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A Tesla Model S car is displayed at a Tesla showroom on November 5, 2013 in Palo Alto, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Some Tesla customers in Florida and California have experienced delivery delays of weeks or months, forcing them to rely on borrowed cars, costly rentals and ride-hailing apps while they weather the unexpected wait.

Tesla acknowledged Model S delays earlier this year, but the delivery issues extend to the Model Y, Tesla’s crossover SUV and most popular vehicle in North America, according to several customers who spoke to CNBC.

The continuing delays are a sign that Tesla is still struggling with the “delivery logistics hell” that Elon Musk referenced in 2018 as the company dramatically increases its vehicle production. The company delivered more than 201,250 vehicles in Q2, a company record and a 144% increase from the year-ago quarter. Supply chain shortages, which the company discussed on its last two earnings calls, may also be playing a part in the delays.

A Tesla sales employee in California told CNBC that sales and delivery staff are doing the best they can to answer questions from upset customers, but do not have enough information from higher-ups or the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, to answer them precisely. This person asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press about company matters.

The employee said a colleague in another state resigned after managers threatened to fire him last quarter because he “broke the chain of command” by sending an e-mail to CEO Elon Musk and other managers in Fremont seeking information about the Model S delays.

After that, some sales staff felt hesitant to seek further details on behalf of customers, the sales employee said. CNBC reviewed internal correspondence corroborating the sales employee’s account of events.

Generally, sales and delivery workers are aware that Tesla has faced parts shortages and challenges implementing the use of new machinery at the Fremont plant, this person said. Those issues were discussed by executives on prior Tesla earnings calls.

The dates keep slipping

One bemused Tesla customer, Steve Salem, placed his order for a long-range all wheel drive Model Y with premium interior and silver metallic paint on May 31. He had test-driven the vehicle outside of New York City, and later ordered online, arranging to pick up the car in Los Angeles where he would soon be living.

According to records and correspondence he shared with CNBC, Tesla’s site initially said a Model Y should be available in an estimated 4 to 8 weeks, putting the late end of his estimated delivery window around the week of July 26.

After placing his order online, paying a $100 non-refundable fee to do so, the Tesla site showed Salem a new estimated delivery window with Aug. 10 as the latest possible delivery date. The dates continued to change in his Tesla account, and Salem says he did not receive apologies from sales staff or even email notifications with each change. The date range shifted all the way into October at one point, and then back to a date in late August. As of Monday this week, the estimated date was between Sept. 4 and Sept. 24.

Three other customers who are waiting for Model Y and Model S vehicles also told CNBC that they had to keep checking their accounts to detect changes to their estimated delivery dates.

While he hasn’t given up on his Tesla, Salem said he might have to eventually. “I’m fortunate that I’m not in desperate need for a vehicle. But I’d like to drive the car,” he said.

He arranged financing through a third-party lender, and doesn’t expect any trouble getting another loan approved. But delays could effect his loan rate, and he will also need to get a new insurance quote. “It’s a hassle,” he said. “At a certain point do you say the heck with this and try to get something else? It’s frustrating — not just the delays but the total lack of communication.”

Tesla cars are delivered to a showroom in Brooklyn, New York on April 25, 2019.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

If Tesla cannot firm up a delivery date, Salem said he may order a Ford Mach-E or revert to a high-performance internal combustion engine vehicle. The Model Y was going to be his first battery electric.

Another would-be owner of a long-range, all-wheel-drive Model Y in Southern California ordered from the Tesla site and received a confirmation by e-mail on June 6. This customer, who asked to remain unnamed to avoid confrontations on social media, had roughly the same experience as Salem.

She shared records indicating that her original estimated window for delivery was between Aug. 4 and Aug. 24 in Burbank, California. The date slipped repeatedly, and she says the company never proactively reached out to her about the changes.

When she saw the dates changing in her Tesla account online, she texted a sales employee to ask whether the delivery dates would keep getting pushed further out. The employee failed to give specifics, but reassured her that staff would keep an eye out for a black Model Y that may become available sooner in the area.

In one text message to this sales employee, this customer asked if there were problems in manufacturing. The employee replied in early August that Tesla had manufacturing delays due to a chip shortage, and said many other car companies were dealing with the same thing.

As CNBC has previously reported, chip shortages have recently caused production and delivery delays of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E crossover and in July, caused Rivian to delay production and deliveries of its debut RIT electric pickup, and R1S SUV (but not its commercial delivery vans which it is making for Amazon).

This customer is now expecting to receive her Tesla some time between Sept. 8th and Sept. 28th. She told CNBC she has spent more on rentals and ride-sharing than she and her finacee planned to spend leasing and insuring their Model Y from Tesla.

She’s willing to wait for the Tesla, but wants an explanation from the company. And now, since she’s planning to be out of town for a few weeks, she is worried the company will make her wait months more if she can’t take delivery.

Finally, two customers who have been waiting for Tesla’s higher-end Model S luxury sedans told CNBC they have been waiting for months.

One engineer, who works in utility-scale renewables, ordered his Model S Plaid in January, and planned to take delivery at the Ft. Meyers, Florida, Tesla dealership. He asked to remain un-named citing privacy concerns, and said he is annoyed every time a YouTuber shows up in a video with a Model S Plaid. It made him wonder if the company is allowing people to cut the line if they have dedicated fan accounts on social media.

While he has already waited for months, he said he will never give up on getting his dream car from Tesla. He is drawn to the Model S Plaid’s design, performance and the appeal of a vehicle that will have new features added or old features refined via over the air software updates.

Barry Stuppler, founder of a rare coins and precious metals wholesale business, first ordered a Model S Plaid in January, as CNBC previously reported. On Aug. 10, he told CNBC, Tesla moved his delivery date to the very end of the third quarter — Sept. 21 through Sept. 30.

Last week, he went to a Mercedes dealer and configured and ordered an all-electric Mercedes 450 EQS, with no deposit required. The sales staff there said he would have a price quote and vehicle identification number by late September, and he could take delivery in November. He said if the Mercedes arrives before his Tesla, and isn’t more than the price he’s expecting, he’ll cancel the Model S Plaid order.

Even famous people aren’t immune. On Tuesday, rock musician David Crosby tweeted that a Tesla he ordered seven months ago has still not showed up, and alleged that Tesla had “lied to us 4 times about when we would get it.”

Crosby was not immediately available for comment.

Tesla and Troy Jones, the company’s Vice President of North American Sales, Service and Delivery, did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

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Intuit shares drop as quarterly forecast misses estimates due to delayed revenue

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi speaks at the opening night of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.

Rodin Eckenroth | Filmmagic | Getty Images

Intuit shares fell 6% in extended trading Thursday after the finance software maker issued a revenue forecast for the current quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates due to some sales being delayed.

Here’s how the company performed in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $2.50 adjusted vs. $2.35 expected
  • Revenue: $3.28 billion vs. $3.14 billion

Revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income fell to $197 million, or 70 cents per share, from $241 million, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.

While results for the fiscal first quarter topped estimates, second-quarter guidance was light. Intuit said it anticipates a single-digit decline in revenue from the consumer segment because of promotional changes for the TurboTax desktop software in retail environments. While that will affect revenue timing, it won’t have any impact on the full 2025 fiscal year.

Intuit called for second-quarter earnings of $2.55 to $2.61 per share, with $3.81 billion to $3.85 billion in revenue. The consensus from LSEG was $3.20 per share and $3.87 billion in revenue.

For the full year, Intuit expects $19.16 to $19.36 in adjusted earnings per share on $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion in revenue. That implies revenue growth of between 12% and 13%. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $19.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $18.26 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Intuit’s global business solutions group came in at $2.5 billion in the first quarter. The figure was up 9% and in line with estimates, according to StreetAccount. Formerly known as the small business and self-employed segment, the group includes Mailchimp, QuickBooks, small business financing and merchant payment processing.

“We are seeing good progress serving mid-market customers in MailChimp, but are seeing higher churn from smaller customers,” Sandeep Aujla, Intuit’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. “We are addressing this by making product enhancements and driving feature discoverability and adoption to improve first-time use and customer retention.”

Better outcomes are a few quarters away, Aujla said.

CreditKarma revenue came in at $524 million, above StreetAccount’s $430 million consensus.

At Thursday’s close, Intuit shares were up about 9% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 has gained almost 25% in the same period.

On Tuesday Intuit shares slipped 5% after The Washington Post said President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” had discussed developing a mobile app for federal income tax filing. But a mobile app for submitting returns from Intuit is “already available to all Americans,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.

Goodarzi said on CNBC that he’s personally communicating with leaders of the incoming presidential administration.

On the earnings call, Goodarzi sounded optimistic about the economy.

“Our belief, which is not baked into our guidance, is that we will see an improved environment as we look ahead in 2025, particularly just with some of the things that I mentioned earlier around just interest rates, jobs, the regulatory environment,” he said. “These things have a real burden on businesses. And we believe that a better future is to come.”

WATCH: H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump administration is considering a free tax-filing app

H&R Block, Intuit shares fall after report Trump admin considering a free tax-filing app

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is ‘billionaire proof’

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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says X rival is 'billionaire proof'

Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”

In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.

“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”

Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.

X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.

“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”

Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”

Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.

“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”

Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.

In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

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Alphabet shares slide 6% following DOJ push for Google to divest Chrome

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.

The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”

This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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