Tesla Pulls The Rug On Customers Who Scored $80 Model Y Leases

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Tesla has repeatedly made waves as it has slashed the price of its EVs time and again. This has won it new customers and angered some existing owners who have seen their resale values plummet. In any case, a recent slip-up by the EV automaker has left some new potential customers perturbed as a new offer wasn’t as good as it seemed.

The news comes to us from one Steve Fowler, a self-confessed “car and tech geek” based in the UK. Earlier this week, Steve found a rocking deal on Tesla’s UK website. He saw the new Model Y available for lease for just £66 ($83 USD) a month, with just £993 ($1,260 USD) down. For two years with 10,000 miles a year, he’d be getting into a new electric whip for just £2577 ($3,270) USD.

Who could resist getting to drive a brand-new EV for the price of an old Corolla? Of course, it sounds too good to be true, and that proved to be the case for Steve.

Despite the initial promise, clicking through to lock in the deal revealed it wasn’t so special. The order confirmation page requested a more typical lease fee of £399 ($506 USD) a month. Not bad, but not the absolute bargain Steve was hoping for. Still, he wondered if Tesla might be forced to honor the original deal.

Alas, that wasn’t the case. A day later, Steve found his order canceled, along with a short apology from Tesla for the confusion. The automaker noted its error, which resulted in the webpage displaying “incorrect finance options” to be displayed. He was duly notified that his £200 order fee ($253 USD) would be refunded in a few working days.

Steve wasn’t the only one who spotted the hot deal. Londoner Helen Wakerly also hoped to secure a Model Y, also making it all the way to the order confirmation stage. She was eager to secure a Tesla Model Y for £80 a month. Despite her eagerness, she suspected the deal was too good from the drop.

While the site “confirmed” her order, she was similarly left disappointed a short while later when the offer was rescinded. “It doesn’t sit right with me that they can so badly misrepresent the costs with zero repercussions to them,” Helen posted on Twitter. Others posted similar tales of woe, too.

Fair play to Steve and Helen for trying to lock in the red-hot deal. Spending less than $4,000 over two years to drive a brand-new car would be pretty sweet, overall. Alas, Tesla would be surely losing a great deal of money in that case, so it’s no surprise the mistaken offer wasn’t honored.

Image credits: Tesla

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41 thoughts on “Tesla Pulls The Rug On Customers Who Scored $80 Model Y Leases”

  3. About 2 months ago Kia was leasing brand new Kona EVs for 800 dollars ish down and total monthly at 213. This is for a nicely equipped version and the $800 down included the first month payment. 24 month lease. I was talking my brother into buying a new Bolt EUV while they were still around but this Kona lease deal was too good to pass up. Unlike the Tesla BS this was legit. He’s driving the leased Kona day right now,

        1. Yup, we have two of the worst candidates possible.
          Vote your values, belief’s, morals and wallet in no particular order.

          Just remember, there is no such thing as ‘government money’ – only money it takes from others.

          Annnd, the government likes to spend money it doesn’t hav,e so our grandkids can pay the bills.

          https://usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
          $34 Trillion and counting. 89% of GDP.
          or
          $3.7 Trillion if you’re from the UK, which is 109% of GDP.

      1. Hey, you had your chance to teach us filthy rebels a lesson, but failed in 1812-1814. And don’t tell me anything about that tosser Napoleon. YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE AND YOU MUFFED IT!!!

        1. It’s why I switched sides and moved to the USA. That and I can’t stand the taste of Tea…
          Plus I like a good steak, and you can’t get good steak over there, like you can’t get good fish n chips over here.

          1. Welcome to the Dark Side…we have cookies! And there’s a few places in the Pacific Northwest for some fish and chips, but nothing like what y’all have back in merry ol’ England!

        2. Yup, and have to add my very corny joke that I’ll never, ever get sick of:
          “Man, for some reason I can NEVER remember what the hell year it was when they had the War of 1812…I give up, I don’t think I’ll ever remember…”
          Actually I’m so glad they happened to mark what year it was or NONE of us would EVER remember…geniuses!
          I’ll see myself out…
          Happy 4th of July!!!

  5. And yet, if the error is in their favor:

    “Thank you for reaching out to Kunkleman Chevrolet [insert whatever dealer here]. We appreciate you bringing this error to our attention. A member of our staff will be with you to help with resolution.”

    /proceeds to get no further response for 2 weeks, minimum

  6. I have to wonder whether this was a mistake at all or a scheme for raising money from nothing.

    Customers were notified that their order fee would be refunded in a few days. Meanwhile, Tesla gets to show that cash on their books and collect a few days interest on the money before the refund.

    May not sound like much per transaction, but that’s how Ross Perot built his fortune. He ridiculously low-balled a bid to process government payroll checks for the US government. The government would transfer the payroll funds to an account controlled by Perot’s company a certain amount of days ahead of pay days. The company then sat on those funds for few days while they collected interest, then, on schedule, disbursed government employee checks. The interest stayed with the company and, because of the sheer volume of government employees, amounted to more income than any company would have received by contract alone.

    Now, Tesla doesn’t have that scale of customers plunking down a few hundred in deposits, but free money is free money and until their shenanigans and real deficiencies drive a large number of buyers away, what a great way to fleece a few bucks from people.

    1. That’s also how the god forsaken ACH system in this country works. You initiate a transfer, and *poof* the money is instantly gone from your bank account. Then 3-5 business days later it shows up in the other account. There is no longer any technical reason for this delay, they simply make a ton of money off the floating interest.

      2. I learned of this trick of finance late in life but now i see it everywhere.
        You can imagine my surprise that we now have almost instant transfers between private bank accounts (for context im in australia).
        I’m waiting for something to go wrong but so far none of my buyers have had to wait

    2. I mean it’s possible, but TSLA generally carries about 15-30 billion in cash. High yield accounts get about 5% annual interest right now. If they hold $200 for a full week they get about 19 cents of interest.

      So let’s say it’s an intentional scheme and 1,000,000 people bite. That’s 200,000,000 TSLA temporarily holds and $190K they get to keep. Even if you assume all 1 million people order on the same day and that day happens to be 7 days from the end of the quarter so all 200 million is in TSLA’s hands at the same time on a quarter end reporting date, it’s a 1% bump in the cash balance they would report. And the $190K they get to keep is a 0.001% bump in their cash balance.

      Risking upsetting 1,000,000 potential customers and their family and friends for cash bump that’s a rounding error in their financials would be a pretty bad business decision. But now that I’m reminding myself who their CEO is, just because it would be a bad idea certainly doesn’t rule out that it was an intentional idea.

      1. Yeah, I know you’re probably right given the low return, it just seems like something he’d pull, given the fact that he wasn’t worried about reputation when he slashed prices thereby placing thousands of customers underwater on their cars. Of course, he already had their money.

        1. To your credit, he has already done similar stuff in other cases. ~250million in cybertruck deposits collected on a truck that was delivered years late and double the expected price. Not to mention another 250 million in Tesla roadster “founder series” reservations they started taking in like 2017 for a car that in mid-2024 still doesn’t even have a realistic production begin date.

  7. “It doesn’t sit right with me that they can so badly misrepresent the costs with zero repercussions to them” – the repercussions come when you spend your money elsewhere. You a fanboi or not?

  8. If the way you sell you cars is through the internet, and there is a price listed there on the corporate site, it should have to honored. Cancelling an order and refunding should not be allowed without the customer’s approval. Tesla wants to move fast and break things, well they broke their own web page moving too fast, and there should be consequences to that. I don’t know about UK consumer protections, but figure they are stronger than the US laws. If there is an advertised price it needs to be honored.

      1. Craigslist has no consumer protection, as I am not a company, it is simply a social contract in which I expect not to be murdered by the other person while buying or selling. If you receive a receipt or order confirmation, it should be binding.

        Imagine McDonald’s advertises 5 burgers for $1. You order online, go to pick up find out the real deal is 1 Burger for $5.

      2. If this was in the US, they would 100% have a solid case to make Tesla honor the deal other than the fact the legal fees outweigh the cheap lease.

        A contract requires a formal offer and formal acceptance and an advertisement/listing isn’t considered a formal offer.

        if you just throw an ad out there that’s missing a digit and someone comes to try to buy it at a discount, your ad isn’t considered a “formal offer”. Their request to buy is considered the offer, at which point the seller has the opportunity to recognize their mistake before accepting. This is comparable to your bike example.

        In this case it’s different because in addition to listing the price, the customer gave their formal offer to buy and tesla’s website formally accepted and even allowed for consideration to change hands. If your company has the resources to automate stuff like ordering, it’s on you to also spend the necessary resources to make sure your automated agent isn’t getting you into trouble.

        That being said, all of the above is irrelevant since it’s US law and I have no clue what the contract laws are in the UK, plus all of the above could be negated if the purchase agreement has any phrasing like “Tesla can cancel the sale if they want”

      3. Depends, did you allow a Craigslist buyer to start the transaction process and take a deposit from them against the full $120 before realizing the mistake?

    2. One of the few places that holds water is Mexico, where a man recently got some earrings that were meant to be listed for I think $1800 for $180. It may have been more than that.

      In most other countries, unless someone sues and shows it was an intentional deceptive practice, it is simply treated as a mistake.

  9. In the US, Tesla has been slow-rolling deliveries of Model Y’s that were purchased with a 0.99% financing offer. I suspect that they underestimated how much demand would be and thus how much money they would have to forego in interest.

    1. It’s much better for them to move those at full price at low interest than to discount them again.

      The discounting thing causes some backlash.

  10. I don’t know why automakers like Tesla, since their leases go back to them, repurpose the vehicle and put them back in the market for a used vehicle lease. I wouldn’t mind leasing a 30k miles electric vehicle if it will be covered all the way to 60k miles if the price was right.

    Put a new set of tires, replace brakes if needed, clean it pretty good. After 60k miles, they can auction the vehicle. This could be a good way for more people to afford electric vehicles in the short term.

    1. I leased a new Tesla Model 3 and can tell you at 30k miles it will definitely have had new tires put on already. Mine wore out before 25k. Also brakes won’t need replacing since mostly regenerative braking puts very little wear on pads.

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