100% faking that. Yesterday the esims got remotely disabled, the server shut off so it's impossibile to push any OTA update.
If they really wanted, the fact that a loyal customer that paid almost one year of subscription had access to a certificate is completely irrelevant to publishing said OTA update
Tesla now is definitely in panic mode! In my country they slashed the price of the model 3 by 4000 euro AND they're doing mystery shopping inspections like the traditional carmakers!
I make beer money with mystery shopping (Corporations pay me $2/hour to go to pretend to buy their product in their stores to report the customer experience). Traditional carmakers ask this to do all the time: KIA wants pictures of their ads in their dealers to see if the match the guidelines, Ford wants to know if i ask a oil change what price I will be quoted, Honda wants to know what people will be told if they ask to test drive a CBR650, and so on.
New this month... TESLA! They never had to resort to this kind of stuff, that means they're desperate.