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I can see why Tesla has made this move and wants referrals to have a personal touch...to be used among friends not the public at large. Otherwise Tesla could unilaterally give a $1000 off on anyone's online purchase...or just publish a $1000 "coupon" on their website for anyone to use; that's more or less what people are doing by posting codes everywhere for essentially strangers to take advantage of. Just don't think it's the personal touch Tesla wants to foster and it's their program to manage.
 
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With publication of your referral link now being specifically against the rules, I wonder if that has been the case since the beginning of the year. Tesla's rules listed are particularly cryptic, but with this clarification it makes sense.

I was a link publisher, but have now taken down all mention of my link. Buyers are welcome to e-mail or PM me with their questions. I typically get a few e-mails a day from buyers so getting to 4 referrals without publication should be easy.
 
To all those spamming this thread with your referral codes, I would suggest you stop. At least until we're clear what Tesla's new policies are going to be. It appears that Tesla does not approve of anyone publishing their referral codes and wants the personal touch. Those who publish their codes here might find them banned.

Forcing the "personal touch" does favor the more wealthy among Tesla owners. If the Model 3 were available and if the referral credit extended to the M3, I could probably get 20 referrals a year. My socio-economic peers are the demographic ripe for the M3. I know few people who can stretch their budget to an MS or MX and I would feel guilty talking someone into more car than they can afford.

I don't anticipate that the referral program is going to extend to the Model 3 for a while (maybe around 2020) and when it does, the benefits probably won't be as big as they are for the Models S and X. Somebody will reap the benefits of selling the 50K MS and MX in the next 6 months, but it probably won't be many of us who primarily talk about the car online and don't have much opportunity for face to face "selling".
 
I can see why Tesla has made this move and wants referrals to have a personal touch...to be used among friends not the public at large. Otherwise Tesla could unilaterally give a $1000 off on anyone's online purchase...or just publish a $1000 "coupon" on their website for anyone to use; that's more or less what people are doing by posting codes everywhere for essentially strangers to take advantage of. Just don't think it's the personal touch Tesla wants to foster and it's their program to manage.
Whether or not it's what corporate wanted, my understanding was that if you ordered through an Owner Advisor and didn't have a referral link, they would find you one. Perhaps Bjorn's (lol). (And I'm joking.)

In any case, I doubt anyone that really wants one won't be able to find one. The whole program needs to be clarified as to what is fair use (what is a 'friend', etc.).
 
Whether or not it's what corporate wanted, my understanding was that if you ordered through an Owner Advisor and didn't have a referral link, they would find you one. Perhaps Bjorn's (lol). (And I'm joking.)

I have heard this too. Not very fair that Tesla will unfairly help an owner. Would especially suck if one of them won the free car. It would be easy to hit 20 if you had an insider pimping your referral link.
 
Do we really believe that Tesla sells cars to anyone without the referral discount?

I think if Tesla truly limited the referral discount to "real friends" (like they started to do at the start, asking some buyers for the names, email addresses of the referring owner, which didn't last long), that would have the exact opposite effect and many many people with the "broad distribution channels" would/could stop all this free advertising Tesla is getting, exposing so many new people to the brand and awesomeness of Tesla.

I have plenty of friends that can afford a Tesla, but none of them are actually interested in buying one, and I've tried! Does Elon think we all have infinite numbers of well-off friends to continue to market his cars to?

When you're Elon Musk, the answer is "of course!" but that doesn't hold true for most people.
 
When I was in the ordering process, my OA said if I didn't have a referral she'd give me one from one of her former customers and also offered to do the same with my referral once I purchased.

When I purchased my Model S about a year ago, I made the order from the website without talking to anyone at the store. When I was assigned an owner adviser and he introduced himself over email, he did not mention a referral code at all. It seemed that he (and Tesla) were perfectly happy with processing the order without the discount. Luckily I tripped across the referral program on this forum before my 7 days between order and confirmation was up and I emailed him in a panic to see if he can apply it.

I don't know what would have happened if I didn't find the link but I can tell you I would have been pretty darn pissed to be the one guy who didn't get the $1,000 off :)

Knowing what I know now I would have preferred not to have my purchase count towards some random person's referral. Instead, I would have used a code from someone here that helped answer my questions. I would hope someone would do the same for me.
 
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Just got this e-mail and wasn't sure if this is new or an already existing policy:

Hi xxx, Thank you for your participation in the Tesla Referral Program. Every referral you make helps to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, and we appreciate your support. The intent of the program is to provide owners with something special to give to their friends. As such, commercializing, advertising, publishing, mass distributing, or selling referral codes is not appropriate. We kindly ask that you remove your code from any broadly distributed channels. We will be deactivating any referral codes which do not comply with these guidelines. Thank you for your continued support and understanding. Best Regards, The Tesla Team"

Does this mean you can't advertise it on YT or put it in your signature on TMC?

I'm certain there is a group of potential customers how don't know any Tesla owners. Since mass distributing of referral links is forbidden, how can they get one? Why does Tesla punish them?
 
I'm certain there is a group of potential customers how don't know any Tesla owners. Since mass distributing of referral links is forbidden, how can they get one? Why does Tesla punish them?

Come to a forum like this and PM someone. Pick someone randomly or preferably pick someone you credit for being helpful to you and others. Watch a YouTube video and if you liked it, found it useful in helping you make a decision to buy, contact the person directly. Messages in direct person to person emails, private messages, Facebook messages, etc. is not considered a broadly distributed channel.

I don't think Tesla is saying you have to know the person intimately. Someone earlier in the thread made a good point, if they wanted to just give $1,000 off, they could just do that from Tesla.com.
 
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Come to a forum like this and PM someone. Pick someone randomly or preferably pick someone you credit for being helpful to you and others. Watch a YouTube video and if you liked it, found it useful in helping you make a decision to buy, contact the person directly. Messages in direct person to person emails, private messages, Facebook messages, etc. is not considered a broadly distributed channel.

I don't think Tesla is saying you have to know the person intimately. Someone earlier in the thread made a good point, if they wanted to just give $1,000 off, they could just do that from Tesla.com.
All of that sounds eminently sensible. As opposed to the 'friends and family' language which seems like way too far in the other direction. The 'Now You Know' folks said something like it yesterday, talking about how 'everyone we talk about Teslas with is a member of our family' and they weren't broadcasting their code on stickers on their cars, and the like. Okay, fine, if that works. But Tesla sure sounded like they meant in the 'Amazon Prime' sharing sense, where you are supposed to be in the same household. Lol...
 
I don't get it. It was all fine and Tesla sold many cars through all those YouTubers putting the word out and pretty much provide free advertising for Tesla. One grumpy man's tweet and all of it is suddenly bad? It makes no sense. The referral program went on for so long. It was a win-win for Tesla and people coming up with creative and positive content about Tesla to get their referrals out.

I have sold many Teslas to friends and acquaintances that asked about my car and got to test drive mine. It was at least 6 or 7 that bought their Tesla after I convinced them. All of that was before the referral program and I never got anything out of it. I finally started a YouTube recently and I put my code up there and I don't feel one bit bad or subconscious about it. I was an early adopter, helped them sell more cars and I'm still helping them.
 
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