starting to worry that I'd have my LEAF before I have my plug-in :roll: . Still, no sweat, I have a plug in the garage to trickle from and I only drive about 8 miles to work. But I'm READY to get this over with.

The hassles you guys go through is sometimes hilarious, but often pathetic. If there is a dealer nearby, just go there and pick one, or have it shipped. I understand in Kansas you may not have choices, but I find it perplexing anyone going through the order process, if you are in a big metro area like Dallas.

Also this whole run-around on getting an L2 installed even before the Leaf arrives, seems unwarranted, unless you get a lot of federal credit and such. Otherwise pick a damn Leaf in your friendly dealer, or have it shipped, charge on Nissan supplied L1, enjoy the gas-free, super-smooth driving for a few months, and then go for an L2 installation at a later date if you decide you need one.

I got an email from Nissan saying Leafs are available for demo sometime in March, one week and serveral demo test drives later with 4 different dealers the Leaf was sitting in my garage. That one week was fully spent on reading through this forum, getting excited and taking the plunge. As simple as that. I am still researching electricians to install a 220V plug, and if that works out will go for the EVSE upgrade at sometime.

mkjayakumar:

Do you really think we're enjoying this huge hassle? NO! We're not. There in TX you have cars on the lot - lucky you! Here in KC we have - demos! They got here in early March and each dealer only got one. We weren't allowed to order online until that opened up March 1st, ahead of the dealers getting their demos. We learned from reading the forum that AV was a scam and we've done what we could to get our own electricians involved instead. Some of us have older homes with inadequate electric (I needed my service upgraded anyway - the box is at capacity). If I'd have gotten Ingineer's upgraded EVSE, I still would have had to upgrade my service to get a more powerful plug in my garage, since no other appropriate option exists there. The others here (Tom & Eric) have had their own electrical issues. Nope, no Federal credit for the EVSE here, that I've found looking - but correct me (Tom & Eric) if I'm wrong. BTW, our "friendly dealers" don't even advertise this car (very rare). I'm pretty tired of seeing the Nissan Tent Event commercials about their other cars with no mention of the LEAF. Pretty aggravating. Any time I've mentioned the LEAF to coworkers, they have no idea about it and never knew it existed. Friends and family don't get why I'm buying this car, either, as their bent on getting into their luxury ICE cars and too busy looking down their noses at me thinking outside the box. This is just my personal experience. Tells you what we're working with here. We're very excited to be getting our cars soon. Don't take away our fun!

mkjayakumar:
Also, after we ordered, we were told we'd be taking delivery in "30-90 days," another HUGE disappointment, since I put down my deposit August 2010. So, as far as we could determine, cars we're sitting around anywhere/available to be shipped intra-state; our cars were being birthed in Japan.

Correction: our cars WEREN'T sitting around anywhere/available to be shipped intra-state;

The order process worked out ok for me since I needed a new garage door first anyway. That should appear next week I'm hoping. Then install of the evse. So the delay on order for a car specially built just for me is ok.

Kathy...there is an evse federal tax credit for 2011 that may extend to 2012 that would cover up to 30% of the cost of the evse. I don't know if it's evse + installation.

Latest on the evse saga, the dealer had some Schneider sets on hand that he was willing/able to sell for $850 instead of the $799+shipping+1-2week delivery wait for the same product from Home Depot/Lowes. So we're getting that and a local electrician for the installation so grand total would be about $1100. I didn't really want to upgrade the trickle via evseupgrade because I wanted to keep that to hopefully use at work.

On the plus side, the dealer I'm working with has been awesome. If anyone in KC wants a Leaf I will definitely recommend McCarthy Nissan in Olathe.

eclecticflower said:

mkjayakumar:

Do you really think we're enjoying this huge hassle? NO! We're not. There in TX you have cars on the lot - lucky you! Here in KC we have - demos! They got here in early March and each dealer only got one. We weren't allowed to order online until that opened up March 1st, ahead of the dealers getting their demos. We learned from reading the forum that AV was a scam and we've done what we could to get our own electricians involved instead. Some of us have older homes with inadequate electric (I needed my service upgraded anyway - the box is at capacity). If I'd have gotten Ingineer's upgraded EVSE, I still would have had to upgrade my service to get a more powerful plug in my garage, since no other appropriate option exists there. The others here (Tom & Eric) have had their own electrical issues. Nope, no Federal credit for the EVSE here, that I've found looking - but correct me (Tom & Eric) if I'm wrong. BTW, our "friendly dealers" don't even advertise this car (very rare). I'm pretty tired of seeing the Nissan Tent Event commercials about their other cars with no mention of the LEAF. Pretty aggravating. Any time I've mentioned the LEAF to coworkers, they have no idea about it and never knew it existed. Friends and family don't get why I'm buying this car, either, as their bent on getting into their luxury ICE cars and too busy looking down their noses at me thinking outside the box. This is just my personal experience. Tells you what we're working with here. We're very excited to be getting our cars soon. Don't take away our fun!

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I agree completely!! Mkjayakumar comes off as pretty arrogant. He obviously doesn't understand the market in Kansas City.

ksnogas2112 said:

Kathy...there is an evse federal tax credit for 2011 that may extend to 2012 that would cover up to 30% of the cost of the evse. I don't know if it's evse + installation.

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The tax credit for the charging station and installation expired the end of last year. That's one of the reasons I had mine installed last August.

Arrogance will get you slammed on this forum! :lol: We're really not purposely trying to torture ourselves in the process of buying this (wonderful) car. It's just the way it is, here.

Thanks so much Tom. I wasn't able to find where that federal credit for the EVSE extended to us/thought it was expired. If you find something official, please post a link. I'll certainly toss my EVSE receipts into the tax folder to claim on my 2012 return.

Eric, thanks. It thought so. Your post got in before mine.

ericvoll said:

I agree completely!! Mkjayakumar comes off as pretty arrogant. He obviously doesn't understand the market in Kansas City.

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Oops.. perhaps wrong choice of words of 'hilarious and pathetic'. Sorry.. I don't understand Kansas that much, but my main observation was on folks in the large metros that have Leafs in the lot, and still go through a similar frustrating long waits. Oh well, this is Kansas topic anyway.

On the L2 though, it might be wise to defer the spending on that after you get comfortable with the Leaf and see how an L1 actually works out or not. There will be occasions you will miss the L2, but if those are few and far between, an L1 should serve well for a long time.