Excellent first service experience

[cgm9999]

...it was fantastic!

I had the typical stuff replaced. The clicking steering wheel and clacky/sticky silver appliqué buttons finally got to me, so I put in a service ticket. My pilot panel also stopped moving upward, so it was a good time to get service involved.

I put in the service request on a Monday and by Thursday a tech showed up to my house in a GT loaner(!). The next day, my car was brought back to my house and everything was replaced with no issues. It was as painless and seamless as could be.

By owning a Lucid, I avoided:

1. Determining a time out of my schedule that I could be without my car;
2. Coordinating with the wife about who's going to drop the other off at work, run the errands, etc;
3. Driving my car out of the way to a dealership on a weekday during morning rush hour traffic in a major metro city;
4. Letting my team know that I would be late to work that day;
5. Dealing with the chaos that is a modern day service bay at a dealership (i.e. figuring out where to park my car since the bay is already jam packed with customer cars, asking a porter where to put my car but being told "no ingles", parking my car in a sales customer spot in the front of the dealership, walking a half a click in the snow to the service department at the back of the dealership while wearing cordovan leather oxfords because it's 0730hrs and the front of the dealership is not unlocked, etc.)
6. Explaining to an apathetic, overworked service advisor my issues, then being told that that the diagnostic fee will be $200 even though my car is still under bumper to bumper warranty;
7. Being told that there are no loaners available and then insisting on one because the whole reason I scheduled service on this day is because I was told by the scheduler that a loaner would be available;
8. Being given a Nissan Versa with mismatching tires (both Nankang and Laufen tires and balder than Telly Savalas? Oh boy!) and the fetid miasma of old breast milk as a loaner;
9. Waiting patiently all day for a status update on my car, which actually never comes;
10. Calling the dealership service desk multiple times because no one ever picks up or returns requests for a call back;
11. Finally getting a hold of my service tech 2 days later (because he was on vacation, you see) only to be told that the parts for my car are backordered without an ETA;
12. Picking up my car days later, with greasy finger/palm prints all over the interior, and fresh scratches over every square inch of paintwork from the complementary "car wash" that uses brushes caked with grit and dirt from the 1995 Dodge Ram Dually that got "washed" right before my car did;
13. Filing a complaint with the dealership to be reimbursed for the damage done to my car, and;
14. Threaten legal action when the dealership inevitably denies any wrongdoing.

And yes, this is an account of a real situation that has happened on two separate occasions at two different dealerships.

As a car buyer, the decision to purchase a vehicle involves far more than determining how good the actual car is. When you're young/inexperienced with car purchasing, you don't care about the details like resale value, predicted reliability, serviceability and dealership experience after the sale. However, once you've had a few of the above experiences, the after-the-sale experience moves up the list on the hierarchy of important things when considering a new car. I don't have "FU money", but I do well enough to have a stable of nice cars from a career that demands A LOT of me, and as such, I simply don't have the luxury of having the extra time and patience for nonsense. I've eliminated specific cars from consideration simply because I knew that when something failed, I'd have to deal with a carnival of chucklef***s at a particular dealership network.

I say all of this because even though Lucid has issues in terms of software and little things here and there, a lot of that is completely mitigated for me because a.) none of these issues "brick" my car or leave me stranded, and; b.) the service experience is stellar. In other words, I know that if something goes wrong, a Lucid will be brought to my door, and mine will be whisked away to be worked on - easy peasy. Short of having absolutely flawless for the life of the vehicle, this is as good as it gets for me in terms of service.

I don't think people do this algebra, either - even a reliable car needs service every once and a while, and if the dealership experience blows, it's still a pain in the ass, reliable car or not. It's to the point now that the thought of having to do the whole "go to the service department thing" whenever I need service is a non-starter for me.

That's why as nice as a Porsche/Lexus/BMW/Mercedes/etc. might be, as long as I have to deal with the service department in a traditional way, it's going to give me pause before deciding to purchase one of those cars. Lexus changed the game in the '90s by not only making an outstanding product at an outstanding price, but also providing an outstanding service experience, as well. As great as this is, the next step in customer satisfaction is removing as much as the traditional service experience as possible, which Lucid does. As nice as the service department's coffee is at the Lexus dealership, the fact that I have to go there at all is less than ideal.

With my Lucid and Rivian, I don't have to worry about such things and that's a huge win for me and a major reason why I'd consider buying another.

 

[Batteryman]

Lucid service is exceptional, software isn’t that bad as people say here on the forum, it’s 95% there!!!!