During the Great Recession, a few desperate automakers offered two cars for the price of one.
That's a lot better deal than what Tesla gave some recent customers: one car for the price of two.
CNBC spoke with at least five customers who said Tesla not only double charged their bank accounts but also gave them a "frustrating runaround" when they tried to get refunded for the extra amount.
The overcharges ranged from $37,000 for a base Model 3 to $71,000 for a loaded Model Y, CNBC said.
One of the customers said he spent an entire day trying to call someone at Tesla about the issue with no luck. He then drove to the Tesla store in Burbank, Calif., but didn't get any resolution there either.
"They told me to call my bank and have my bank reverse the charge," Tom Slattery told CNBC. "That was not acceptable. When you debit more than $50,000 and tell a customer to solve it on their own? I kept pushing."
He said an employee at the Tesla store admitted that "hundreds of customers" had experienced duplicate charges.
"It's hard to imagine sales and service getting worse," Slattery said. "I had almost $53,000 unauthorized stolen from my bank account. And nobody, nobody has called me, emailed me, there's no sense of urgency in resolving this."
