Wait. Is this saying she had 20 FCWs in a 23 mile drive!?
By my math it's two... 88.8/1000*23 = 2
I have similar feelings. I know for sure I would not order without being 100% up front with them. Just trying to be creative in a situation where Tesla continues to say cam upgrades are done based on SS. But you bring up a good point too - Tesla's clear lack of ethics and communication is not a reason to join that club.
The only question on the table at the moment is "can these be ordered?" I suspect they cannot, at least not in a timely manner.
That's exactly how I did it. I brought my car in for my initial appointment (which they didn't cancel at the time...); they came back to bring me the bad news: That they were not doing any camera upgrades yet and that the parts didn't exist yet.
I informed them that the parts did in fact exist (and had been available for several years...), and provided them with a parts list. I then asked them to order the parts for me and to re-schedule my appointment for a few weeks out. I said:
"Let me know when the parts arrive; hopefully you have a process to do the upgrades by then, but if not I'll probably just buy the parts and do the install myself". They wrote up my estimate for my next service visit for ~$880 (the cost of the parts, no labor). Once the parts came in, the tesla website had been updated, they were able to do the upgrade for "free", and updated my estimate and invoice to $0 accordingly.
So my situation was a little different, as I was trying to make some progress before they had a formal process in place. But if you want to try something like this now, I'd just be totally upfront with the SC.. say something like:
1) The website says that "Invitations will be sent first to vehicles with the highest safety scores containing Intel Atom® infotainment processors", but that several owners with lower safety scores than you had already received their invites and you had not yet despite waiting months
2) That given the part shortages and long lead times, you want to make sure you get in the queue by placing a firm order for the needed parts in system so that you can get the retrofit completed as soon as possible
3) To do that, you'd like the SC to order the parts on your behalf, and once they arrive to schedule a visit to have the SC install them on your vehicle