Tesla Referral Program Lives On (Till 2016, At Least), With Some Changes
Originally published on EV Obsession.
Despite the potential legal issues in California concerning its pilot referral program, Tesla appears to have gone ahead and extended (restarted is maybe a better word) the program until at least the end of 2015, going by recent reports.
There do appear to be some changes, though (perhaps owing to the possible legal challenge, which follows complaints from the car dealership associations in California). The $1000 matching referral has simply been changed to: $1000 off for the buyer, and the referrer getting access to “prizes and giveaways.” The “double referral” offer for Virginia and Ohio sales appears to have been nixed as well.
Regardless of the issues in California, the company seems to have made the changes partly due to concerns about people selling their referral codes.
“Please note that we may withhold credits, discounts or other awards where we believe customers are acting in bad faith or otherwise acting contrary to the intent of this program. To be clear, commercializing or otherwise selling referral codes is not appropriate, and we will not honor such codes. We cannot cover every nefarious scenario, nor will we attempt to, but we do promise to be fair and reasonable.”
Thanks to “Sasmania” on the Tesla Motors Club forum for this. And for the interesting comment that followed the posting:
This seems to be new language for this round. Does anyone know if buying Google Adwords for “Tesla Referral Code” etc is OK or not? I noticed a lot of the previous leaders were doing so last round. Personally, I didn’t think that was really any benefit to Tesla… all that’s doing is picking off people who were about to buy anyway, it’s not like that creates new demand. But hey, if you had the $ to spend on buying ads and took the risk then more power to you I guess. I just wish they would spell out a little more clearly what’s OK and what’s not. Of course, this time, it’s a lot more risky to spend $ on ads since the $1000 credit is gone and there’s really only 1 large prize with cash value.
Hmm. I don’t know why, but I actually wasn’t aware of this. That certainly brings a new light to the changes that were made.
Image via TMC forum member “Reeler.”
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