Is anyone else concerned due to lack of Guide Contact?!?!

[DucRider]

I'm thinking the first group of contacts were just to calm everyone down.

And to get the guides up to speed.
And find out what type of things customers were asking and what their expectations were from the interaction.
And to see how much time each guide would need to spend during the initial call.
And to see how much time each guide would later spend on follow up conversations.
And then they need to hire and train enough guides to handle the process when they open the floodgates

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[AndroidAppBundle]

Q 2020 R1S reservation holder here. I am right there with ya. I haven’t waited nearly as long; but the Rivian experience has been a test of patience. It is like we are holding out for our “one true love”; but in years past - there have been no fish in the sea. Now there are more fish in the sea; with more on the way.

The lack of communication makes me concerned; if they have anything good to share - they would share it. If they have nothing good to share; they wouldn’t share it. It has made me really just stop; reset my own expectations, and use my own timelines that take in to account all the risks that Rivian might not be sharing.

I have personally reset my own expectations; reset them in a way that should hopefully give Rivian space to impress and surpass my own expectations. Since I am 2020 holder; I predict 2023 delivery for me. Anyone buying in 2021 is getting theirs in Q2-Q3 2024.

I expect the R1T deliveries to be either;

• Pushed to Jan 2022. Or... started, stopped, and resumed in late 2021 or Jan 2022 for either;
  • Temporarily convert both production lines to produce Amazon vans to meet 10k delivery
    • The 10k vehicle purchase may have strings attached (claw backs, penalties for deliveries delayed, etc)
  • Supply chain constraints
  • Vehicle teething pains (aka, issues that require deliveries to be halted, recalls to be issued, and time to identify root cause, workarounds, changes to manufacturing processes)
  • Labor shortages (52k residents in Normal. Largest employer is State Farm with over 14,000 employees. Add up the other large employers and do the math on working age adults available in the labor pool. Then subtract all the employees already employed at large employers. That number will be either employed at smaller companies or unemployed. That number of people is what Rivian has to work with. https://www.visitbn.org/about/major-employers/)

 

[CarterGee]

Hate to be the one to say it, but being an hour from a service center may put you out of range to be contacted at this point :/ That's not actually as close as you'd think and they may only be contacting people much closer. I have a Guide contact and am ~7min from the service center in South San Francisco.

 

[bajadahl]

I expect the R1T deliveries to be either;

• Pushed to Jan 2022. Or... started, stopped, and resumed in late 2021 or Jan 2022 for either

In my opinion there is absolutely no way Rivian delays the R1T past September. I could see them running the line slowly and the deliveries to trickle out over the coming months but a straight up push to January can't happen. RJ has confirmed September deliveries are on track and in my opinion there is no way they file for an IPO if that were in jeopardy. It may not be as fast as we would like but I think there will be significant deliveries throughout the 4th quarter.

 

[kanundrum]

Hate to be the one to say it, but being an hour from a service center may put you out of range to be contacted at this point :/ That's not actually as close as you'd think and they may only be contacting people much closer. I have a Guide contact and am ~7min from the service center in South San Francisco.

I really think this is Key despite what anyone says.

 

[DucRider]

I really think this is Key despite what anyone says.

Rivian has been pretty clear that:
A) The very first deliveries are highly dependent on proximity to an operational service center.
B) Later deliveries will not be.

The only question is how the transition from A to B progresses

 

[Matty J]

I really think this is Key despite what anyone says.

An hour from El Segundo can be as little as 10 miles, depending on traffic. I'm 32 miles from El Segundo, which can sometimes take 2 hours, or as little 35 minutes... It will be interesting to see how Rivian will prioritize distance in miles vs travel time, given traffic variables.

 

[eggpaul]

Hate to be the one to say it, but being an hour from a service center may put you out of range to be contacted at this point :/ That's not actually as close as you'd think and they may only be contacting people much closer. I have a Guide contact and am ~7min from the service center in South San Francisco.

My friend is part of the team that is planning all the service. He said majority will be mobile, and only larger issues would go to the service center. Rivian won't be popular enough to pop up a service center every 20 miles.

 

[Autolycus]

• Pushed to Jan 2022. Or... started, stopped, and resumed in late 2021 or Jan 2022 for either;
  • Temporarily convert both production lines to produce Amazon vans to meet 10k delivery
    • The 10k vehicle purchase may have strings attached (claw backs, penalties for deliveries delayed, etc)

Amazon's first 10k are supposed to be delivered by the end of 2022. Why would they stop production on the R1 line in 2021 to meet an Amazon deadline a year away?

 

[jtshaw]

For what it's worth, I happened to ask Rivian Customer Service a question and they told me to expect to hear from my guide officially "by mid-end of November."

I'm an R1S LE pre-order customer (in the first 600 or so total pre-orders on day 1) who lives in Seattle relatively close to the Bellevue Service Center.

 

[Tommy]

I really think this is Key despite what anyone says.

FWIW, I received my invitation to set up a call with my guide in mid July. Due to unavoidable circumstances, I was unable to make contact until late July. During my initial call I asked what criteria was used to determine when I was contacted. He advised that he did not really know, as someone else makes up the lists and puts it in a queue for the guides, but from what he could tell, it is dependent upon 3 things, order date, configuration, and proximity to a service center (not necessarily in that order).

The closest service center to me (which was discovered very recently) is just over an hour drive from my delivery address.

My guess is that the requirement of "proximity to a service center" is somewhat fungible dependent upon the saturation of orders in your general area. In other words, the fewer orders in your area, the greater the distance to the service center allows you to be on the guide list. Conversely, if you are in an area with lots of pre-orders, that proximity may be significantly less. Just a guess, but seems to fit with the inconsistencies of experiences of those of us in this forum. ?‍

However, as much as I search for some pure logic to determine everyone's place in line, I truly believe that there is a significant random component to it all. Kind of like life after all. ?

 

[Shzeph]

I was (as far as I’m aware) part of the first group to be contacted by the Guides. December 2018 order date, and I live like five minutes away from the Bellevue service centre. So it certainly does seem like the closer you are, the better your chances of being contact are

 

[CarterGee]

My friend is part of the team that is planning all the service. He said majority will be mobile, and only larger issues would go to the service center. Rivian won't be popular enough to pop up a service center every 20 miles.

I understand this for the long term, but for their first deliveries they probably want to limit risks.

 

[DuckTruck]

I think some of the attendees didn't have guide contacts prior to being invited. @DuckTruck is that right?

I don't know about others. While I have been in touch with the Engagement Center many times over the past two-and-half years for general questions (that also led to fun chit-chat), I didn't know who my Guide would be until the end of the recent visit. Engagement Center visits and Guide contacts are not the same thing. I have not had a great deal of contact since, but I didn't expect a lot.

I know, Captain Obvious here, but I think the deliberate pace of Guide contacts is a continuation of Rivian's intent to under-promise and over-deliver. They haven't wavered much from that pattern since the beginning and I wouldn't expect any sudden change now. As others have pointed out here, there are unresolved legal/tax issues that the company is still working through, so taking their time makes sense, at least to me....

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