A man who wrote a blog post criticising Tesla boss Elon Musk and complaining about an event in which ‘no food was provided’ has had his order for a Model X cancelled by the firm.
Venture capitalist Stewart Alsop was one of the first to leave a deposit for the upcoming Model X electric SUV, and had been invited to a special launch event hosted by Musk himself.
In the original blog post, Alsop said: “Starting a 7:00pm event at 8:50pm is simply unacceptable, particularly when the invited guests are actually your customers! But for you to stand up at 8:52pm and not even acknowledge that you have wasted your own customers’ time was insensitive and poor judgement.
“You should have apologised right then, but you didn’t. You have our email addresses, since we’re all the people who put a $5,000 deposit on your new Model X. When I was invited to the launch event, I was excited to hear that I could drive to the factory and see and touch a new Model X, even if I’ll have to wait another 3–4 months to actually get mine.
“Instead, I drove 2.5 hours round trip. I arrived on time, waited around 30 minutes outside the building, got packed inside the building with 3,000 other people for another 60 minutes, got moved from one room inside the building to another to wait another 20 minutes with the same 3,000 people. And then, drum roll please, you shuffle out on stage and start with a slide show — an amateur slide show at that — all about how safe the Model X is.”
He went on to complain that he left feeling angry and hungry, as no food had been provided.
In a follow-up blog post, Alsop explains that he received a phone call saying that Musk didn’t ‘feel comfortable’ with him owning a Tesla, so was cancelling his order.
He added: “The end result is that you have decided that I can’t own one of your cars, and I am terribly disappointed. I had outlined in the original post how excited I was at the prospect of owning a Tesla, especially the Model X and especially the configuration I ultimately ordered — the P90D in red with black leather seats and the Ludicrous Speed option.”
The Tesla boss has since tweeted, describing Alsop as a ‘rude customer’.
Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2016
In a restaurant if the chef made a mistake and did not send the first customer’s ordered meal before the second, then the first orderer would have the right to complain to the waiter. However, if that customer abused the waiter then the restauranter has the right to ask that customer to leave, (without meal) for being rude and disruptive. Same shakes for Musk.