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Rivian Support / Service over the first 9 months of ownership

s4wrxttcs

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In my experience over the last 9 months with Rivian the biggest issue hasn't been the vehicle itself, but the utter lack of any kind of competency from Rivian Service or Support. There is no feeling of cohesion or that there is a process. I'm not saying there aren't competent people at the local level, but that it lacks the feeling you're working with a tightly run operation.

A good example is even something as simple as service appointment confirmation happened multiple times. Just how many people are going to call me to confirm a service appointment on the same day?

The last service appointment in Bellevue a couple months ago was a disaster because they took over a week to even begin service after I dropped it off, and only managed to fix one of many issues I reported. Anything I didn't have on the service ticket they ignored (understandable given the immense workload they're under at Service Centers). Then to top of that they had me pick up the vehicle with around 20% battery charge. I'm not even going to get into issues with not having loaners or EV rentals or Uber credit expiring before I can pick up the vehicle.

To make sure I covered everything I made sure to report everything I could think of to Service/Support for the next service appointment. What's funny to me is with each one they pretend like they never heard of the problem before.

It got to a point of me writing "please don't contact me about this SW bug. This report is to simply let Rivian know the bug exist" because I couldn't take the "Have you tried resetting it" runaround any longer.

They have no way to separate out SW bug reporting and reporting service issues. So everything ends up going through service, and my current Service appointment has around 9 issues. Where only 3-4 of them have anything for service to actually do. The only ones I really care about are the first five.

Here are the issues as I reported them:

Experience dampening issues:
  • Makes a toking sound when accelerating or decelerating -> In the previous service they lubed it, but it didn’t fix it completely. It’s my understanding there is a more complete fix?
  • Heating Steering Wheel is only lukewarm -> During the Mobile Service they said that the bottom of the steering wheel wasn’t heating up
  • The FM Radio favorites can no longer be selected by the left wheel button like they used to. You used to be able to select a favorite then use the left wheel buttons to toggle through the favorites. Now it toggles through every available station which is really annoying. Likely not something service can fix, but I’m hoping that service can tell Rivian Support that it indeed is an issue and to stop telling people “Have you tried resetting?”.
  • Unable to wake vehicle over WIFI/Cell once its gone to sleep (4-8 hours after parking somewhere). This means I can’t turn on a heater before heading towards the vehicle to get within Bluetooth range
  • Driver+ works intermittently at best in the rain. Even mild showers can trigger the “take over now” message. It impacts both Adaptive Cruise control only, and Adaptive Cruise Control plug lane steering. This is likely not something service can fix, but Rivian support needs to be aware of the issue to stop giving people the runaround. It simply doesn’t work well enough.
Annoying (possible firmware bugs)
  • Spotify isn’t showing all my favorites and instead limits them to 100 (or it might be 50). So I made copied all my favorites to another playlist, and this works fine. EXCEPT when the vehicle goes to sleep when parking you don’t get to see the same screen as you left it. Instead you have to go all the way back to the playlist to see where you’re at. If you push the other button it then only shows 50. I haven’t tested that screen enough to see what happens when it reaches the 50th. In any case its not very user friendly. This is mostly just feedback for Rivian and I don’t expect service to do anything.
  • It loves flashing error messages on the first drive in the morning, but there isn’t anyway to recall what popped up. Sometimes its Driver+ unavailable and sometimes it’s something else. I don’t expect service to do anything aside from checking the logs to make sure nothing is really wrong. It doesn’t inspire much confidence in the vehicle when you get random error messages.
  • The backup lines don’t immediately appear when backing up in the morning. Usually it takes many seconds, but other times it comes on fine
  • Twice over the last 6 months the backup camera (nor the forward) camera showed an image. An infotainment reset fixes this, but it’s a bit concerning as backup cameras are a key safety device. I can see people being in a hurry and not having time to reset.
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Mandarin

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  • The backup lines don’t immediately appear when backing up in the morning. Usually, it takes many seconds, but other times it comes on fine

Upon jumping in the car, and before switching to R or when you've switched already try to turn the steering wheel a bit. Lines will appear immediately.

Per my understanding, it is somehow related to the sensor that reads the steering wheel/rack position and after a deep sleep, it is not activated before the steering wheel/rack is moving.

Tocking sound. Just let it go, they don't know what's that. My car spent 70 days in the service center in 1st 6 months of ownership and they have never been able to fix it.

Nothing else happened to me. Can't say anything. But totally agree with everything you said about support over the phone
 
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s4wrxttcs

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it is somehow related to the sensor that reads the steering wheel/rack position and after a deep sleep, it is not activated before the steering wheel/rack is moving.
Thanks. I'll try that when I get my vehicle back from service.
 

SciGuy

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What are “damping” issues?
 
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s4wrxttcs

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Update:

During the weekend I dropped the Vehicle off to Service In Tualatin Oregon for the items listed in the original message.

They said they would get in contact with me on Monday, but I haven't heard from them.
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