Lucid Will Call You 14 Times to Try Talking You Out of Canceling Your Order

Image: Lucid

Lucid has been having a bit of trouble. After delivery delays and staffing issues, the company finally started to deliver customer vehicles last fall. But the company still isn’t on track to meet its production goals. Customers may be tired of waiting, and that’s freaking Lucid out, as Business Insider reports: a leaked email shows the startup is implementing an aggressive strategy to keep customers from canceling their orders.

Over the last two months, internal emails and memos show that the company is working hard to keep orders, putting pressure on employees and customers alike. An internal email sent to employees says that “Every cancellation is a failure.” 

Speaking to Insider, a Lucid employee outlined what the company expects employees to do to keep customers from canceling their orders. Essentially, it involves bugging the hell out of them. First comes the unnecessary elevation to a case manager when a customer gives word they want their order canceled.

When a customer asks to cancel their order, the request is assigned to a Lucid “case owner,” who must call the customer within 24 hours to “attempt to save” the order. If they don’t reach the customer, they must try calling again three more times on consecutive days.

Then more calls.

Then, the case is passed up to a manager, to review “logged activities,” call the customer within 24 hours, and then try calling again five more times, on consecutive days, if they don’t make contact.

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And then another unnecessary elevation and even more calls.

After that, the case goes to a regional manager, who must try calling the customer within 24 hours, then try calling again three more times on consecutive days. At that point, they can cancel the reservation.

As Insider points out, that amounts to two weeks of calls to keep you from canceling your car order. Mind you, during this entire time, they haven’t even canceled the order yet. They just want to speak to you to keep you from canceling.

And as bad as this customer pressure campaign seems, Lucid has made things even more untenable for employees by blocking end-of-year vacations. According to the report, employees were barred from taking vacation dates between November 24th and 27th, as well as December 17th through 31st.

One employee said that the desperate tone of the company over the order cancellations is clashing with the luxury nature of the brand. “I think the level of desperation and the tone of that email, combined with that cancellation protocol — it doesn’t spell high-end and luxury,” the employee told Insider.

Whatever else is going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t look good. The company just introduced two cheaper base-model Air sedans. It remains to be seen whether this can help boost Lucid’s sales numbers.