Photo: Screenshot
Just in case you didn't know this already, allow me to give you a piece of very important advice: don't ever shop online late at night. You can browse, you can add to cart, but never hit that check out button before morning or you might regret it.
One Reddit user from Germany nicknamed Ballon-Man found this out the hard way after placing 27 orders for a Tesla Model 3 on the company's website. That's 26 more than he intended to. The combined value? A mere €1,404,000 ($1,576,886).
The man and his father were looking for a new car to replace one of the family's current vehicles, an aging Ford Kuga. They weren't specifically thinking about a Tesla - or any other electric car for that matter - but since Germany has recently doubled its EV incentives, the prospect of ordering one suddenly sounded a lot better.
According to his Reddit post, the initial plan was to wait until July 1st to take advantage of a VAT reduction, but then decided to act quickly fearing Tesla would change the price anyway to make up for that. So the pair sat down in front of their computer at around 9:00 PM and placed an order for a base Model 3 with the Autopilot option. Or so they thought.
Their first attempt was met by the classic message informing them the order could not have been processed due to some payment problems. They quickly searched the Internet to see whether other people were having the same problem, and it turned out that they did. Determined to have their Model 3 as quickly as possible, they tried again. And again.
It was 11 PM when they finally received the confirmation message after 26 failed attempts. Their excitement was cut short once they accessed their account on the Tesla website and saw that each one of those presumably failed attempts had actually been very successful and Tesla was expecting them to pay 1.4 million euros.
No biggie, right? You just cancel 26 of those orders and you wait to have just the one delivered to you. Except Tesla's policy is to have a €100 non-refundable order fee, meaning their base Model 3 with Autopilot would cost €54,600 (with the added €2,600 lost in non-refundable fees) instead of the usual €52,000.
The man is hopeful the company will understand the situation and let them off the hook for the late-night mishap without having to pay the €2,600 fee. Hopefully, Ballon-Man will keep us informed over how this situation unfolds.
The man and his father were looking for a new car to replace one of the family's current vehicles, an aging Ford Kuga. They weren't specifically thinking about a Tesla - or any other electric car for that matter - but since Germany has recently doubled its EV incentives, the prospect of ordering one suddenly sounded a lot better.
According to his Reddit post, the initial plan was to wait until July 1st to take advantage of a VAT reduction, but then decided to act quickly fearing Tesla would change the price anyway to make up for that. So the pair sat down in front of their computer at around 9:00 PM and placed an order for a base Model 3 with the Autopilot option. Or so they thought.
Their first attempt was met by the classic message informing them the order could not have been processed due to some payment problems. They quickly searched the Internet to see whether other people were having the same problem, and it turned out that they did. Determined to have their Model 3 as quickly as possible, they tried again. And again.
It was 11 PM when they finally received the confirmation message after 26 failed attempts. Their excitement was cut short once they accessed their account on the Tesla website and saw that each one of those presumably failed attempts had actually been very successful and Tesla was expecting them to pay 1.4 million euros.
No biggie, right? You just cancel 26 of those orders and you wait to have just the one delivered to you. Except Tesla's policy is to have a €100 non-refundable order fee, meaning their base Model 3 with Autopilot would cost €54,600 (with the added €2,600 lost in non-refundable fees) instead of the usual €52,000.
The man is hopeful the company will understand the situation and let them off the hook for the late-night mishap without having to pay the €2,600 fee. Hopefully, Ballon-Man will keep us informed over how this situation unfolds.
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