Good Luck Trying To Get Your Entire Tesla Roadster Deposit Back

I feel like you could write a book on the saga of the second-generation Tesla Roadster. The car was all the rage when it debuted in 2017, with Tesla promising some (at the time) incredible specs, like a 1.9-second 0-60 mph time, a range of 620 miles, and a top speed of over 250 mph. A year later, CEO Elon Musk even promised the Roadster would have “~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly throughout the car.”

The second-gen Roadster was supposed to enter production in 2020. Obviously, that didn’t happen. In the eight years since the car’s unveiling, Musk has, year after year, promised the Roadster would eventually see the light of day. Last year, he updated the company’s claimed specs, saying it would now hit 60 mph in under one second, and earlier this year, he promised plans for the “most epic demo” by the end of 2025. Many believe this demo will involve the Roadster, though Musk himself hasn’t confirmed this.

Whether the car will actually appear in customers’ driveways by the end of the year is anyone’s guess. To reserve your spot for a Roadster 2.0, you have to give Tesla an immediate $5,000 deposit, and then wire the company another $45,000 within the next 10 days. Tesla’s website advertises the deposit as fully refundable. That’s also true of the reservation agreement form, which says the same thing but with more words:

Cancellation. Until you enter into the Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement, your Reservation may be cancelled at any time through your Tesla Account and for any reason, by either you or us, in which case you will receive a full refund of your Reservation Payment. The refund will be returned to the original for [sic] of payment. If the original account is no longer open or the funds are returned, Tesla will issue the refund via check in the name of the Reservation holder only.

But that’s apparently not what happened to Marques Brownlee. The YouTuber known best for his tech reviews took to his podcast to document the saga of canceling one of his Tesla Roadster orders. While most Tesla orders can be canceled via Tesla’s app, it seems it’s a bit more difficult for the two-seat coupe.

If you log into your account and you have a reservation, typically, if you don’t want to go through with it, there’s a cancel button. But with the Roadster… you go to manage your reservation, and there is no cancel button next to the Roadster. You have to go in and hit manage.

And when you hit manage, it goes, here’s a phone number, here’s an email address. And you call that phone number. I actually did this for a couple of days and just got voicemail, which was great. And I finally got through to someone, and it was somebody in vehicle sales. I asked them if they could cancel my Roadster reservation, and there was a really long pause, and they were like, “A Roadster?”

As Brownlee tells it, after being put on hold, being tossed between representatives, and having to call back again after two weeks, Tesla finally promised Brownlee his money back. Except he says he’s not getting all of it back. Brownlee specified he’ll be getting back the $45,000 wire, but not the original $5,000 reservation. What’s up with that?

[Update: Brownlee says he eventually got his $5,000 back, details below.]

Brownlee isn’t the only one. Mark McCann, another prominent YouTuber, published a video earlier this year documenting the saga of his £4,000 deposit that he hasn’t been able to get back, even after multiple attempts and even a visit to a Tesla service center. Despite asking for the money back, Tesla allegedly later asked him for an additional £185,000 to secure his spot for a Founder’s Edition Roadster.

I’d reach out to Tesla for an explanation, but Tesla dissolved its PR department back in 2020, and is famously impossible to reach out to regarding questions like this. After four years of operating like this, the company finally posted a job listing for “Vehicle Communications Manager” on LinkedIn last year, with a description of duties that seems to involve dealing with the press. But it’s unclear if anyone’s been hired for that job, and if they were, I still have no way of contacting them. If you’re the PR person for Tesla, hit me up!

As I mentioned before, Brownlee isn’t going to go Roadster-less when (if?) the car eventually comes out. He still has one car reserved, but he’s not paying anything for it. The car was awarded to him via Tesla’s now-dead referral program, which allowed buyers to input a referral code for people who recommended the car to them. Brownlee was able to garner enough referral bonuses to earn an entirely free Roadster, plus another 52 percent off a second Roadster. It was the second example, which he had to put a deposit down for, that he canceled.

If everything that they’re saying is still true, and I actually take Tesla’s word for it, I will still be getting, for free, one of the first thousand [Roadsters].

I just canceled the half-free one to get my 50 grand back, and I’ll just still get a free Roadster. Instead of paying half price for two Roadsters, I’ll pay zero dollars for one.

That’s exactly what I’d do if I were in Brownlee’s position. Personally, I wouldn’t want Tesla to have any of my money at this point, and five grand is a lot of money. He could involve a lawyer to get the remainder of the deposit back, but that might jeopardize his free car. That $5,000 is ultimately a small sacrifice (that is, if the car ever comes out).

[Update: After this article was published, I discovered Brownlee had issued an update about his refund to X, claiming to have received the additional $5,000 back from Tesla through a separate wire transfer after a week of waiting. I need to start remembering to check people’s social media more often. -BS]

Top graphic images: Tesla; WVFRM Podcast/YouTube

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