Tesla Referrals Through Mobile App

[ssrajputev]

I got my car recently and have been playing around with the car app.

I noticed as of yesterday, there's a new field for "Referrals." However, when I click it, it says, "Error. Unable to Connect to My Tesla."

I thought this would tell me how many people have been use my referral code, but the error message came up. I couldn't figure out how to find this info in my main "My Tesla" account online either. All I can see is my referral link, how many days left to use my referral link, and the general summary and description of the referral program.

 

[ssrajputev]

I posted the screenshots from my app.

 

[Gwgan]

That button gives you in-app access to your contacts so you can invite friends to buy a car. First click on the “choose friends” button but then “allow” access to Contacts or do that in Settings (on iOS). Select from among your contacts and then an email is created which incudes your referral code and with those invited in the BCC .

 

[javawolfpack]

@ssrajputev my guess is you are running Android 6.0+? In Android 6.0 developers have to prompt you for access to your contacts and get permission at that point; however, it seems Tesla did not do this correctly (or develop it for Android 6.0+ in mind) and so you have to go into app settings and allow it in the permissions access to your contacts. This is a tricky bit of code to do right and something that I challenged my students this Spring with (did not make them happy as only like 2% of Android devices were 6.0+ at that point).

This is a change to the way Android does permissions. So even if you install a very permissive app you can selectively choose which "risky" permissions you want to grant an app when they are asked for by the app. This helps prevent it doing something malicious in the background without having to ask for permissions first.

 

[rog]

The Android version doesn't seem to work that way (at least for now). I always get the "can't reach My Tesla at the moment" error, no other action possible.

@javawolfpack I had the same thought. However, the app has permission to access my contacts, and it still doesn't let me do anything else than confirming the error message. I can see the button to "Chose Friends", but I can't push it.

 

[javawolfpack]

I'm with @rog I just checked... all the permissions are granted, but I get the same error message on my Nexus 6P (sadly not on Android 7.0 yet... )

 

[rog]

Besides that problem, I once more find it interesting that they can add UI changes and functionality to the app without releasing a new version. That button only started to appear today (or maybe late yesterday) - definitely no app update has happened on my phone for several weeks now.

 

[javawolfpack]

Besides that problem, I once more find it interesting that they can add UI changes and functionality to the app without releasing a new version. That button only started to appear today (or maybe late yesterday) - definitely no app update has happened on my phone for several weeks now.

Likely has always been there, but hidden... and an API call it regularly makes to Tesla toggled it to be visible now. My guess since it's not working that someone did this by accident or forgot to turn on the section of code that does the acquisition of contacts.

 

[ssrajputev]

@ssrajputev my guess is you are running Android 6.0+? In Android 6.0 developers have to prompt you for access to your contacts and get permission at that point; however, it seems Tesla did not do this correctly (or develop it for Android 6.0+ in mind) and so you have to go into app settings and allow it in the permissions access to your contacts. This is a tricky bit of code to do right and something that I challenged my students this Spring with (did not make them happy as only like 2% of Android devices were 6.0+ at that point).

This is a change to the way Android does permissions. So even if you install a very permissive app you can selectively choose which "risky" permissions you want to grant an app when they are asked for by the app. This helps prevent it doing something malicious in the background without having to ask for permissions first.

Yes, I have a Google Nexus 6. I get the latest Android updates right away and am running 6.0.1.

 

[ssrajputev]

The Android version doesn't seem to work that way (at least for now). I always get the "can't reach My Tesla at the moment" error, no other action possible.

@javawolfpack I had the same thought. However, the app has permission to access my contacts, and it still doesn't let me do anything else than confirming the error message. I can see the button to "Chose Friends", but I can't push it.

Yeah, that's the exact same issue on my Nexus 6.

 

[ssrajputev]

Does anyone know about my other question? How do I see how many people have used my referral code?

 

[Chopr147]

Samsung Galaxy 7 and yes noticed that yesterday so of course I clicked it "My Tesla could not be reached" is what I get. NOTHING Tesla does gets changed w/o TMC noticing

 

[ssrajputev]

Samsung Galaxy 7 and yes noticed that yesterday so of course I clicked it "My Tesla could not be reached" is what I get. NOTHING Tesla does gets changed w/o TMC noticing

Of course!!

 

[Gwgan]

Does anyone know about my other question? How do I see how many people have used my referral code?

That is on your tesla/mytesla/profile page
(Where I have only 1 )

 

[javawolfpack]

That is on your tesla/mytesla/profile page
(Where I have only 1 )

That's better than me I have 0. My guess still is there is a bug in the code that's leading to the button not working on the app currently. As doesn't seem constrained to phones running a specific version of Android.

 

[ssrajputev]

That is on your tesla/mytesla/profile page
(Where I have only 1 )

Really? Mine doesn't show anything, so I'm assuming I have 0. I can just see my referral code, how many days are left to use the referral code, and the general terms of the program.

 

[rog]

The latest app update has fixed the referral function.

 

[ssrajputev]

The latest app update has fixed the referral function.

Thanks. I just checked it on my app, and it does let me choose friends for the referral program.

But, I still can't figure out how to see in My Tesla if anyone has even used my referral code.