It would seem Tesla just can’t help but break the rules, over and over again. As battles continue to rage in various states against the automaker and their direct factory-to-customer sales mantra, it seems they’ve annoyed a state that was already not entirely on board with the electric-car maker: Virginia.
With only one Tesla store in the entire state, there isn’t a huge Tesla following in the state, but it would appear that a recent incentive program has broken a few more rules. The program invited Tesla owners to attract new buyers, and once they’d brought them in to purchase the car, the new buyer would receive $1,000 off the price of their new Tesla, while the referrer pocketed $1,000 himself for future service fees or towards the purchase of his next Tesla.
Essentially, the program was paying individuals who weren’t licensed to sell vehicles, which goes against a Virginia state law known as “bird-dogging.”
Tesla has since changed the program, so that now only the buyer of the new car gets $2,000.
Source: Autoblog