Rivian Service policy - no alternative transportation unless vehicle kept for 48 hrs

[coasties]

Read what I posted, they provide a loaner it is in their official stated policy on their website right now. People are complaining about something that one person said happened to them, not what myself and hundreds of others have experienced.

It is at their discretion that they provide a loaner. There is no guarantee. There is no policy, I'm asking Rivian to clarify.

The message in my service thread said no rental because under 48 hrs.

I then wrote to the service technician at Tualatin (whom I met at the last service), who wrote what I posted.

I've asked Rivian to clarify, no response yet (March 26th).

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[coasties]

Do you know who wrote that, @coasties, and whether it was written when the Service Center was open or not?

My speculation is that it was written after hours by someone in Plymouth, who may not know how Portland/Tualatin SC actually does business.

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The "Cover Your A**" philosophy" may think it best to "underpromise and maybe overdeliver" -- but receiving an "underpromise" can feel pretty scary if your relationship with the business or the other person doesn't feel secure.

Understanding customers' feelings is one of the most important skills in customer service. Misunderstanding customers' feelings can create relationship-disrupting problems that take hours of human Customer Service to clean up -- if the relationship can be salvaged at all. It is VERY hard to understand the other person's feelings in an electronic-messaging medium such as the Rivian App.

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When you finally get to Tualatin, @coasties, consider telling the frontline staff (or manager/assistant manager, if available) your story about what you were told in this message, and how it felt.

I've never talked with Steve, but I see his leadership reflected in his staff. I have talked a lot with Jesús (pronounced "hay-ZEUS") over the years; Jesús is first-rate and he deserved his recent promotion. I am confident they'll meet your needs if it's in their power to do it.

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Very best wishes!

@Dave Cundiff , the message was written by the service tech at Tualatin. I got his email the last time I went to the SC. I didn't want to mention his name in the thread.

If you have other contacts at Tualatin, I'll contact them.

 

[Dave Cundiff]

I don't know the staff at Tualatin, @coasties. We've always used Portland, which is overseen by the same managers and occasionally swaps staff members with Tualatin.

This seems like a very new policy. Our February 2026 experience, when they replaced whining front motors on our Dual Max R1S, was excellent and included Enterprise (at first) and then a loaner until we could get home and retrieve our 2019 Bolt. This was warranty repair, which was projected to take (and did take) more than 48 hours.

Best wishes!

 

[CrazyOne]

Read what I posted, they provide a loaner it is in their official stated policy on their website right now. People are complaining about something that one person said happened to them, not what myself and hundreds of others have experienced.

At least 2 btw. It's a change and people have the right to complain if they don't like the change.

Since you are talking about fine print, they have the right to stop giving loaners. People have the right to complain. And people reading have the right to take their business elsewhere.

 

[buglas]

for what its worth, I dropped my vehicle off yesterday at the Lake Forest SC and they thought it would be ready same day but gave me a loaner

 

[BourboNole]

Read what I posted, they provide a loaner it is in their official stated policy on their website right now. People are complaining about something that one person said happened to them, not what myself and hundreds of others have experienced.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Lots of language up to interpretation in that email. What denotes a shorter service appointment? Is it one day, a couple of hours, or a week? Using the phrase "good-faith effort" is helpful, assuming follow-through. I guess the only thing to do is see when I take mine in, what happens.

 

[DKM_R1S]

Lots of language up to interpretation in that email. What denotes a shorter service appointment? Is it one day, a couple of hours, or a week? Using the phrase "good-faith effort" is helpful, assuming follow-through. I guess the only thing to do is see when I take mine in, what happens.

Regardless of your outcome, I think it’s safe to say that there has been a shift in the customer experience level we are used to receiving from Rivian. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Not being greeted by anyone when I show up with my vehicle. I have to get the attention of the service advisor to help me. A Keurig machine with no pods, no cups, actually no beverages (at all) for customers who are waiting. Midas muffler shop provides more amenities for waiting customers. Zero Rivian merch to browse. The waiting space looked a mess, books laying everywhere.

Maybe I’m the only one who pays attention to this stuff.

 

[Count Orlok]

Could be worse... you could, like The Count, live in a Rivian mobile no go zone even though you're only 95 miles from a service center.

 

[SeaGeo]

Lots of language up to interpretation in that email. What denotes a shorter service appointment? Is it one day, a couple of hours, or a week? Using the phrase "good-faith effort" is helpful, assuming follow-through. I guess the only thing to do is see when I take mine in, what happens.

FWIW, my SC has tried to give me rideshare credits and then when I explained the cost of rideshare for my commute to/from work they have opted to put my in an enterprise or loaner. When I've had an appointment for less than 24 hours (same day pickup/drop off) I've generally worked with them on a rideshare since that made sense.

Either way, they haven't left me or anyone I personally know stranded without some form of alternative transportation.

 

[DKM_R1S]

Re: Count - All the more reason for a service center to provide some basic amenities for its waiting customer who just drove two hours. I realize I’m being a bit hyperbolic.

 

[DKM_R1S]

FWIW, my SC has tried to give me rideshare credits and then when I explained the cost of rideshare for my commute to/from work they have opted to put my in an enterprise or loaner. When I've had an appointment for less than 24 hours (same day pickup/drop off) I've generally worked with them on a rideshare since that made sense.

Either way, they haven't left me or anyone I personally know stranded without some form of alternative transportation.

Agree. Rivian has always taken care of me over the past 2 years of ownership, 11 service visits.

 

[Mellowyellow]

Regardless of your outcome, I think it’s safe to say that there has been a shift in the customer experience level we are used to receiving from Rivian. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Not being greeted by anyone when I show up with my vehicle. I have to get the attention of the service advisor to help me. A Keurig machine with no pods, no cups, actually no beverages (at all) for customers who are waiting. Midas muffler shop provides more amenities for waiting customers. Zero Rivian merch to browse. The waiting space looked a mess, books laying everywhere.

Maybe I’m the only one who pays attention to this stuff.

Which service center is this? This is the exact opposite of my experience. I’m always greeted by someone smiling, there are always plenty of drinks, merchandise is stocked, the area is neat and clean. I would take a few pictures of the disarray and email them. That is not how it is supposed to be.

 

[Time2Roll]

I cannot imagine buying a vehicle that the nearest service was over an hour away.

 

[Kaiju]

I agree with you. The service center is 3.5 hours away, ONE WAY for me. If I don't get a loaner or a rental, what am I supposed to do?

This policy change is not great, and I'm not too happy right now. I was one of Rivian's biggest cheerleaders.

I feel a bit disappointed to say that if you're feeling spurned by Rivian that things can still get much worse than this. There'll be no enthusiastic welcome to the dark side since nobody who winds up here wants to be after getting psyched up enough to take a risk on a new brand.

There was a time when Rivian would drop off vehicles after service to avoid impacting customers with having to get to the SCs to retrieve them. That went away. I can't believe this is anything other than a statement of intent. Maybe it won't change overnight, but the groundwork has been laid. It was mentioned already, but the real question will be what happens when people unhappy with this policy show up for a same-day service appointment that turns out the service center never intended, or worse, don't get a loaner or a rental for a visit that was supposed to last a day but took a month. I've gotten burned that way trying to be nice about it on one of the occasions I've been towed. I expected would be over quickly and weeks later had a little trouble trying to arrange a one-way rental for a day to be able to go pick up my truck from service.

I too live distant from a service center where Uber credits cannot reach. I've shown up for what I thought was a same-day turnaround only to find out when I got there that the service center had been expecting a multi-day dropoff and wasn't prepared to do the work while I waited. Nobody told me beforehand and I'm actually wondering if there ever would be a point where someone does. I've also been put on the spot to find a way home again without my truck because something that was supposed to be simple required parts that would take weeks to get.

In these instances the service center planned for a rental (because they expected it would be multi-day even if I didn't) at least or managed to get one for me on short notice. With this new policy in place, are people who can't simply uber back home going to be left hanging?

My experiences with Rivian suggest it doesn't occur to whoever makes their call center scripts and service systems that a disproportionate number of customers aren't local to service and that these sorts of changes cut pretty deep. The thing that hit me while writing this was that it would take a fundamental change to how service interacts with customers to actually get someone to look up that you're coming in from a long ways away specifically to tell you to plan for several days. The service centers expect everyone to drop off and just pick up when it's done, whenever that is, as opposed to waiting there because that's the only option. Or you're looking at them holding it overnight and they're not giving you a rental because it's not '48 hours' so you'd better get your shit together if you want to get somewhere to sleep. Then there's two layers above that at being insulted at the idea of having to pay your own transport to deal with warranty repairs, and being insulted at the idea of a $200/hr shop nickel and diming.

They really do need to have another tier for customers who are remote, if only to have a second set of prompts for their service and call center people. Of course if I was doing that I would also not have the mobile techs based out of the service centers, because it makes the service center absolutely resist sending a guy 300 miles to fix something. It works if you consider your mobile service as some sort of white glove thing for the local neighborhood so people can get tires rotated in their driveway, but it absolutely falls apart when you need someone to triage a vehicle or maybe try to fix it before you commit to a $2000 tow. It's sort of a double whammie against people who don't live next door to a major center with an SC. I'm sure on a ledger somewhere it's cheaper if you can just make your customers absorb all the costs of getting to and from service, but it only takes a few horror stories to guarantee that Rivian's sales can only expand at the rate of its service center footprint.

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