Photo: Lucid
Lucid started its career with a remarkably efficient new EV. Despite Air’s qualities, autoevolution readers know they were not enough to prevent several flaws presented by the electric sedan, some of which are making customers give up on buying it. Curiously, Lucid is not trying to improve that by solving the issues: it is instructing retail employees to make the cancelation process a via Crucis.
According to two emails obtained by Business Insider, Lucid’s workers should treat any cancelation as a failure. These employees must contact the people giving up their reservations to try to revert them. The first ones with that responsibility are “case owners.” If they cannot save the sale, a manager will try to do that. If this manager fails, a regional manager will make a last attempt to revert the cancelation. Only at this point, the customer’s decision will be respected.
The insistence chain is not as simple as the process described above makes it seem. The case owners have to try to contact the customers who are canceling their purchases. If they do not manage to talk to the client right away, they have to try doing so three more times on consecutive days, which makes them insist on four calls in total. When the case escalates to managers, they have to try to contact the former Lucid buyers six times. Regional managers have four mandatory attempts to revert the cancelation.
In a way, the Business Insider story shows a Lucid client has to be prepared to talk at least three times about why they do not want to purchase the Air anymore. If they do not pick up their phones, they should expect 14 calls, which is pretty far from the premium experience Lucid said it wanted to offer its customers: one contact with a client should suffice.
As autoevolution readers already know, Lucid Air units are presenting several problems that remind us of the quality issues Tesla vehicles have: thin paint, 12V failures, uneven panel gaps, loose trim pieces, software issues, and the “Turtle of Doom,” generally caused by a rear motor defect.
In September, then Lucid’s vice president of global manufacturing, Peter Hochholdinger, and five other high-level manufacturing executives left the company. We have no idea if they departed (or were invited to hit the road) because they did not avoid these problems or because they could not fix them as they wanted. We’ll probably never know: we’re yet to hear from Lucid about the issues we reported on October 7, 2022.
The insistence chain is not as simple as the process described above makes it seem. The case owners have to try to contact the customers who are canceling their purchases. If they do not manage to talk to the client right away, they have to try doing so three more times on consecutive days, which makes them insist on four calls in total. When the case escalates to managers, they have to try to contact the former Lucid buyers six times. Regional managers have four mandatory attempts to revert the cancelation.
In a way, the Business Insider story shows a Lucid client has to be prepared to talk at least three times about why they do not want to purchase the Air anymore. If they do not pick up their phones, they should expect 14 calls, which is pretty far from the premium experience Lucid said it wanted to offer its customers: one contact with a client should suffice.
As autoevolution readers already know, Lucid Air units are presenting several problems that remind us of the quality issues Tesla vehicles have: thin paint, 12V failures, uneven panel gaps, loose trim pieces, software issues, and the “Turtle of Doom,” generally caused by a rear motor defect.
In September, then Lucid’s vice president of global manufacturing, Peter Hochholdinger, and five other high-level manufacturing executives left the company. We have no idea if they departed (or were invited to hit the road) because they did not avoid these problems or because they could not fix them as they wanted. We’ll probably never know: we’re yet to hear from Lucid about the issues we reported on October 7, 2022.
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