Resellers: The little known clause Tesla can use to cancel orders

A Tesla customer who may have been seeking to make a quick buck recently overlooked a very important clause in their buyer’s contract: the one that prevents a driver from buying a car with a view to reselling it shortly after purchase.

In the Tesla sales contract, the EV maker has included a clause that says, “Tesla and its affiliates sell cars directly to end-consumers, and we may unilaterally cancel any order that we believe has been made with a view toward resale of the Vehicle or that has otherwise been made in bad faith.”

A screenshot shared in a local electric vehicle group on Facebook shows that a buyer had open orders cancelled after Tesla’s “Loss Prevention Team” determined they may have bought a car in order to resell it.

“Our Loss Prevention team has conducted an investigation and determined that actions on your account post-delivery are in violation on our reseller policy,” the email, which had been reshared from a US Tesla group, read.

“We will hereby be cancelling any remaining open orders and you have been added to our do not sell list.” t

The Driven was not able to verify the source of this particular email, and the fact that there are currently lengthy wait times for new Tesla electric cars means that buying and selling a car to make a quick buck as secondhand car values increase amid supply crunches may not be the reason behind the sale.

However, buying and selling Tesla electric cars has been a subject of discussion in other social media forums in the past.

One member of the Tesla Motors Club, who says they rent Tesla electric cars out on US-based car rental platform Turo, posted that they received a similar email in late 2021.

In their case, they claim that their orders were cancelled unfairly. “I buy many Teslas, and most of my renters end up buying my cars,” they said.

“How many Teslas did you end up reselling? I also do Turo and I have 4 Teslas that I’m thinking to sell and upgrade to 2022’s Model S/X/Y. I would be pissed if Teslas ended up cancelling my reservations because I want to upgrade my fleet,” said another forum member.

While this particular owner said he’d only sold 5 out of 19 Tesla EVs he’d bought, it does raise the question of what parameters Tesla uses to determine which customers are resellers. The above email screenshot implies that customer also had multiple orders and may have been in a similar boat.

The Driven has requested clarification from Tesla and will update the article if more news comes to hand, however it is standard practice by Tesla to decline to comment on such requests.