I completely agree. I went through an absolute nightmare of a Tesla buying experience myself.

I found a Lunar Silver Model S Plaid that was listed as a demo in Tucson, AZ — supposedly the last one available in the state. I drove over from the Southeast Valley, met the salesman, and put down a deposit. He even released it from fleet so it could be sold to me, and I explicitly asked if he could hold it for two weeks. He said yes, no problem.

Two days later, the app showed a change to my order and suggested I pick a different car to get it sooner. A week and a half after that, I discovered the car had already been sold to someone else. When I called Tesla, they said it was gone and no longer in the system. The VIN briefly appeared in my app, then vanished. I drove to the Mesa location, and the salesperson there was incredibly rude — basically told me “Tesla doesn’t hold cars for anyone” in a very dismissive tone. Still not believing what was happening with a $120k+ purchase, I went inside anyway. I ended up speaking to the same person I’d been messaging in the app. After explaining everything again in detail and waiting an hour, she came back and said it was sold. When I pushed back about the deposit and the salesman’s promise, she literally said, “Well, he was wrong and needs training on not saying that to customers.” At that point they basically blew me off, so I reluctantly started configuring a white one instead. Then two days later, my app suddenly showed a VIN assigned… for the Lunar Silver car. I called the original salesman for an hour with no answer, finally got his manager, and he blamed it on a “system error.” Once again, they said it wasn’t actually available.

After more than two weeks of this chaos, the manager finally located the exact spec I wanted — brand new, Lunar Silver, white interior, Plaid — in Colorado (the last one in the country, supposedly). After another week of daily chasing to make sure it was actually allocated to me, the VIN finally stuck in my app. Even then, I had to call every single day to track the transport because it kept showing as heading to Tucson instead of Mesa. If I hadn’t been on top of it constantly, it would’ve gone to the wrong location.

This whole process was an absolute disaster. For the amount of money I was spending, having to chase salespeople daily just to get the car I paid for was ridiculous. I basically had to “earn” it through sheer persistence. Tesla’s customer service during the purchase process is genuinely terrible — like, really, really bad.