RJ, Rivian Service is Broken

[razmataz]

I love my R1T. I am an early adopter, having received my truck in March of 2022. I am also a shareholder. Those things said, Rivian service is downright painful. In my current encounter, I dropped my truck at the temporary service center in Trenton, NJ eight days ago for the tonneau cover update and a comprehensive inspection.

I‘ll Spare you the details of how difficult it was just to get the status of my repair. My truck has not been taken into the shop yet. “When should I schedule a day to come pick it up? We don’t know yet. When will it go into the shop. We don’t know.” I can see the writing on the wall. When they finally look at my truck, they will find that they need a part. I will be driving this wonderful Chrysler minivan for weeks. I cannot arrange my life around an unknown pickup date. This is not the service I was promised when I purchased the vehicle and it is certainly one of the worst customer service experiences of my life.

RJ, this is fixable. It is costing company money, prestige and customers.

I could not agree more, Love the product/Scared of the service experience.

Now that the company is out of the gate, I hope RJ is surrounding himself with seasoned auto industry veterans who understand and appreciate service and the differences between a software or tech company support structure with levels 1, 2 and 3 and a car company where the shop and owner have to get tightly netted and parties be able to communicate direct efficiently and effectively.

In my case and so I am not wasting time when trying to get things fixed, I feel I have to be a semi QA trained person and provide deep level of documentation and details to recreate the problem when submitting a service, so it eliminates any doubts/need for their tech to scratch head or figure out what the issue was before trying to get it fixed. Otherwise, no chance if its a fix on an intermitting issue and even when they say fixed, nothing was fixed. This is all because Rivian has implemented a one way/open loop process.

And then calling an 800 tech support to get looped in on service status, where Rivian people answering are super nice but are looking at some crm screen and have no insight to the SC specific status or state of your vehicle (and say 100% of time that SC is not picking up the phone, leaving a msg so they get back to you, scary!) is a basic flaw in Rivian's service work flow.

sidebar, happen to live 2 hours away from Brooklyn SC and as of now have clocked 30% on my vehicle mileage going back and forth to SC (LOL)

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[Kuro-Rivian]

sidebar, happen to live 2 hours away from Brooklyn SC and as of now have clocked 30% on my vehicle mileage going back and forth to SC (LOL)

Wow. Lot of sad stories here but this one hurts hard!!!!

 

[jb0063]

Hi me

My truck is in Trenton for a tonneau cover fix (initiated by Rivian) and a comprehensive inspection. I added a request to replace the steering wheel with an updated one due to peeling finish and a shimmy at 60 mph. Today is day number nine, and my vehicle has not yet been looked at. I asked repeatedly if I could delay delivering my R1T until they were ready to work on it and was repeatedly refused. What should have been a two day repair will probably stretch beyond two weeks. I am stuck driving a Chrysler minivan.

Ugh. That's not good.

 

[R1Tom]

It's all about that fine line of spending just the right amount of money to pacify new potential buyers concerns as well as existing looking at next purchase.

I just think Rivian either has completely incompetent top management(which I don't think is case) or just doesn't feel the need to spend enough to fix the problem.

Time will tell if that dice roll they keep throwing and saying not to completely tackle the issue is the right one....

 

[NY_Rob]

It's all about that fine line of spending just the right amount of money to pacify new potential buyers concerns as well as existing looking at next purchase.

I just think Rivian either has completely incompetent top management(which I don't think is case) or just doesn't feel the need to spend enough to fix the problem.

Time will tell if that dice roll they keep throwing and saying not to completely tackle the issue is the right one....

Well the early (and not really early as Rivian has been delivering vehicles for almost 3yrs now) results are pretty much FAIL.

 

[Hopper]

It's all about that fine line of spending just the right amount of money to pacify new potential buyers concerns as well as existing looking at next purchase.

I just think Rivian either has completely incompetent top management(which I don't think is case) or just doesn't feel the need to spend enough to fix the problem.

Time will tell if that dice roll they keep throwing and saying not to completely tackle the issue is the right one....

Just managing expectations (don’t over promise and under deliver) and helping customers to bring their vehicles in when service is actually expected to be ready will go a long way. Both require no capital investment and can be implemented quickly.

 

[R1Tom]

Just managing expectations (don’t over promise and under deliver) and helping customers to bring their vehicles in when service is actually expected to be ready will go a long way. Both require no capital investment and can be implemented quickly.

I agree. They clearly like having their backlog sitting in their lot for their efficiency. Completely ignoring the customer side of equation.

 

[R1Tom]

Well the early (and not really early as Rivian has been delivering vehicles for almost 3yrs now) results are pretty much FAIL.

I agree. I have been preaching on these forums for over 2 years now...and Rivian just keeps doing the same thing. At least now it seems most posts aren't defending Rivian like they have been in past.

 

[NY_Rob]

I agree. I have been preaching on these forums for over 2 years now...and Rivian just keeps doing the same thing. At least now it seems most posts aren't defending Rivian like they have been in past.

Yeah, some possibly stopped defending the poor service because they might have had to actually suffer through it

 

[RivRohr]

Yeah, some possibly stopped defending the poor service because they might have had to actually suffer through it

I love my R1T. I am an early adopter, having received my truck in March of 2022. I am also a shareholder. Those things said, Rivian service is downright painful. In my current encounter, I dropped my truck at the temporary service center in Trenton, NJ eight days ago for the tonneau cover update and a comprehensive inspection.

I‘ll Spare you the details of how difficult it was just to get the status of my repair. My truck has not been taken into the shop yet. “When should I schedule a day to come pick it up? We don’t know yet. When will it go into the shop. We don’t know.” I can see the writing on the wall. When they finally look at my truck, they will find that they need a part. I will be driving this wonderful Chrysler minivan for weeks. I cannot arrange my life around an unknown pickup date. This is not the service I was promised when I purchased the vehicle and it is certainly one of the worst customer service experiences of my life.

RJ, this is fixable. It is costing company money, prestige and customers.

This is my experience. 1 month ago the buttons and dials on the steering wheel ceased to function. They said it would be July before someone could come out to me. Ok, nothing critical, I can wait. 3 weeks later, the car/screen goes dark. Dead in the water. Unable to reset because the button on the steering wheel is needed to do that. Towed the R1S to Brooklyn. Finally got a call that they looked at it yesterday. Something about the comm bus to the battery, but nothing definitive. So I wait. Luckily I have been out of town and not in need if the vehicle. Next is a different story.

 

[WFR1S]

I love my R1T. I am an early adopter, having received my truck in March of 2022. I am also a shareholder. Those things said, Rivian service is downright painful. In my current encounter, I dropped my truck at the temporary service center in Trenton, NJ eight days ago for the tonneau cover update and a comprehensive inspection.

I‘ll Spare you the details of how difficult it was just to get the status of my repair. My truck has not been taken into the shop yet. “When should I schedule a day to come pick it up? We don’t know yet. When will it go into the shop. We don’t know.” I can see the writing on the wall. When they finally look at my truck, they will find that they need a part. I will be driving this wonderful Chrysler minivan for weeks. I cannot arrange my life around an unknown pickup date. This is not the service I was promised when I purchased the vehicle and it is certainly one of the worst customer service experiences of my life.

RJ, this is fixable. It is costing company money, prestige and customers.

Especially when just hiring additional staff would be a better efficient use of the money they’re having to pay out with rentals and other cost associated with delays.

To boot these rental vehicles are ICE; which means we are wasting our money on gas! Defeats the entire purpose of having an EV.

 

[R1Thor]

This is a tough problem to have. Parts availability/logistics, technicians trained on and willing to work on EVs, and competition with legacy dealerships who've been in business for 50+ years.

It would be easy to justify building out a more extensive service network if there was profitability in it. Service is the largest portion of income for a dealership --Either through direct cost to the consumer for maintenance or bill back to the manufacturer for warranty work. Rivian has neither of these opportunities currently. I'd wager a guess that 95%+ of Rivians on the road right now are under warranty of some kind. Service profitability isn't going to be a thing for them for at least a few more years...

TLR; every service appointment costs them a whole bunch of money.

So, expect a slow roll out of service centers until it becomes profitable to have more of them. Or, they'll need to authorize 3rd party service centers that can receive training, equipment, and parts direct from the manufacturer to reduce their overall service costs.

Best bet right now is to just have a second car LOL.

I'm sure it's not a profit panacea, but I'm a bit dubious it's even a revenue-generation problem (well, consideration).
I contacted service to schedule a 'comprehensive' inspection (per Rivian's updated recommendations) on April 29th. I was told Gaithersburg doesn't have that "Express Service" in their systems yet.

I was told by the service advisor I spoke to that he'd figure out what the best next steps were by working with the SC and get back to me within a day. It's been crickets, but I still have an active "Request" listed as "in Review" since then...

When I asked if they could do this via mobile and I was told that they needed to put the vehicle on the lifts for the comprehensive, and that mobile can only do the 7500 intervals. Due to the timing of when I rolled over 22,500, I never even had a 7500. You'd think they'd have just had them come out and do the lower-level checkup if they're really all that concerned with preventive maintenance/proactive checks.

So, here's a non-warranty situation that by all accounts *should be* in and out and I pay them money for their time, and they apparently cannot accommodate that.

And to wit: by not performing proactive maintenance on vehicles earlier in the game, if there might be a minor problem they can find and correct now, they're just opening themselves up for bigger repairs in the future, one would surmise... At least they have a record that I requested it, even if I'll be having my 22,500 service somewhere around 45k...

 

[ads75]

In my current encounter, I dropped my truck at the temporary service center in Trenton, NJ eight days ago for the tonneau cover update and a comprehensive inspection.

I also dropped my R1T off in Trenton 9 days ago, also for a tonneau replacement (which they reached out to me for), a 20k inspection since it is there, and a rotate+balance of the tires (last did about 7k miles ago). They told me 7-14 days when I dropped it off. I have a smokey cabin (previous owner or customer) F-150 XLT as a loaner. The smokey smell has gotten old after a week, I didn't notice when I first picked it up with the ventilation running at full blast. Trenton is 1.5 hours each way for me. Gaithersburg and Brooklyn are about 2.5 hours each way.

I was also a little annoyed when Rivian proactively called to schedule the tonneau replacement because it was in Gaithersburg for about a week for other repairs about two months ago, I wish they could've done the fix then, but maybe they didn't have the parts. I won't complain about the service at Gaithersburg because it was to fix the truck getting errors and shutting down after high speed charging. It was there for about a week, I have done 3 high speed charges since then, and no issues. My only complaint would be it being 2.5 hours each way.

Last summer my 12v batteries died in my driveway, it took mobile service almost 3 weeks to get to me. After they replaced the 12v batteries, I got several motor errors that cleared the following days, Rivian towed it into Brooklyn in less than a week after I started reporting the errors, fixed it, and had it back to me in a couple of days.

Everyone I have talked to or dealt with on the phone or at the service centers have been friendly and professional. I have not reached out at all on any of my issues to get updates, I just wait for them to call or contact me.

When I first bought the R1T, I knew there would be some growing pains, and thought I would probably keep it for the warranty period (about 4 years). The extended service times and my distance to the service centers have me re-evaluating that timeline. I think in the last 30 years, since I started buying new cars, the longest one was in for service was about a week (coincidently a mid 90's Mitsubishi Eclipse, which I believe was built in the same factory Rivian got from Mitsubishi). I think the longest since then was 2 days.

 

[Joe Hoffman]

Costa Mesa, San Diego are bad, but I had a great experience with Eastvale. Not convenient for everyone but certainly a great option. It’s a beautiful facility and well equipped to handle lots of activity.

My R1S sat in Costa Mesa for a week untouched. I took the loaner mobile back and picked up my vehicle. Then I rescheduled to have serviced by Eastvale and they were very responsive and quick.

 

[R1Tom]

I find it interesting how Rivian continues to do the same thing to owners over and over with seemingly no desire to correct it.

I don't even get the head in sand they seem to be doing from regard to the long term sustainability of a company that is abusing its customers to this degree....the people who are supposed to be brand ambassadors really. But even more than that.....isn't somebody seeing how much money they are throwing at Enterprise and wondering "what are we doing here....how can these repairs take this long....and if not....why are we having customers drop off vehicles way in advance of being able to even look at them?"

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