Rivian service center messed up (fixed!)

[Mandarin]

Hi all

After 11500 mi with the truck, I noticed as many were mentioning tocking noise and metal grinding noise from the front left (take a look at my posts to find out more information, this story is not about that).

Before starting, I want to say that I really like my truck and Rivian experience overall. I had a few service center visits in 6 months of ownership already and all of them were perfect. I was totally happy with how the Service Center team is taking care of customers. But this is the 1st time I will need to deal with something like this in my past 15 years of driving many different makes and models and dealing with different service centers.

So I dropped the car to address those issues back on 11/21 at Bellevue Service Center and the car spent there 2,5 weeks. The rivian team has completed a few different things including replacing rear drive shafts which have popped out of the rear drive unit. While completing that, seems like they were required to disconnect the rear lower control arms which are the base for air struts.

I picked up the car today after work when it was already dark outside. When I was driving home on city streets before entering a freeway, I noticed that the steering wheel is unusually heavy to turn to the right, while turning to the left is now even easier than before. Also, the steering wheel is not centering anymore after turning.

2nd thing I noticed when I got on the freeway and was driving in the center of the lane, the car was showing on the driver's display that I'm driving perpendicularly between 2 lanes. Unfortunately did not get a photo of that.

When I got back home, parked inside the garage, the car kneeled as always but I realized the front right corner is dropped more than other corners.

I got outside and saw this:

I decided to reboot the vehicle and completed it a couple of times, and the issue was not fixed.

Then I decided to use Leveling function in camping mode. I launched it and the vehicle was telling me that leveling is in process, but the car was not moving. After 10 minutes it was still going. I stopped it and clicked "reset suspension settings" and the car gave me the error that speed may be limited during the suspension settings reset.

I was in the car for about 10 minutes and the car still was trying to reset settings. I went on the drive and drove about 4 miles, but resetting was still in progress.

Parked in a parking lot and rebooted the car again. It has cleared the "resetting suspension settings" task, but the error that says the car will not drive above 20mph has not cleared. However, the car is able to drive over 20mph.

I raised the car to the highest settings and still was able to see that the truck is not leveled.
The FR was the lover point.
The FL was higher than FR.
The rear end was even higher than the FL side, but RR and RL corners had different heights.

So I decided to call Rivian support. While I was waiting on the phone, I decided to check the vehicle level sensor on each corner. All of them were installed visually properly and the plugs were connected tight.

However, on the RL end, I saw something wrong with the air strut. By that time Rivian support team has answered the phone. I told them the whole story and they told me since I have rebooted the car a few times already and it did not fix the issue, they asked me to force the truck to go into the deep sleep cycle and then call them back. I did it and it did not fix the issue.

So after I have completed all of those steps I raised the car again and went to take a look at what was wrong with the RL air strut.

Here is what I have found.

As we can see it is not looking good. Also if you will take a look at where the air strut is connected to the lower control arm it is installed not properly.

Here is the RR air strut for comparison.

Also, if I lower the truck to "lower" now I can see this error:

The rivian Service team told me they will try to schedule a service a soon as possible but currently, they are scheduling for April xD

I will drive the truck back to Service Center tomorrow morning and respectfully ask them to fix what they did immediately since this car is not safe to drive as of now and I don't have any other car to drive.

So, as of now, this is everything I had to say Will see how it will be addressed.

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[R1Tom]

I can't tell if for sure that airspring is misinstalled or the tech just didn't care enough to install the dust boot nicely.

But more than anything...what a pathetic response to a situatuation like this...."we are booked up till April". That should have been "we are really sorry about that and let's get you back in here tomorrow am and we will have a loaner waiting". They are starting to really disappoint in situations like this....

 

[connoisseurr]

Posts like this are where I’d wish Rivian would open their pocket book and start taking care of the lack of service centers. Having to wait 4 months for an appointment is truly unacceptable, for any vehicle owner.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Posts like this are where I’d wish Rivian would open their pocket book and start taking care of the lack of service centers. Having to wait 4 months for an appointment is truly unacceptable, for any vehicle owner.

They are working on it, but it takes quite a while to get a physical location stood up and put trained employees in it. Perhaps you could help by applying to be a service tech at one of these locations?

 

[Kuro-Rivian]

99.9% of posts like this are wild-eyed ranting and petty bitching. Yours is not and you are rightly disappointed/upset. You seem pretty level headed and reasonable. One problem i think we're seeing is an inability of rivian's central service scheduling to triage. Seems like you'll get the same initial response/scheduling whether you need your windshield wipers changed or you've dropped a drive unit on the side if the highway. When they need to prioritize anything they have to play telephone tag to coordinated with the actual service center. This is an inherent problem with the central service advisor model. I'm sure the service center will take care and get you back asap.

 

[kyunam]

In this case, when the car is not operable, do they give you or are they supposed to give you a loaner while you are waiting until your service appointment?

 

[Dark-Fx]

99.9% of posts like this are wild-eyed ranting and petty bitching. Yours is not and you are rightly disappointed/upset. You seem pretty level headed and reasonable. One problem i think we're seeing is an inability of rivian's central service scheduling to triage. Seems like you'll get the same initial response/scheduling whether you need your windshield wipers changed or you've dropped a drive unit on the side if the highway. When they need to prioritize anything they have to play telephone tag to coordinated with the actual service center. This is an inherent problem with the central service advisor model. I'm sure the service center will take care and get you back asap.

My service center was able to "fit me in" before my originally scheduled appointment for a new problem, but it ended up that the parts took so long to receive that my truck was still there more than a month later when my appointment was scheduled for. But, that probably meant that it would have been a month after the scheduled date too.

If parts were available, I'd probably take on fixing something like that myself if it was a four month wait, but as far as I'm aware, no-one has been able to convince Rivian to supply service parts to them personally. Will be interesting to see if this changes once people start coming off warranty.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Yeah I don't think that long of a wait is an acceptable option for an issue like this. I certainly hope they don't have that many critical issues ahead of you in the queue. I get that everyone thinks their issue is critical but I'm personally happy to wait for my seats to be calibrated so that someone like yourself can get his truck into drivable condition.

 

[Mandarin]

99.9% of posts like this are wild-eyed ranting and petty bitching. Yours is not and you are rightly disappointed/upset. You seem pretty level headed and reasonable. One problem i think we're seeing is an inability of rivian's central service scheduling to triage. Seems like you'll get the same initial response/scheduling whether you need your windshield wipers changed or you've dropped a drive unit on the side if the highway. When they need to prioritize anything they have to play telephone tag to coordinated with the actual service center. This is an inherent problem with the central service advisor model. I'm sure the service center will take care and get you back asap.

Thank you.
I don’t see any reason to be rude or bitching about what’s happened. Everyone can do mistakes. Especially In situation that Rivian Service Centers are having now. When a lot of units are pumped out by the plant and the capacity of SC is not enough.

But I hope they will be able to take the car back when I’ll be there and will be able to give me a loaner again.

 

[connoisseurr]

They are working on it, but it takes quite a while to get a physical location stood up and put trained employees in it. Perhaps you could help by applying to be a service tech at one of these locations?

I'd totally be down to be a service tech for Rivian. While I'm no trained professional, I have an advanced general knowledge of automobiles. Would be hard to beat my current job/career though - full teleworker, 4-days a week

 

[Dark-Fx]

I'd totally be down to be a service tech for Rivian. While I'm no trained professional, I have an advanced general knowledge of automobiles. Would be hard to beat my current job/career though - full teleworker, 4-days a week

Fully remote? Just work both jobs.

 

[connoisseurr]

In this case, when the car is not operable, do they give you or are they supposed to give you a loaner while you are waiting until your service appointment?

You'd get a loaner, or they'd get you an Enterprise rental.

 

[connoisseurr]

Fully remote? Just work both jobs.

Haha touche. I've known a few people to carry two full-time jobs, especially through COVID. Double dipping on six-figure salaries sure is nice.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Hi all

After 11500 mi with the truck, I noticed as many were mentioning tocking noise and metal grinding noise from the front left (take a look at my posts to find out more information, this story is not about that).

Before starting, I want to say that I really like my truck and Rivian experience overall. I had a few service center visits in 6 months of ownership already and all of them were perfect. I was totally happy with how the Service Center team is taking care of customers. But this is the 1st time I will need to deal with something like this in my past 15 years of driving many different makes and models and dealing with different service centers.

So I dropped the car to address those issues back on 11/21 at Bellevue Service Center and the car spent there 2,5 weeks. The rivian team has completed a few different things including replacing rear drive shafts which have popped out of the rear drive unit. While completing that, seems like they were required to disconnect the rear lower control arms which are the base for air struts.

I picked up the car today after work when it was already dark outside. When I was driving home on city streets before entering a freeway, I noticed that the steering wheel is unusually heavy to turn to the right, while turning to the left is now even easier than before. Also, the steering wheel is not centering anymore after turning.

2nd thing I noticed when I got on the freeway and was driving in the center of the lane, the car was showing on the driver's display that I'm driving perpendicularly between 2 lanes. Unfortunately did not get a photo of that.

When I got back home, parked inside the garage, the car kneeled as always but I realized the front right corner is dropped more than other corners.

I got outside and saw this:

I decided to reboot the vehicle and completed it a couple of times, and the issue was not fixed.

Then I decided to use Leveling function in camping mode. I launched it and the vehicle was telling me that leveling is in process, but the car was not moving. After 10 minutes it was still going. I stopped it and clicked "reset suspension settings" and the car gave me the error that speed may be limited during the suspension settings reset.

I was in the car for about 10 minutes and the car still was trying to reset settings. I went on the drive and drove about 4 miles, but resetting was still in progress.

Parked in a parking lot and rebooted the car again. It has cleared the "resetting suspension settings" task, but the error that says the car will not drive above 20mph has not cleared. However, the car is able to drive over 20mph.

I raised the car to the highest settings and still was able to see that the truck is not leveled.
The FR was the lover point.
The FL was higher than FR.
The rear end was even higher than the FL side, but RR and RL corners had different heights.

So I decided to call Rivian support. While I was waiting on the phone, I decided to check the vehicle level sensor on each corner. All of them were installed visually properly and the plugs were connected tight.

However, on the RL end, I saw something wrong with the air strut. By that time Rivian support team has answered the phone. I told them the whole story and they told me since I have rebooted the car a few times already and it did not fix the issue, they asked me to force the truck to go into the deep sleep cycle and then call them back. I did it and it did not fix the issue.

So after I have completed all of those steps I raised the car again and went to take a look at what was wrong with the RL air strut.

Here is what I have found.

As we can see it is not looking good. Also if you will take a look at where the air strut is connected to the lower control arm it is installed not properly.

Here is the RR air strut for comparison.

Also, if I lower the truck to "lower" now I can see this error:

The rivian Service team told me they will try to schedule a service a soon as possible but currently, they are scheduling for April xD

I will drive the truck back to Service Center tomorrow morning and respectfully ask them to fix what they did immediately since this car is not safe to drive as of now and I don't have any other car to drive.

So, as of now, this is everything I had to say Will see how it will be addressed.

Maybe I’m a jerk, but the car clearly should not be driven in that state. As such, April - 4 months is not an acceptable resolution timeframe. This isn’t a panel gap here. You don’t have an operable vehicle right now. I would give it one more try but then I would probably submit a complaint to NHTSA.

The failure of an air strut may result in a loss of ground clearance, vehicle vibration, and potential damage to critical braking components which increase the risk of a crash.

That’s not my language but taken from other recalls that have happened for suspension failures.

I get it’s a new company, we’re all expecting kinks, but they need to have reasonable and timely service.

 

[jjswan33]

I feel your frustration with Rivian service. I have tickets open for months and they keep calling me to schedule service in Bellevue but I’m not driving my truck 3+ hours for service.

To make things worse I called last week about none of my exterior buttons working, meaning I can’t open the gear tunnel doors without a helper (because I have to use the inside screen). They haven’t bothered to follow up.

By far the long lead times and failure to fix things right when you take them in is my biggest issue with Rivian.

Best of luck with the getting your truck fixed, trust me I‘ve been there with the front suspension failure.

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