Elon Musk Personally Cancels 'Super Rude' Customer's Tesla Model X Order Don't cross the Bel Air billionaire. He has the power to ban you.
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Warning: Watch your mouth when you talk about Tesla online. If you say the wrong thing, Elon Musk could bring down the hammer and block you from buying one of his precious electric cars.
In fact, the golden boy CEO did just that, personally canceling venture capitalist Stewart Alsop's order for a Model X after Alsop called him out for showing up almost two hours late to the official launch event for the CUV.
If you follow Musk, his habitual tardiness should come as no surprise. Still, it didn't sit well with Alsop. He took to Medium, the Internet's all-the-rage op-ed page, to complain.
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"It probably won't matter that you screwed up this event completely," he carped in a shaming rant directly addressed to Musk last September. "It would still be nice if you showed some class and apologized to the people who believe in this product."
Big mistake, Alsop. Musk's the boss and he'll do as he pleases. Not only do get you no apology, you get no Model X. How's that for showing "some class"?
No surprise here, Alsop took to Medium once again after the two apparently spoke on the phone, revealing the hot-headed man behind Iron Man's petty move. "I heard from our phone conversation that you feel that my post, "Dear @ElonMusk: You should be ashamed of yourself", was a personal attack on you," he wrote. "I also hear that you are not comfortable having me own a Tesla car and have cancelled my order for a Tesla Model X."
"Banned By Tesla!" @ElonMusk won't let me buy one of his cars... https://t.co/ylgpFkl1dz
— Stewart Alsop (@salsop) February 1, 2016
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Once the press got wind of the catfight, the Twitterverse went off and so did Musk, confirming that he had car-blocked a "super 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
Any other CEO would be harshly criticized for stooping so low, for exacting such rock-bottom revenge. But not Elon Reeve Musk, entrepreneurial superstar, future citizen of Mars. Aside from a few dings and scrapes, his halo seems fully intact.
@elonmusk meh, you're breaking a pile of cultural taboos, that has a cost. You can afford it but shouldn't be surprised by it.
— Dan Kaminsky (@dakami) February 3, 2016
@paulg @salsop @elonmusk Steve Jobs was incredibly petty at times.. don't think success and pettiness are mutually exclusive.
— Zev Lapin (@bbzeven) February 3, 2016
As for Alsop -- whom Musk helped turn into Tesla's most famous dissatisfied customer -- he's bummed he likely can't have in on any SpaceX action. "I guess this means I probably won't be allowed to buy a SpaceX Dragon, either." Probably not.
@elonmusk u sound like a spoiled brat sometimes, but I still love ya
— ? Robert McDougal (@mcdougalbugle) February 3, 2016
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