Tesla is once more axing its referral program, which allowed owners to earn prizes by referring recent buyers to purchase a Tesla.
For a few years now, Tesla has offered some type of program to permit current owners to profit from evangelizing the brand.
It began early on, when Tesla owners recognized that that they had “sold” several Teslas to their friends via test drives, conversations, and so on, and owners asked Tesla to implement a scheme to offer them referral rewards.
The program was originally launched in 2015, and has evolved repeatedly since then. It began off as a direct $1,000 reward, but later became various tier systems, point systems, and so on.
A buyer would use a current owner’s referral link to position an order, and in return the client would get some type of profit (a reduction, some free supercharging, or some free FSD access), and the referrer would get credit towards some type of prize.
At one point, Tesla even promised free or discounted next-gen Roadsters, and ended up promising making a gift of around 80 of them – or no less than, promising to, every time that automobile (or is it even a automobile?) may or may not finally get made.
Unsurprisingly, after promising such substantial prizes, Tesla substantially reduced the prizes available in 2019, and later ended the program for every little thing except solar roof in 2021.
But the subsequent 12 months, Tesla brought the referral program back, though again in a more limited form. This version would give buyers either temporary free supercharging, temporary FSD access, temporary premium connectivity, or $500 off a brand new vehicle (depending on if you purchased the vehicle), and referrers would get credits that might be redeemed in Tesla’s shop for merchandise or accessories.
It also occasionally offered special prizes like accelerated Cybertruck delivery, invites to the Cybertruck delivery event, or entries into vehicle sweepstakes that might be purchased with referral credits.
However, all of that is ending now, on April 30th. Tesla announced today that the referral program can be shut down in all markets on that date.
Tesla has not yet updated the legalese on its referral page, so we don’t know the specifics yet of how it’s going to be retired. Orders made before April 30th should qualify for credits if delivered after April 30th, and referral credits already earned could also be redeemable after that date (Sawyer Merritt says each of these items can be true, but we don’t know his source for that). Given that credits earned beforehand do have an expiry date, we expect that Tesla can have to honor them until their expiry date, but some rewards may disappear before those expiry dates come.
Credit : electrek.co
