Delivery Day: Confirming the Referral Benefit Actually Landed

A referral benefit is decided at checkout and delivered around handover, which means delivery day is where a problem first becomes visible — and it is the worst possible day to be checking anything. Ten minutes of deliberate verification is the whole job.

Before you leave home: the paperwork check

Open the order in the Tesla app and read the order summary you agreed to. The referral benefit — in North America, three months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — should be visible as an included line. If it was there at checkout it should be there now. This is a five-second check and it establishes what you are entitled to before anyone is standing next to you with a clipboard.

If it is not there and never was, be realistic: a referral cannot be applied after the order was placed. Delivery day cannot fix that, and the escalation path in the missing-benefit sequence is about establishing which of the two situations you are in.

At handover: the software check

Once the car is in your name, the benefit appears as software state rather than paperwork. On AI4 (HW4) cars the dedicated Self-Driving app introduced in spring 2026 is where FSD status lives — whether it is active, and what it renews as. Older interfaces surface the same thing under the car's software or subscription screens.

Two things to note, in this order: that FSD (Supervised) is active, and what the screen says the subscription will cost when the trial ends. Since February 2026 there has been no outright FSD purchase in North America, only a $99 monthly subscription — and for prior Enhanced Autopilot owners a $49 rate — so the same screen tells you both that the benefit landed and what it becomes.

Write down the end date

This is the single most valuable thirty seconds of delivery day. A three-month trial converts to a paid subscription unless you act, and the default is not neutral. Put the end date in whatever calendar you actually read. It is unglamorous advice and it protects roughly a third of the benefit's value.

Why delivery day is the wrong day to discover a problem

Two reasons, and both argue for the pre-travel check. First, attention: handover involves paperwork, a walkaround, an app pairing and often a queue behind you, which is not an environment for noticing an absent software entitlement. Second, and more important, the fixable window has already closed — a referral cannot be attached after an order is placed, so anything discovered at handover is either a delivery issue with documentation behind it or a permanent miss.

That is why the order of operations in this piece puts the paperwork check at home. If the benefit line is on the order summary you agreed to, you are in a supportable position and can raise it calmly. If it never was, delivery day cannot change that, and knowing so before you travel saves a difficult conversation with someone who has no ability to help.

What is not your job on delivery day

The referrer's side. Whether their credits have been granted, when their Grant Date fell, and what the balance came to are all questions for their account, not your handover. Nothing you do or fail to do at delivery changes it, and the two sides of the programme resolve independently.

The order of operations, compressed

1. Read the order summary in the app before you travel.
2. At handover, confirm FSD (Supervised) is active in the car.
3. Read what the subscription renews at, so the figure is not a surprise later.
4. Diary the trial's end date.
5. Only then do the ordinary delivery inspection — panels, paint, tyres, charge port.

The desk’s read

Delivery-day checklists circulating online are almost entirely about physical condition, which is reasonable — panel gaps are permanent and a software trial is not. But the referral benefit is the one item on the list with a deadline, and the only one that quietly becomes a monthly charge if nobody looks at it. Check the paint carefully. Check the end date first.