Dark Patterns in Telsa App

As an example, in Germany:

First, a contract only exists when - in a somewhat metaphysical sense - two matching agreements are made. One by Tesla, one by the customer. Accidental purchases regularly do not constitute an agreement by the customer, which is why before a court, it would be decided that the contract does not, and in fact did not exist. Here, it would be especially trivial to show that the purchase was accidental. Indeed it would probably be enough to have contacted Tesla after the "purchase". As an implication, Tesla would be forced to roll back the transaction and eat any costs associated with it.

Second, and of more practical relevance, there is legislation mandating that anything ordered online can be returned within 14 days, retroactively voiding the contract. In this case, the customer may need to pay some of the costs incurred with rolling back the transaction, although there is legislation for this. In this particular case, a software update, the cost would of course be zero.

I personally do not see these legislation as a source of friction. They are simple to implement and fair, and have no impact if one does not rely on deception.

As others have said, anyone doing business in the EU is aware of these matters. If these patterns do not exist in the EU version, then Tesla is employing these patterns for deceptive purposes.

You have to enter in complete billing details to accidentally make this purchase. For Apple Pay I can only assume that the standard Apple Pay confirmation window comes up, which cannot be triggered in your pocket. If that window comes up and you authorize a $4,000 purchase I don’t see how that’s Tesla’s fault.

All the text that’s claimed to be hard to see seems plain as day to me.

The claim that one of the people seems to be making to Tesla support, that they never had the app open at all when this purchase took place, seems kind of questionable. I don’t see any way that’s possible.

Now, I agree that putting shit in your shopping cart by default isn’t a good practice but this isn’t exactly a shopping app, either. You wouldn’t go the upgrades section or checkout with anything unless you were looking to buy upgrades? I don’t own a Tesla, I don’t know.

I do agree that the policy of no refunds ever is nonsense. The software can most definitely be disabled or removed, and if Tesla isn’t using some kind of package manager, shame on them. The analogy of the house addition is total garbage.

See, what you need to do with customer service in these situations is to just tell them that they can give you the refund or that you’ll take care of it through a chargeback to your bank. That’s their two options. Companies process your refund 99% of the time after you say those magic words (just don’t do this for things like your Steam account where a permanent ban will be a hardship).

The last thing: I had to laugh at the letter that started with “Dear Sirs.” Made the whole thing impossible to take seriously.