Very interesting… did Rivian tell you a 3rd party was going to be used? I was told it would be a Rivian employee bringing a flatbed, similar to what they use for deliveries.
It may depend on how busy they are, and what's available.
Ok - wheel balance and alignment can be a safety issue.
In the 50ish years that you have been buying cars, it's unlikely that you purchased anywhere other than a local dealer that provided service, or with a service center local to you. In my 30 years of buying cars, I was in the same boat.
Someone might be able to "hotel it" overnight instead of traveling twice, but then you are counting on them to fix it the day you bring it in and the next day. Might be ok once in awhile, but some people have been doing repeat service for repeat problems.
At the end of the day they are putting the burden of their growing pains squarely on the shoulders of their customer base - the very customer base that is helping them stay in business and serve as brand ambassadors at a critical time in the companies development.
Based on the discussions I had plus what I’ve seen posted it looks to be exceedingly rare to get a Rivian employee service tow. They use freight brokers who post the job on services for independent haulers. Both of the actual drivers I spoke with had done several Rivians, and the owner of the freight company said he had handled almost 200 of them.
Those tow rates aren’t nickel and diming. It is possible that Rivian had set up a tow for the original service date, but still had to pay a portion of that when the OP moved his date, so they are potentially charging to prevent that from happening again. Either way, Rivian can’t do free tows forever for trucks that are drivable. I have the pre 3/1 pricing, and still intend to purchase, but if I end up needing service at a service center more than my ICE vehicles, especially with the time and effort or tow money required, I’ll cut my losses. I understand that Rivian can’t fulfill everyone’s needs, they need to grow, as I’m sure they understand not everyone wants to travel hours for service.
FYI, rivian ONLY uses third party tow trucks for service. They go through another service called Avao or something to schedule everything. They only use rivian flatbeds for delivery. And yes, when you talk to the third party tow truck drivers most of them have done multiple Rivians
We can agree to disagree on that. People are paying luxury brand pricing and are doing so with blind faith that Rivian is going to sort out the issues in its first generation builds - for a brand new company. Tesla is a dumpster fire when it comes to service, but the first few years at least, they took care of their customers who were putting up with all of the issues so that the company could get on better footing for the next model year/generation.
