Man blows through all of his 111,600 Tesla credits at once and ends up potentially 'ruining it for everyone'

If you’ve got a lot of friends and you’re particularly good at convincing people, Tesla credits are a wonderful way to save a lot of cash.

One guy managed to accrue over 100,000 Tesla credits, which he then spent on free charging and some gadgets.

Unfortunately for him, charging credits expire, which means he could only charge his car for free for a few months.

But that’s not even the worst part.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie

The inherent problem with referrals

Almost every referral program in the world follows the same trajectory.

It’s very generous at first, then it’s a lot less generous, and then it’s generally phased out.

Companies eventually end the programs because, even when tilted in their favor, they eventually become a financial problem.

This applies to all industries, not just car companies.

Crypto companies, for example, used to offer very generous rewards, but they’re almost all gone now.

Hard cash is often replaced with trading fee rebates or other perks that are arguably a lot less useful.

To its credit – pun not intended – Tesla remains one of the few car companies to even offer such a program in the first place.

Click the star icon next to supercarblondie.com in Google Search to stay ahead of the curve on the latest and greatest supercars, hypercars, and ground-breaking technology

Here’s why this Tesla owner may have ‘ruined’ the program for everyone

YouTuber Jack Massey Welsh ended up with 111,600 Tesla credits after convincing hundreds of people to use his referral link.

He got some free charging at Tesla’s Superchargers.

Then he bought a bunch of things, including three wall chargers, dozens of hoodies, and even some accessories for a Tesla Model S, which is interesting because he doesn’t even own a Model S.

But then the problems started.

For starters, Tesla disabled his referral link entirely.

While he was technically within the rules, the manual labor required for Tesla to process 50 separate shipments for one guy likely flagged his account as ‘spammy’.

Also, the automaker introduced a hard limit of 10 referrals per calendar year, reduced the credit value, and became much stricter about the 12-month expiration date for the credits.

Tesla didn’t specifically say they did this because of what happened with this YouTuber.

But, well, it’s easy to connect the dots.