[Johnnyblu]

I took delivery of my R1T on 5/5/22. Two days later it was in the shop for 2 weeks. It’s spent over 5 weeks in the shop across 7 service visits.

As much as I loved the performance of the R1T, the QC is terrible. I had panel gap issues surface 3 months in, severe front tire degradation in only 8.5k miles (front tires were nearly bald, only took it off roaring once in those 8.5 miles, other than that daily driving) and TONS of software issues.

it got to the point where I either deal with the issues or push for a buyback. For $85k, it wasn’t worth it.

On top of this, their service center and support centers are terrible. They clearly don’t have software that allows them to share information between the two. I turned in my Rivian on 12/09, and asked them to cancel the scheduled service center pickup for 12/19. Sure enough, a Rivian employee showed up to my house on 12/19 with a Rivian loaner. On top of that, they also set up a car rental reservation.

Lastly, I had to lawyer up because they didn’t want to cover my interest paid. Once we settled, they agreed to make payment in 7-10 days, and now are saying “these things take 30 days”. I’m now in a position where I have no car, and no down payment for another car as I need the 20k I put down on this in order to buy a new one.

I went from being open to revisiting ownership once the kinks were worked out to having zero faith in this company and will stay far away from them going forward.

 

[IThinkFreely]

Not everyone is suited to be an early adopter.

 

[Johnnyblu]

Not everyone is suited to be an early adopter.

Makes zero sense to have a truck that is in the shop every other month. Early adopter = deal with some issues. This is on a whole other level. My truck was in the shop and not drivable 25% of the time I owned it.

 

[IThinkFreely]

I don't agree with your definition of being an early adopter in the slightest. "Deal with some issues" is what anyone who buys anything endures. I have a family member who clipped a deer in a Defender. Driveable but needed repair. Left it in to Land Rover, 4 months ago. No idea when it's coming back.

While what happened with you was unfortunate and clearly aggravating, it is also inevitable that some, just some, of the first few thousand vehicles off a newly invented production line will have trouble. They have a young and fragile service infrastructure. Those 2 things together lead to vehicles being out of commission for longer than 'normal'.

What you describe doesn't qualify the car as a lemon in my book. I'm surprised they settled with you at all but that is likely them being generous with an 'early adopter' as part of their brand goodwill. You actually gripe about too much service in a way. People showing up with loaners at your house and giving you rental reservations you don't need.. Mistakes yes but not the worst type I have heard of.

 

[SANZCO2]

My only take here would be if you cannot buy another vehicle because you do not have your deposit back from this purchase, then you clearly should have never purchased a vehicle this expensive to begin with.

 

[Nsblifer]

My only take here would be if you cannot buy another vehicle because you do not have your deposit back from this purchase, then you clearly should have never purchased a vehicle this expensive to begin with.

Mine as well. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.

 

[Johnnyblu]

Mine as well. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.

And why not? Given what Rivian is supposed to be, I had no issue forming over $20k to get it. Paying my $1k a month Rivian payment and forking over another $20k 6 months after is unreasonable for most people.

I ended up going back to Tesla and put 13k down on it.Not sure how that’s flying by the seat of your pants buddy

 

[Nsblifer]

And why not? Given what Rivian is supposed to be, I had no issue forming over $20k to get it. Paying my $1k a month Rivian payment and forking over another $20k 6 months after is unreasonable for most people.

I ended up going back to Tesla and put 13k down on it.Not sure how that’s flying by the seat of your pants buddy

Nobody is here to give you financial advice. But as referenced above and based on your OP, I’d consider it. GL.

 

[Johnnyblu]

I don't agree with your definition of being an early adopter in the slightest. "Deal with some issues" is what anyone who buys anything endures. I have a family member who clipped a deer in a Defender. Driveable but needed repair. Left it in to Land Rover, 4 months ago. No idea when it's coming back.

While what happened with you was unfortunate and clearly aggravating, it is also inevitable that some, just some, of the first few thousand vehicles off a newly invented production line will have trouble. They have a young and fragile service infrastructure. Those 2 things together lead to vehicles being out of commission for longer than 'normal'.

What you describe doesn't qualify the car as a lemon in my book. I'm surprised they settled with you at all but that is likely them being generous with an 'early adopter' as part of their brand goodwill. You actually gripe about too much service in a way. People showing up with loaners at your house and giving you rental reservations you don't need.. Mistakes yes but not the worst type I have heard of.

Good thing lemon law isn’t written according to your book. California lemon law is pretty clear, and Rivian far exceeded it with my R1T. I made reasonable efforts to keep the truck, but they admitted while all the issues I experienced were known issues, I was experiencing them all at the same time.

Also, you don’t know the extent of the issues so premature to say they don’t “qualify” in your book.

If you’re an owner, watch your tires as you’re going to have to replace them every 10-15k miles. Rivian didn’t factor in tire degradation when building the truck and the combination of weight, torque and horsepower, and regen braking shred the tires, especially front ones even with normal driving. Totally fine if that’s what you know you are getting into, but owners are just finding that out now. Not pleasant to have to fork over another $1-2k a year in tires when you had no idea you’d be incurring those expenses.

 

[Johnnyblu]

My only take here would be if you cannot buy another vehicle because you do not have your deposit back from this purchase, then you clearly should have never purchased a vehicle this expensive to begin with.

So, you’re saying not to purchase a vehicle you can afford because you should be able to purchase two of them at any time? Makes zero sense.

 

[Johnnyblu]

Nobody is here to give you financial advice. But as referenced above and based on your OP, I’d consider it. GL.

Wasn’t asking for financial advice - don’t need Rivian fanboys trying to give it either

 

[Nsblifer]

Wasn’t asking for financial advice - don’t need Rivian fanboys trying to give it either

Clearly you’re frustrated, and rightfully so. You did buy an R1T correct? That makes you the fanboy. Go read your original post. Maybe you wrote it the wrong way. You said you couldn’t buy another vehicle because you haven’t gotten your down payment of only $20k back from Rivian.

 

[Johnnyblu]

Clearly you’re frustrated, and rightfully so. You did buy an R1T correct? That makes you the fanboy. Go read your original post. Maybe you wrote it the wrong way. You said you couldn’t buy another vehicle because you haven’t gotten your down payment of only $20k back from Rivian.

I was highlighting the hardship this has caused, especially because Rivian was giving me the runaround, first saying 7-10 days then saying 30 days. Meanwhile I need a car and still have to make payments on the Rivian. Any reasonable person would agree that it is a less than ideal situation.

if I was a fanboy, I’d still have it. They offered me $2.5k refund to keep it, but honestly it wasn’t worth it given so much of the functionality just flat out didn’t work.

 

[SANZCO2]

So, you’re saying not to purchase a vehicle you can afford because you should be able to purchase two of them at any time? Makes zero sense.

That speaks volumes.

The term “afford” is arbitrary, sure you could scrape the down payment together and even probably make the monthly payments but when you stretch yourself so thin that when something like this happens, as it can with any manufacturer, you could not actually “afford“ the vehicle. You clearly left yourself in a bad position, this is a direct quote from your post

“I’m now in a position where I have no car, and no down payment for another car as I need the 20k I put down on this in order to buy a new one.”

Any vehicle in this price range is a frivolous purchase, it should only be made with disposable funds and not put anyone in a bad financial position, as this clearly did based on your own words.

 

[racekarl]

The OP has a legitimate complaint. Rivian is not perfect and will have mis-steps and it doesn’t help anyone when the response to someone pointing out one of those mis-steps is to jump down their throat and accuse them of poor decision making or bad judgement or of not being willing to suck it up.

Let’s not turn this into the Tesla forums…

 

[Johnnyblu]

That speaks volumes.

The term “afford” is arbitrary, sure you could scrape the down payment together and even probably make the monthly payments but when you stretch yourself so thin that when something like this happens, as it can with any manufacturer, you could not actually “afford“ the vehicle. You clearly left yourself in a bad position, this is a direct quote from your post

“I’m now in a position where I have no car, and no down payment for another car as I need the 20k I put down on this in order to buy a new one.”

Any vehicle in this price range is a frivolous purchase, it should only be made with disposable funds and not put anyone in a bad financial position, as this clearly did based on your own words.

Wow you are exuding serious small dick energy. Not wasting any more time engaging with you.

 

[O. horridus]

The OP has a legitimate complaint. Rivian is not perfect and will have mis-steps and it doesn’t help anyone when the response to someone pointing out one of those mis-steps is to jump down their throat and accuse them of poor decision making or bad judgement or of not being willing to suck it up.

The OP's post is a mess - it's not clear exactly what the problems were and how they were handled, but from my reading he took delivery of a very early VIN (~2k?) and it had problems. Rivian couldn't address all the problems to his satisfaction, so he returned the vehicle and will be getting his money back + interest (?). No one wants to deal with this, but frankly it's not a surprise that it happened to some people who bought one of the first vehicles to roll off the line from a brand new manufacturer.

I don't see any mis-steps here, but again unclear from the poor wording of the initial post. The way I read it Rivian bought back the vehicle and paid some interest for some reason, but didn't deduct any amount for the 7 months of use? What more do you want Rivian to do? They went beyond the 7 day return policy, and although it's unclear from the information provided, this vehicle is probably not covered by the lemon laws (which would almost certainly be IL lemon laws, not CA, because the vehicle was purchased in IL). Regardless, they worked with the OP, offered monetary compensation, and, when he wouldn't accept that, they bought the vehicle back at full price (plus interest). I don't know what more you could expect. It seems like Rivian took responsibility and made the OP whole.

I'm not sure why a rant about this situation is needed, weeks after the OP returned his vehicle. (I also don't see the point of making this a "poll".) Others have quietly returned their Rivian or sold it when the vehicle didn't meet their needs and/or expectations, or had it replaced by Rivian with another vehicle when Rivian couldn't resolve the issues with their first vehicle. These things happen, and by all accounts (including this one) Rivian seems to be working with the customer to solve the issues and come to some mutually agreeable solution. It sounds like both sides tried. Perhaps the interaction took longer than the OP would have liked, perhaps there were more communications problems than the OP would have liked. The OP could have returned the vehicle back in May but clearly the OP was trying to end up keeping the vehicle and eventually reached the point where he decided it was no longer worth the trouble. Again, no one wants this to happen to them, but when it does happen this seems to be a relatively good outcome.

 

[Adam R1T LE]

Not everyone is suited to be an early adopter.

"Early adopter" means bugs, missing features, "less than great" quality, fit and finish, etc.

I've had my R1T since March. None of these problems (only the suspension torque recall and wind noise.)

I'm not commenting on the legality or business ethics, just the expectations for "version 0.9 early adopter experience."

 

[racekarl]

The OP's post is a mess.

True, and I almost wrote something to that effect, but it’s beside the point. Nothing the OP wrote justified the vitriol with which the post was met.

I don't see any mis-steps here

Besides building a defective truck (singular) Rivian agreed to a payment schedule then reneged on it immediately.

this vehicle is probably not covered by the lemon laws

7 visits and 40 days out of service meets the lemon law standard in all but a handful of states. It read to me like the OP says he’s in California.

I'm not sure why a rant about this situation is needed, .

And by the same token no rants about the OPs unwillingness to tolerate a defective truck or impugning his financial position were needed either.

 

[O. horridus]

The OP's post is a mess

True, and I almost wrote something to that effect, but it’s beside the point.

The reason I call this out and the reason it's to the point is because something that is poorly explained invites interpretation. I made sure to state what I was inferring from the OP, and to highlight my assumptions, but because the post was incomplete and contradictory I leave open the possibility that I misunderstood what the OP was saying.

I don't see any mis-steps here, but again unclear from the poor wording of the initial post.

Besides building a defective truck (singular) Rivian agreed to a payment schedule then reneged on it immediately.

(You left out the qualification, which I added back here with emphasis.)
Defective truck yes, but I don't call that a mis-step. Unless you expected them to be perfect, which no-one is. They clearly didn't intend to do it, and they clearly tried to fix it at no cost and to otherwise compensate the owner, which also wasn't a mis-step - it was what was expected.

But reneged on payment schedule? I didn't and don't see that. I read that Rivian agreed to return his money, and that he got multiple answers about when he would receive it. Same as I get from just about every organization I deal with. 7-10 days might be reasonable for refunding a credit card, but chances are after 7 months Rivian can't simply reverse the charge. Besides, there seems to be a loan involved (inferred because he talked about down payments) and it's not clear whether this was a loan through Rivian or through a third party. Last year it took me 9 months to get my tax refund, which I consider excessive because the IRS should have that process down pat after hundreds of millions of times a year. But I doubt that Rivian has accepted a return more than just a handful of times, so I don't think 30 days is really unreasonable. By my count it's only been three weeks since he returned it so it's too soon to cry foul. Maybe that's just me, but on the other hand Rivian is slow to accept payment as well - they didn't get paid by my bank until more than 30 days after I took delivery because it took Rivian that long to process the paperwork.

7 visits and 40 days out of service meets the lemon law standard in all but a handful of states. It read to me like the OP says he’s in California.

Depends. If it was out of service repeatedly for the same thing, then perhaps. If it was for a dozen little unrelated things, then perhaps not. Again, hard to tell from the OP, but he does talk about CA lemon laws which are probably not relevant to a vehicle purchased in IL (AFAIK all Rivians are purchased in IL. Certainly mine was, even though I live in WA.) And he does talk about things like panel gaps issues which became a problem "3 months in" which I don't understand and which probably don't count as defects that " ...“substantially impair” the use, value, or safety of the motor vehicle." which is the standard here in WA. As I said, the OP leaves a tremendous amount to interpretation, and I attribute that in part to a large number of little issues (including some that were first brought up many months later) that he doesn't want to have to recount, as opposed to a few big issues.

To illustrate my point, if he said something like (for example) he had persistent battery problems, turtle mode, screen errors etc. that kept happening even after Rivian serviced the vehicle, replaced the drive units, replaced the traction battery, replaced the control modules, etc. and that he still had these problems after 7 months, then that would clearly be a lemon law situation if Rivian refused to accept return of the vehicle. But if he said (again for example) first Spotify wouldn't work, then the radio only played static, then there was a chip in the rear seat display screen, then the tailgate wouldn't drop automatically, then he had alignment issues, then he had to take it in for the recall and get the nut torqued, well then I would say this is not really a lemon law situation.

Regardless, lemon laws don't really come into play here because Rivian agreed to accept the return. I am not seeing any indication that Rivian refused to accept the return, just that the issues got to the point where the OP decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to deal with them any more.

Then there's the tire issue which again doesn't make complete sense - excessive wear on the tires is probably due to the alignment problems that were common in early VIN Rivians, at a time when the SCs didn't seem to have complete knowledge or ability to do the alignments properly. I have to assume Rivian replaced his tires (at some point) after eventually correcting the alignment issues, but who knows? "Bald in 8.5k miles" is not typical or expected, but tire wear due to bad alignment is not lemon law material either, unless Rivian was unable to fix it after a reasonable effort.

I'm not sure why a rant about this situation is needed, .

And by the same token no rants about the OPs unwillingness to tolerate a defective truck or impugning his financial position were needed either.

Yeah, but that wasn't me, and I didn't defend them either. I didn't contradict you about that. My remark was to emphasize that the tone of the original post didn't really match the facts presented and didn't seem consistent with the fact that the OP was able to return his truck like he wanted, with interest, when he finally decided he'd had enough of trying to get it fixed.