As a bit of context:
It is not uncommon for high end cars (and that is what they are marketing the cybertruck as…) and even a lot of “prestige” fashion or electronics to have a no resale for N months clause. That is actually “good” because it severely limits the resale/scalping market and discourages people from buying them to flip them.
That said, this is also a textbook example of when you provide an exception. Loyal customer (whether they are or not) who can’t actually use a product. Because then you can spin that as “We are a great company, we have your back”
Tesla is only interested in screwing customers out of money and never dealing with them again. It’s not a prestige vehicle, it’s a defective piece of shit.
Obviously. Doesn’t change that this is “normal”
What is not “normal” is that, like all of musk’s companies, they manage to fuck up even the most trivial of PR wins.
Gallant would either buy the truck back (maybe minus a “restocking” fee) and use it for parts or replace enough parts they can call it “new” and re-sell it. Or they would coordinate with an influencer they trust to favor them and broker the deal
Goofus tells the cusomer to go fuck themselves and assume they will win on twitter.
It isn’t normal. Toyota doesn’t ban you from resale, Ferrari does. Tesla isn’t comparable to Ferrari, and drawing that comparison only serves to normalize this lunacy. That’s the point I was making about that. The stans will punish themselves, and I’ll chuckle sensibly at it, but normal consumers getting duped into this kind of BS isn’t acceptable.
As at example why this is a good thing, consider the latest X-Box consoles.
I tried two Christmases in a row to buy new game consoles for my kids, but they were never available. They sold out almost immediately. Some of that was too few being produced, but some was scalpers swooping in to take all stock before customers could. Scalpers would offer some for double or triple the price, but I refuse to support that behavior.
Scalpers directly lead to my frustration on the product, and giving them up, scalpers directly lead to my kids giving up XBox gaming altogether. Scalpers directly led to the entire eco-system losing the profits from a family that likely would have spent way too much, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Everyone lost, except the scalpers.
Retailers eventually started imposing purchase limits to reduce the impact of scalpers, but it was too little too late. the X-Box ecosystem lost customers who will never come back.
And Walmart. Fuck Walmart. I’ve read about the negative impact of Walmart but never had a strong opinion since I rarely used them anyway. But during the Xbox fiasco, their website offered scalper sales at some of the highest markups, their websites falsely reported Xboxes in stock to product finders when it was only scalper ads. Fuck that, and fuck any large retailer who refuses to support Apple Pay because they’re trying to force customers to use their shitty pay system
Yup. It was especially hilarious how many people on the various message boards and discords would talk about “Oh, this is the tenth PS5 that I found to buy for my friends”. And there were people dumb enough to think they weren’t scalping.
Which was actually nice. The Sony website queues were… bad. But it was tied to a PSN account which drastically limited how many an individual could buy. I am sure that, much like with Valve doing the same for the Steam Deck, is no longer effective because professional scalpers have like 40 accounts they bought a 2 dollar game on. But it made for a much nicer experience.
Lol they could just say you can’t sell it for more than the sticker price. This is just fucking the customer!
In theory? I prefer that approach.
In practice? Oh yeah, I totally legally sold my stupidly and unnecessarily expensive limited edition shoes to someone for sticker price. On a completely unrelated note, they gave me an extra 500 dollars for no apparent reason"
“No resale” sidesteps all of that while also removing the bad PR of “and all 5000 cybertrucks were on facebook marketplace two days later”.
The issue is not the no resale for N months policy. That is, ironically, more pro consumer than not. The issue is that it is being applied to a shitty product with prototype teething issues where the scarcity was artificially induced due to poor design processes.
Now, if we want to have a DIFFERENT discussion about how most of these “prestige” products are marketed through artificially induced scarcity then… yeah. But in a world where people want to buy something with a ridiculously limited run? I would rather the people fighting over who gets to buy it actually “want” it rather than just the same scalper bots we see in everything else.
