@Snowy77, appreciate it if you can give more detail what the "On Hold" process is. Do you mean that when you refused the delivery offer, your car was put "On hold" and then you need to wait for your next turn (and you don't know when it will be? Do you need to explicitly release your hold? And, what will happen when the hold is released?
Just speaking from experience here- The estimated date you see when you first order is a sort of 'target' date for you to get the car. This is what I'd probably consider to be the organic delivery date. Tesla (depending on availability and a lot of ethereal factors) sometimes draw your numbers in a lottery and you'll end up getting a call or your ETA shifting on your account. If you're ready for a car this is awesome! If not, sometimes can be a bit too soon especially if you have stuff going on or simply not ready.
Two ways to delay an order.. the NOT advised way is to leave your order open, and keep rejecting cars... don't do this, once or twice but more than that and... well, probably not good to find out
The preferred way is to put a match hold until date X. You do this by speaking to Tesla and explicitly ask for a match hold until say, Q3 or Q4 if you happy to be non specific. Then you will see a message on your account .... ON HOLD until.... September 28th (or something). Rule of thumb is if you're within your organic ETA there are no issues.. it's if you ask for a match hold until 6 months after your original ETA they will likely cancel your order, give you your deposit back, and ask you to reorder when you're ready.. losing you a place in the queue.
We notice that the first month of the quarter is shipping month.. so it looks like Tesla fulfil local market during the last month of the Quarter. So we generally see a gap; a no delivery gap during the first month of the quarter when ships are in transit. April for instance, no arrivals in Southampton; BUT you betcha there are ships incoming from Shanghai from the start of April. Transit time of about a month. I have an ETA of May 9th - 21st or something, but this should coincide with a very early May delivery....
Anyway back to match hold. When you have a match hold, you're still in the queue (as advised by a Tesla rep). The nearer your organic date is the higher in the queue you are. You don't lose your place as you order date will keep you good. So if you saw March 2023, likely your car will be shipped and matched sometime in January. You need to stop the match hold or ask for the hold to lift sometime in January. This way you should be allocated something during the February shipping.. You could get lucky and Tesla will call you to say you have a match, but it's at this point you can choose to take it or decline, and you'll get matched again in the next ship.
In short, try to lift a match hold at the end of the shipping cycle the quarter before, if you want to snag a car at the start of the next Quarter. I.e. February for a May delivery (like me) - (no cars shipped from Shanghai in March, so February is too late for the Q1 deliveries, but plenty of time to be in line for Q2s).
I'd start here but keep in touch with your Tesla rep. I left mine a little too late and missed March... Since there are no deliveries in April, I have snagged the first of the Q2 ships
It's a friends birthday today, so I have had way too much to drink.. hope I sort of make sense. I'll probably re-read this tomorrow and WTF myself lol