It’s been eight long years since Tesla promised the second-generation Roadster, and yet the car still doesn’t exist outside of renders, prototypes, and Elon’s Twitter, err, sorry, X feed. Back in 2017, Tesla managed to talk plenty of people into dropping $5,000 for a reservation, followed by another $45,000 as a deposit, all with the confident assurance that production would begin in 2020.

The Refund Maze

For years, people have quietly wondered how you cancel a Roadster reservation, assuming anyone at Tesla would, you know, actually pick up the phone. Thanks to YouTuber Marquess Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, we finally know what the process looks like. Predictably, it’s a bit of a mess. Still, reservation holders can get their money back, even if it takes some persistence.

Read: 8 Years Later, Tesla’s Still Taking $50K Roadster Reservations Musk Promised For 2020

While speaking on a recent podcast, Brownlee said that he paid the $50,000 deposit for a next-gen Roadster when it was first announced in late 2017. When he later decided to cancel, he followed the required steps on the Tesla app and was given a phone number, but when he reached out, his call went straight to voicemail. When he did finally speak with someone, they said they didn’t know how to cancel the order, but assured him that they’d work out how to do it.

Money In, Money Out

Eventually, Tesla was able to confirm to Brownlee that he would receive the refund, but only for the $45,000 deposit, and not the initial $5,000 reservation fee that he had paid. Roughly a week after first sharing the story, the YouTuber took to X to reveal that Tesla had, in fact, also refunded him the $5,000, perhaps after realizing that its own website confirms this $5,000 is “fully refundable.”

The money paid to Tesla by Brownlee, as well as others who have placed deposits on the Roadster, may have been used by the electric automaker to help fund the development costs of the car, as well as other models. Either that, or it has been sitting in an account somewhere collecting interest over the past eight years.

Fun fact, had Brownlee put that $50,000 into Tesla stock back in 2017, when shares were around $22 a piece, instead of reserving a piece of vaporware, he’d be looking at more than $1 million today with the price sitting at $454 on October 1!