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Rivian’s customer service disappointed an early adopter in a time of need.
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Rivian struggles with a touch-and-go relationship with his early boosters.
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“I’m just not the right person to be an early adopter,” said the Rivian owner.
When Chase Merrill took his first drive in his new Rivian R1S, it was instantly his favorite car he had ever driven.
Merrill, 24, put down a down payment on an R1S three years ago at the urging of relatives who also own Rivians. He was hesitant about switching from his 2015 Ford Edge to an all-electric SUV, especially since he lives in a relatively remote area in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
But when he got behind the wheel of the $85,626 car on March 10, those worries melted away.
“I was in a honeymoon phase,” Merrill said in an interview with Insider. “It’s an incredible car and it drives unlike anything I’ve ever driven.”
The honeymoon did not last long.
Two days later, Merrill drove his R1S to his family’s shared mountain estate. He wanted to put his robust electric SUV to the test, so he drove it up the unploughed, snow-covered road into the terrain.
Initially, the R1S cut through the snow. Then a big snowdrift obstructed the car, he said.
“I hit about 2 ½ feet of snow and it just stopped there,” said Merrill. “I’d seen all the Rivian marketing campaigns where the cars just ate through the snow, so it was kind of like, man, this is disappointing.”
Merrill said he has previously freed cars from snowdrifts and enlisted another vehicle to help pull him out. While in the driver’s seat, unbuckled, rocking the R1S out of the snowdrift, he said he accidentally activated a safety device that trapped the car between park and drive gears.
His Rivian was bricked up, making it completely useless.
The brand new Rivian eventually had to be loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven to a service center in Chelsea, Massachusetts, hundreds of miles away. The towing cost was $2,100.
Due to the ordeal, Merrill is now considering trading the R1S for a Toyota Tacoma or similar gas-powered pickup, he said.
In an interview with Insider, Rivian executives said the car did exactly what it was programmed to do in a dangerous slip situation. But in this case, it didn’t slip.
“There was an unfortunate cascade of events and edge cases that led to this situation,” Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s senior vice president of software development, told Insider. “But we consider this feedback a gift. It’s a great input for us to improve the product.”
Bensaid said he and his team are brainstorming responses to this particular incident, such as adding better service shortcuts to the Rivian mobile app to report issues like Merrill’s and sharing FAQs for drivers whose cars get stuck .
Rivian risks alienating early adopters
Merrill isn’t the first early Rivian fan to start souring the company. Rivian has struggled to keep some of its order holders happy as it navigates the early days of full production of its three electric vehicles.
Insider has interviewed dozens of current and former Rivian order holders in recent months, some of whom say they are losing hope that their vehicles will ever arrive. Several are even making back-up plans with orders for other electric vehicles in hopes of another option coming sooner.
Having narrowly missed its self-imposed 2022 production target, Rivian has projected a lower 2023 production target than analysts had predicted. The company has also stopped sharing updates on its sizable backlog of orders — once a brag.
The long wait has left some of the company’s early boosters feeling burned. For a young company like Rivian, these early fans can make or break its reputation, shareholders, analysts and Rivian investors tell Insider.
Rivian is working to improve its relationship with its order holders, said Tony Caravano, Rivian’s head of customer engagement.
For example, the company gives customers options for faster delivery if they change their original build specs, he said in an interview with Insider. The company is also trying to be more transparent about the reasons for delivery delays, he said.
Merrill’s Rivian returns with an error message
Most Rivian owners seem to be happy with their vehicles. The EV startup topped JD Power’s EV ownership study last month, and Rivian owners who reached out to Insider often say their car was worth the wait.
For Merrill, the problem isn’t with his Rivian. He is more concerned about how the company handled its first real issue with the vehicle.
Merrill said he later learned that a simple reset could have solved the problem that locked up his car, without the need for a service call. But that solution didn’t come up in his first conversation with Rivian customer service, he said.
A Rivian representative eventually called to apologize to Merrill and offered to pay for the repairs, but the company refused to pay the $2,100 transportation cost, he said. After Insider called Rivian this week to ask about Merrill’s experience, a Rivian representative called Merrill and offered to settle the $2,100 bill.
The last straw for Merrill happened, he said, when the car was returned to him and a critical error message appeared on his dashboard saying the Rivian had to go back to the service center.
“The whole time the customer service attitude was that a Rivian owner should be able to fix this without any issues,” said Merrill. “They just think this shouldn’t be for me and it’s not nothing.”
Caravano takes those kinds of reviews to heart. He says the Merrill incident gives Rivian a chance to rethink the company’s support for new EV drivers.
“There’s a nuance to that ownership experience, we need to make sure they understand it,” Caravano said. “One of the big lessons we learned here is that we are even more communicative about important parts and key elements of the ownership experience now that we know that customers live in more remote areas.”
Merrill said he still stands by Rivian. He’s just not sure if he has the money or the patience to be one of the company’s first boosters.
“The car is super impressive and I want the company to do well,” said Merrill. “I guess I’m just not the right person to be an early adopter.”
Are you a Rivian owner or order holder? Please contact this reporter at [email protected].
Read the original article on Business Insider
