Not only did Tesla have a significant first-mover (or, maybe, fast-follower) advantage with electric cars, the company also collected a fiercely loyal set of buyers. This presented a real challenge for luxury brands as Tesla was mostly taking buyers from them and not giving them back. This was going to inevitably change as more electric cars entered the market, but the collapse of Tesla’s loyalty in the United States is the clearest sign yet of the damage Elon Musk has done to his brand.
The Morning Dump today will be all about second chances. One company that’s taken advantage of Tesla’s fall from grace has been General Motors. Don’t get it twisted, while GM will keep making electric cars, it’s shifting at least one plant in the United States from the production of EVs to gas-powered trucks. Ford is finally going to be building more cars in Europe again that aren’t just, you know, weird Volkswagens.
Renault has been the exception to the rule for mainstream European automakers, but the good times only last for so long.
Tesla Is Really Jack Pardee-ing It
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Do you want to relive some trauma with me? I don’t remember my dad crying a lot, though I’ll never forget the time on January 3rd, 1993, when the Houston Oilers blew a 35-3 lead in the third quarter of the AFC Championship to miss their spot in the Super Bowl to play the vile (to us) Dallas Cowboys. Some call this game “The Comeback,” though I’ll always think of it as “The Choke.”
I remembered this while looking at the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Brand Loyalty report, which looks at automotive brand loyalty. For years, no one has been even close to Tesla. The pandemic-related disruptions impacted most automakers as traditionally loyal buyers were happy to be able to take anything that was available.
Prior to the pandemic, slightly more than half of buyers (54.3%) were likely to trade their car for another from the same brand. That number dipped below 50% during the pandemic and has, finally, climbed back to close to normal through the first half of the year (53.3%).
There are two standouts in this report. The first is Toyota, which is now the most loyal brand through the first half of 2025, with 65.9% of buyers coming back to the brand. This is helped greatly by the RAV-4, with a brand loyalty of 69.4%. Once you go RAV-4 you never go back, I guess.
Tesla, though, has gone quickly in the other direction:
Tesla, for example, was in the number one position in 2024 with 60.9% brand loyalty. In the first half of 2025, Tesla has fallen to 7th with a rate of 54.2%. Tesla owners disposing of and replacing their Tesla vehicle with another electric vehicle have historically stayed loyal to Tesla 88% of the time. Those same owners are now only 75% loyal, increasingly choosing competitive electric vehicles from other brands.
This is helpful data. There was always some inevitability to Tesla losing market share as other companies caught up, and that has somewhat clouded the discussion over how much Elon Musk’s foray into politics was hurting the brand in the United States (it’s obviously happening in Europe).
The rapid speed with which Tesla has descended from God-tier loyalty to basically being like any other car company has no other real explanation at this point. A slow descent was what everyone had expected, and this is anything but slow. And, as the numbers show, it’s not just people deciding to buy a non-EV; the company is also losing traction with people who decide to buy another EV.
I’m anxious to see the earnings report from Tesla later this month.
And what about EVs in general? From the same report:
U.S. consumers are transitioning more slowly to electric vehicles than expected. At the same time, automakers are suffering from future unpredictability, plagued by policy changes at the federal level, emissions standards, the rollback of incentives, and governmental regulations. Consumers who remain brand loyal may elect to stay with an internal combustion engine over an EV model made by the same brand.
That’s a convenient transition to…
GM’s Orion Plant Is Going To Make ICE Trucks Instead Of EV Trucks
General Motors is adjusting its electrification plans, and, no surprise, this means that the Orion Assembly in Michigan will be shifting towards more future gas-powered truck production instead of, as initially planned, electric truck production. This is likely because the strong market for electric pickups hasn’t particularly materialized, plus the loss of tax credits for cars and a general change in environmental policy in the United States.
What will happen, it seems, is that GM will make the Escalade, Silverado, and Sierra at Orion. This will allow the company to produce more Suburbans/Tahoes/Yukons/Yukons XL at the company’s Arlington Assembly.
So what of all the money the company took to make electric trucks there? According to the Detroit Free Press, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) still thinks the company is generally following the rules and shouldn’t have to give the $480 million in state funds back:
So far, no one has publicly called for GM to return any of the grant money, though the agreement contains provisions that if the company was to violate the terms, the state has the right to claw back the funds, according to GM.
“GM remains in compliance with their incentive agreement and we’re grateful for their continued commitment to creating jobs and investing here in Michigan, whether it be at the Lake Orion facility or at Factory Zero” in Hamtramck and Detroit, Courtney Overbey Martinez, vice president of communications for the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said in a statement.
Well, that’s convenient. Orion does still assemble battery packs for EVs that are built at the company’s Factory Zero facility.
Ford Is Going To Give European Dealers Some Real Cars Again
I got to drive the Ford Puma ST when I was in England, and I loved that little hatchback. I would definitely rock one of those over here, though I doubt I’ll ever get the chance. It’s one of the few Ford cars produced in Europe for Europe, as the company has largely pared down the European-specific offerings.
There’s the Volkswagen-based Ford Capri, but the less we talk about that, the better.
Ford hasn’t given up on Europe yet and, per Automotive News, will start investing again in some real products for the market:
Ford CEO Jim Farley plans to develop new passenger cars in Europe again, dealers were told in a video conference by Christoph Herr, head of the brand in German-speaking countries.
In recent years, U.S. automaker has downsized its passenger car offerings in Europe to focus on its more profitable light commercial vehicles business.
The popular Fiesta small car was dropped, along with the Galaxy and S-Max minivans. The Focus compact car is due to go out of production in the autumn.
You know what deserves a comeback? The freakin’ Escort and the freakin’ Sierra. Make it happen!
Talk About A Bad First Day
When Luca de Meo left Renault as its CEO, he went out on a real high note as the company reported healthy margins and profitability at a time when everyone else in Europe seemed lost.
Maybe his sudden timing isn’t so curious now as Renault gets a new interim CEO in Duncan Minto. Here’s how his first day went, as reported by Automotive News again:
Renault Group’s new interim CEO, finance chief Duncan Minto, found himself explaining a profit warning to analysts on his very first day on the job on July 15.
Investors reacted strongly, with Renault’s share price falling 16 percent on early trading July 16.
It was the group’s first profit warning since former CEO Luca de Meo took over a money-losing automaker in July 2020, and it points to immediate challenges facing Minto and Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard, who will co-direct Renault while it searches for a permanent top executive.
The cut was only from a margin of 7.0% to a margin of 6.5%, so it’s not quite that bad. Still, losing 16% of your value in one day is not great.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I forgot that this was the Song of the Summer in 2013, or at least one of them. “Rude” by Magic! is definitely an earworm, but it’s also not anything I’d ever actively choose to listen to. The reason why it’s here is because I saw this Instagram reel in which a comedian notes that the song is actually about a Canadian fusion reggae singer being, frankly, politely denied a blessing from an uptight dad. I am Team Dad on this one.
The Big Question
Are you loyal to a brand? Which one?
Photo: Tesla, NBC Sports
Thanks for dredging up my long buried Houston sports fan trauma. I was sitting in a hotel room in Houston watching the game recovering from a wedding the night before. That was probably the highest and lowest I’ve ever been (and ever, ever want to be) in the space of 2 hours.
Also they got divorced shortly afterwards. The bad juju of that game knows no bounds
I won’t say I’m brand loyal when it comes to cars, but the inverse is certainly true – there are definitely brands I will actively avoid until the day I die.
It’s a mixture of direct personal experience (Kia, as the car was crap and so was their dealer), indirect experiences of family members leading to major distrust in certain companies’ products (anything recent from GM and much of the stuff from Chrysler/FCA/Stellantis), and a new-found distaste for a certain EV maker’s leadership (both the CEO and Board of Directors – a $56B pay package? Really???)
A lot of that might be somewhat irrational and unfairly limited (for example I don’t care for Old Henry’s politics, but that’s water under the bridge at this point – my next truck will probably be another F-150), but it is what it is.
I’m not loyal to any one particular vehicle brand, at least for my daily drivers. I try to avoid buying the same (or even a similar) vehicle twice because I want to experience as many different vehicles as possible. As a result, the eight daily drivers I have owned in my life have all been different brands. I don’t anticipate replacing either of my daily drivers in the next few years, but if I do, I will almost certainly buy something different from what I currently or previously have owned.
I can understand brand loyalty when your car is an appliance; you like the familiarity of it and when they work well, you come to love ’em. I have a Tacoma X-Runner and I do really like that era of Toyota, but drove a modern one and didn’t like much about it.
For enthusiasts, I just think there are too many options to stick with one brand. I want to try them all! But I think also as you get older and have less time for car bullshit, you eventually settle on a brand you’ve had better experiences with.
Amazing analogy to the Bills’ comeback. I grew up in Rochester, NY, which is full on Bills country. GO BILLS!!!!
General Motors. But I would consider another brand if someone would come out with a good midsize truck that was a series hybrid.
Car-wise I’m a big Mazda fan – 3 of my last 4 daily drivers were Mazdas, and I convinced my wife to buy a new CX-9 in 2017 – but as I said in the recent refreshed CX-5 review, the latest generation of Mazdas have lost appeal to me and going with all touch screen controls is a 100% dealbreaker for me.
Great news from GM, because what we DEFINITELY need right now are more gas guzzling 3 ton trucks that people have to finance on 6+ year loans to be able to afford. That’s definitely going to help with climate change, our dangerous roads, and our crumbling infrastructure. It’s also totally 100% recession proof, I’m sure.
Anecdotally speaking I’m literally seeing the Tesla exodus in real time. Unfortunately our AC is cooked at home so we’re staying with my parents, who live in a bougie, limousine liberal part of town while we wait for a part to come in to resurrect our unit. Suffice to say, these areas were Tesla strongholds for years, and they’re just not anymore.
As I’ve been out walking I’ve noticed all sorts of new EVs from other brands. Audi, GM, Volvo, etc…as well as a proliferation of other hybrids and PHEVs. But I haven’t seen a single Tesla. It wasn’t that long ago when they were the de facto accessory for this sort of crowd and I think it’s telling that everyone is dumping them.
They’re also winding up on buy here pay here lots and finding themselves in the hands of people who have less than wholesome intentions. A temporary tagged Model 3 in Altima esque disrepair driving at 110 on the shoulder is an increasingly common sight. Elon should’ve just kept his damn mouth shut but of course he’s literally incapable of doing that and uh oh, the consequences of your actions are at the front door. That’s too bad.
Car wise I’m not brand loyal at all. I’d certainly consider some manufacturers over others for certain use cases (I’d want a Japanese family hauler, I’d buy American for a BOF truck, etc) but no car that I’ve ever owned has blown me away so much that I feel the need to stick with the brand. I think doing that is kind of dated, especially with all the information available at our fingertips. I’d just buy one of the best rated cars in whatever class I’m looking in regardless of make unless there’s something egregiously wrong with it, like wonky styling or a capacitive hell world interior.
But with other products? I must confess that there are some things I remain loyal to. I’ve only ever bought Weber grills because they’ve never failed me and I know exactly what to expect when I fire one up. When it comes to my guitar collection I’m always willing to try new stuff but I’m very particular and a QC snob, so once I find a brand that consistently delivers those things I’m usually a repeat customer.
I’ve owned 5 ESP guitars, 3 Ovation guitars, 3 Paul Reed Smith guitars, and basically a whole lot of brands I was one or two and done forever with. If I’m dropping 4 figures on an instrument I want it to be playable out of the box and I don’t want it to have any fit or finish flaws from the factory. You’d think that that’s a pretty fair ask, but in the era of enshittification it very much is not.
I’m no PRS loyalist either, but I do have uh… 5, 2 US Core and 3 SE, out of 8 total guitars. The Custom 22 I bought in 2006 continues to be my #1, and changed the way I think about what makes a guitar great. I need to sell a couple, the SE NF53 is looking mighty tempting.
I have yet to take the plunge on a full fat Core model but being native to the DC area I do focus on the Maryland made stuff because being local-ish has always been part of the PRS appeal to me. I currently have a CE24 that’s been my main guitar for years at this point. Last year I bought a 10th Anniversary S2 McCarty 594 (with mother of pearl birds and the American pickups) that’s the best Les Paul style guitar I’ve ever played…and back in 2017 I bought an S2 Standard 24 Satin that I regret getting rid of because it felt amazing.
I’ve toyed with the idea of turning the CE and S2 into a full Core but their other USA made stuff is just so damn good at this point that I have a hard time justifying one. You could tell someone who isn’t a PRS player that the S2 McCarty I have is a core model and they wouldn’t bat an eye.
I do keep an eye on what local shops have though just in case something I can’t pass up shows up. There’s a local guitar center that has a 10 top 509 listed for $3700 right now that will get very tempting if they have to drop the price a bit…although I have a custom Aristides that’s nearing completion that I bought myself as a birthday present so I don’t think the wife would approve of two high end purchases back to back.
Right on. I had a S2 Vela briefly when they were first released, but that was the only S2 I’ve tried. My other Core is an ’07 Mira, first year with the old school original bird inlays, and a regular neck carve. I love it but almost never play it and should sell it, but its relative rarity makes it hard to want to sell. Plus, it’s totally player grade, and used PRS buyers seem to want pristine unplayed examples.
I hadn’t heard of Aristides but those are pretty impressive looking, very modern. I like big necks (PRS wide/fat is on the small side for me) and most modern style guitars like that tend to have super skinny necks.
I came up playing more traditional stuff and my main guitar for years was a Gibson SG that my buddy currently has. I’ve also had a few Fenders and for a long time I swore I’d only ever play traditional stuff…but as I’ve gotten older and tried to delve into more advanced stuff I got pretty sick of guitars that felt like they were fighting me.
I’ve tried a few different modern flavors-an assortment of shredding oriented super strats, a couple of multiscales, I’ve played some headless stuff, etc. and I’ve come to the conclusion that change can be good. Even the pattern thin neck on my CE is a little thicker than I prefer these days, but I’m used to it and can still shred away on it.
The pattern vintage on the McCarty doesn’t necessarily lend itself to super fast picking or sweeping but I can still do pretty fast legato runs on it and the neck pickup is just spectacular. I usually use it for classic, blued based rock stuff or the small quantities of jazz I dabble in. It’s basically my “traditional” guitar.
But I also play a lot of metal and have always had a specific “metal” guitar that I keep in drop C sharp since that’s usually what I write heavy shit in. I’ve just never been able to find quite what I want in that guitar by buying off the shelf, so I just said fuck it, combined all the elements of metal guitars that I’ve liked, and custom ordered the Aristides.
I’m very interested to play it because they don’t use any wood. They’re completely made from sustainable materials and their own proprietary tone wood equivalent they call Arium. The whole process is really neat and a lot of reputable metal players swear by them, so I figured it was worth the dice roll.
I don’t know why Cadillac doesn’t make a hybrid Escalade. It wouldn’t even need to be particularly fast or powerful, a nonturbo version of the Silverado 2.7T plus electric boost would be plenty since the market would be limo services.
Unfortunately our AC is cooked at home
Did you check the start/run capacitor? That’s a very common failure. It’s an easy DIY for about $20 and a few minutes of work with basic hand tools.
EDIT
“while we wait for a part to come in to resurrect our unit”
I guess someone did. So what is the part?
I have a strong brand avoidance for certain brands.
That’s got to count as anti-loyalty.
Having worked in the industry seeing a wide rash of OEMs/T1s/T2s, there are many of them who’ve got such toxic work environments, short sighted plans, or products with glaring issues that I’ll never consider them.
However, I look favourably on Honda, and Toyota.
I’ve owned a lot of Nissan/Datsun, a few Subarus, a few Dodges. I guess I’m kinda Mopar and Datsun loyal, but that is really only true if you travel decades back in time.
Is 5% decline really considered a fast decline? Sure they dropped from 1st to 7th, but they are still top 10, and I feel like it’s likely that others went up as much as Tesla declined. This surprises no one, but I would have expected a much more dramatic drop.
As for my own loyalty, I have had several Mazdas, and several Toyotas. My wife is fiercely loyal to Toyota, so I am sure her car will be one of them as long as we kee having good experiences, and I am confident that I will keep going to and from Miatas for a long time.
LexisNexis’ survey was US-based.
I’m willing to bet that there’s a more defined cliff-edge elsewhere in the world.
And it’s early in car market terms. If his name was associated with, say, a bakery or some other products people buy weekly we’d have seen a bigger dropoff in a shorter time but the people who can afford to sell or end a lease early just because are few and far between.
I’m not loyal to car manufactures. I am loyal to certain food products/Brands.
I’m a loyal DT reader too.
Based on car ownership, my only repeat brands are Mini (2 Clubmans) and Honda (2 Preludes)
I want a new Prelude and don’t want a new Mini (RIP Clubman you were too awesome to be allowed to survive) so I guess I’m a Honda guy.
“Are you loyal to a brand? Which one?”
My family,when I was growing up, was fiercely territorial. Whatever they owned was magically ‘better’ than anything anyone else had, and they weren’t afraid of telling others what excrement level their car was in comparison. So when the pickup truck died and was replaced by a different brand, suddenly the new brand was better, no matter what was being said the day before. This happened often as they tended to find replacements off street corners and from shady deals with the kids with guns down the steet. I learned not to follow their example and to look beyond the nameplate of the current item and try going with quality instead. It hasn’t always worked, but it has given me the opportunity to own a wide variety of nice vehicles.
I’m not particularly brand loyal (owned 20 cars, none were ever the same) as much as I prefer the characteristics of certain brands or vehicle types. I like Honda 4 cylinders paired with their manual transmissions. I like Toyota 2gr v6s. I like wagon and hatchback body styles. Things like column shifters, Saabs keyed ignition between the seats or even fuel filler door behind the rear center license plate on my old Cutlass Supreme were always memorable.
There are brands that I like or even love, but I can’t say I have a slavish loyalty to any of them. Leica is probably the closest for me, because using their cameras sends chills up my spine, and the pictures are great too. But I don’t feel like a traitor owning other brands alongside. Listening to Tesla people defend just every tiny thing used to be fascinating, but now it’s just weird.
When I was in my 20’s and poor, I saved and splurged on a Leica 35mm point-and-shoot. It was made in Japan by Fuji I think, but with a Leica lens. It did take excellent pictures, and I enjoyed feeling slightly snobby about it.
I try to not be snobby about it, because I don’t want to get lumped in with hipsters who buy Leica just for the sake of it. I fell in love with their M-series 30 years ago when I sold cameras, and I shot with them occasionally, but I couldn’t justify that much money for a camera, especially as a retail worker.
Finally when I turned 50, I got myself one as a birthday present, and it’s brought me more joy than I’d ever expected. Years later and I’m still in the honeymoon period. But mine doesn’t even have a red dot on the front; I don’t care if other people know what it is… Probably best if they don’t.
Am I loyal to certain makes? Yes, Volvo and Saab. I’ve also owned three Oldsmobile’s. Anyone else, not really.
The Autopian
This was my answer as well. Cars…. not so much. I used to be loyal to Honda, but only loosely.
Tesla’s woes aren’t just political, it’s just that you can’t ride your own coattails for this long without people losing interest. I mean, you basically do nothing for a decade and then “wow us” with the Cybertruck? Nah.
As groundbreaking and generally good as their cars have been, they never piqued my interested because the cars all follow the same exact formula, over and over, seemingly ignoring a lot of customers along the way. For example, a Model 3 wagon with some quasi-analog gauges and a more integrated screen?
I’ll bite my lip, take my tiki torch and khakis down to …. wherever it is you buy Teslas…and get my picture taken with Elon Musk himself. Ironically, of course.
I think it’s the other way round; in the early 90s, it was the Buffalo Bills that tried to trademark the term Choke™
Go Bills!
As a Dolphins fan at the time, I was really cheering for Houston because I was just sick of the Bills running the AFC every year (only to be trounced in the Superb Owl a few weeks later, but I still have to give them credit for consistency).
As someone who lived in Buffalo from 95-00, and wasn’t a Bills fan all that much, it was tough. Then Doug Flutie rolled in, and it got even more entertaining.
At least the sabres were decent then. If you are a hockey fan that is.
I LOOOOVED listening to the Sabres game. Zhitnik was awesome.
Same here!
Lego, because Mega Blocks sucked so hard
Brand loyalty is mostly a sham, but I still hold up a handful of brands as all-stars. The bar is pretty low, though — basically “generally do a good job and have never f*cked me over”
Publix grocery stores
Crutchfield electronics
Discover card/bank (at least until recently; Capital One just bought them so I’m winding that relationship down)
I take loyalty pretty seriously, and I love cars, so I firmly believe that brand loyalty in cars today is a losing position. Each individual car matters more than the brand that “created it.” However, I will look strongly at Honda again based on my experience with their reliability (despite a lot of low-quality materials, the expensive stuff doesn’t break).
I miss Publix since moving out of the south. Been craving a good pub sub lately….
Publix is slowly pricing themselves out of my grocery preference, plus I moved and now the closest ones are 25 miles away.
Used to love Crutchfield, but now I can get the same stuff at a better price and install kits are so complicated these days Crutchfield no longer gives them to you free when you order a car stereo.
Crutchfield will pre-wire the install kit for you for like $25. Totally worth it IMO, and I don’t think any other retailers offer this.
I got my start working on cars in general by installing car radios for myself and friend, and this was before the aftermarket wiring harnesses were available. I don’t have any problem wiring the radio and adapter harnesses together.
In fact, I usually use Posi-lock connectors so I can change radios out quickly as desired.
If you go to Publix randomly, then you’re a lot better off just using Walmart (for price; not quality…Walmart has very little variety, just a LOT of stuff. Like Costco.)
But they’re so aggressive with BOGO, that most of the time 90% of our items come from the BOGO list in any given week. Virtually ever major brand hits a deep discount at least once a month.
I refuse to go to Walmart for grocery shopping. In fact, I don’t go there very often at all (and it’s typically for oil and batteries because they are so much cheaper than even the auto parts stores) but now I order online and make them carry it out to my car because I hate going inside so much. Yes, I could do this with groceries, but I find shopping in a store much easier than shopping for groceries online.
Luckily I have a fairly cheap option (Food Lion) that has my town covered (there is a location 1 mile in either direction from my house. My main reason for going to Publix now (it is in the city I work in) is they have one medication I take for cheaper than anyone else, and the danishes in the bakery I love – I’ll stop in for one from time to time. I do pay attention to the BOGOs at publix and another store in the same city (Harris Teeter) which is pretty comparable to Publix in product and price (but not friendliness.)
I used to be loyal to credit unions and was a total shill for them, but the last one I was associated with dropped some essential services (“shared branch banking” for one) so I took the path of least resistance and opened CapitalOne check/sav accounts because I like their credit card, and there are plenty of physical branches (and ATMs) around in the rare event I need them.
I’ve been a member of a credit union for 30+ years. It (NC Local Government Employees Credit Union, LGFCU) was basically created so local government employees could use the same services as the NC State Employees Credit Union (SECU) – one of the largest in the country and with branches and ATMs all over the state of NC. It had to be done this way because they screwed up the charter of SECU and they couldn’t just add local gov employees.
So, up until earlier this year I just walked into any SECU branch and they handled banking business for me, I just had a different color card. Well, a couple of years ago SECU leadership got a wild hair up their ass and decided LGFCU needed to be independent of SECU and have been blowing smoke about how great ‘independance’ is going to be. Some examples of greatness – 9 branches across the entire state of NC, otherwise you have to do things online. Cash deposits at Wal-Mart and Dollar General, just where I want to walk into with 5k in cash after I’ve sold a car to make a deposit. Oh wait, there is a limit on daily cash deposits so I have to go 5 different days to make that entire deposit. Long lines with hours waits at the 9 branches (closest one is 30 minutes from me.) You get the point, it’s totally screwed up.
So shortly after ‘Independence Day’ I changed over to a local bank with free checking that has branches all over the state and one about 7 blocks from my house.
I dropped my credit union because:
A. Their savings rates were not competitive (1% when Ally was offering 4%)
B. They require me to physically come into a branch office within 5 days of a CD maturing to cash it out. I could buy it completely online but had to cash it out in person.
Anytime I have to physical go into a bank they have failed me as a customer.
Kirkland Signature. In the coming Corpo Wars I’ll fight for them.
Can we get Keanu to lead us as Johnny Signaturehand?
I love Kirkland products. The only shame is having to go to our single Costco for them (one that serves almost 2 million people because Costco are a bunch of cowards!). I buy most of my Kirkland stuff from Amazon because the crowds are like Disney 90% of the time.
I am super fortunate to work right near a Costco which is kinda on the outskirts of town and has a big parking lot. I’ve made it a game to shop there at lunch as quickly as possible. My record was 8 minutes from my office desk to Costco for a slab of Kirkland TP and back to my desk.
You need that much TP at work?
LOL no, this was for home consumption, although my office bathroom uses Kirkland TP too.
Pandemic, got a hot tip that a crapton of TP was dumped that morning and to get your butt over there before that opportunity got flushed away.
“Slab of Kirkland TP” for the win today.
What is it with Costco shoppers flocking to those stores? I can’t quit Costco because of the deals on a few staples and some occasional bigger ticket items but damn do I hate going there specifically because of the behavior of their customers. They act like they’re in Disney too!
Yes, there are those roughly 10% of Costco shoppers that go against the flow and weave their way through the other 90% that are all logically looping around from the entrance to the exit.
Tesla’s problems are the result of that old bugaboo, “accountability”. See, in a free society like ours, each of us is free to make decisions on who we associate with. This extends into the consumer world, where we are free to buy products from companies we like, and also free to refrain from buying products from companies we don’t like.
So this is “cancel culture”, whereby free Americans can decide who they like and who they don’t, and act accordingly. Many people today don’t think we should have this right, because it hurts their feelings when they act like assholes and people call them out for it. Musk and Trump both fall into this category.
Y’know, accountability.
It was such an eye roller a couple years ago when EM was peeved (and suing) companies for no longer advertising on Twatter. The oligarchy think’s it’s entitled to pick everyone else’s pockets. No thanks.
They probably feel entitled because they’ve been doing it without interruption since we formed hierarchical societies over 10,000 years ago.
Last year X sued a bunch of advertisers that organized a boycott of ads on X. Kind of funny considering how “free speech” and “$ is speech” are something we are supposed to believe in.