One would think that a day scheduled with a chocolate factory tour complete with an all you can eat chocolate buffet would be the perfect day. However, after waking up for the second day in a row at a luxury hotel with no hot water (yes we all took cold showers for 2 days in row in an expensive luxury hotel) our day took a turn for the worse. When the valet delivered our car, which we named Cow Belle for its multiple meanings: cowbells pervasive in Switzerland and cowbell reference to Elon Musk, he had some bad news.
He had backed Cow Belle into a pole while parking the car in the charging spot. How this can happen in a car that has audible and visual alerts complete with lots of red colors to STOP and with a backup video camera is a mystery to us all.
The blemished left rear bumper had an impression left on the rubberized coating. Not major. But damaging a car is a horrible feeling…particularly when it is a rental car, and even more so when it is an expensive Tesla Model S. The hotel (Fairmont Le Montreux Palace) took full responsibility for the accident and fortunately there was a EuropCar office right in the hotel. We made sure we had documentation and everyone was notified to settle the issue immediately and ultimately when we returned the car we were not held responsible, so our experience with EuropCar was very good. In fact, if you followed along with our other blog posts (see blog post “Low Tire Pressure Warning Prevents Flat Tire”) you will know that we also had an incident with a screw in the tire. In this case, EuropCar directly paid the Tesla Service Center for replacement of the tire. High marks for EuropCar and Tesla. The hotel gave us a discount for not having had hot water (others were complaining as well) and in the end also did not charge us for 3 days of parking (usually 45 CHF/day).
Soon we were on our way to the chocolate factory, Maison Cailler, in the beautifully scenic city of Broc where we enjoyed a unique animated tour with a choco-buffet at the end.
In the parking lot of Maison Cailler we saw an antique 1920 Bugatti car which was also on a Swiss Alps Tour, complete with a decal like ours. What a contrast!
We also saw a Twizzy!
Full from chocolates and with bags full of chocolates to bring home to share with our friends and colleagues, we were on our way to visit some more superchargers, old medievil cities (Fribourg) and waterfalls (Rhine Falls).
Tesla Driving 
Great ecperience. I congratulate you . You and your wife are more than excellent personsso all of you drserve the best
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Thank you Pablo.
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Lovely post and glad your incident with the car ended on a happy note. We visited Maison Cailler earlier this year and the kids really enjoyed it. Because we were there with the Chocolate Train excursion – wrote about it on my blog – we couldn’t take the class but I think that would have made the trip even more special. Cheers
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