I took delivery of my 2015 Suburban (LTZ) yesterday afternoon. It was ordered on 18 March 2014 and just delivered to the dealer this morning (27 June 2014). That is fourteen weeks plus a few days after I gave the okay to the salesman and two moths past the promised delivery date. I am sure that it would still be sitting in the rail yard had I not taken steps on my own to contact a newspaper automotive columnist, the Chevy Truck Marketing Manager, a communications manager at the plant and the Launch Manager at the plant. In the end all of them went out of their way to help, considering the number of recall and safety issues as well as rail transportation issues. In fact, my truck was put on a haulaway truck two days earlier. Without this help my truck would still be in Texas. From a plant standpoint they all apologized on behalf of GM. Apparently, there are 1,700 pre-ordered vehicles still waiting for fixes and transportation and thousands ordered by dealers.
The Chevy salesman was helpful, but as he was not informed of the build time when I ordered the truck this became a big issue because I had made plans for the truck based on the original date plus a week, or so. I did expect the sales manager and dealership owner to speak with me yesterday, but they did not. That is disappointing and I will be following up with then in a week, or so.
I am very pleased so far with my Suburban–only drove it a few miles since yesterday, but I am leaving Monday for a week-long trip from Detroit to Minneapolis/St. Paul. That should be a good “shakedown cruise.” It may take me the weekend to go through all the features and set up the navigation and music options.
I still feel that timely communication, even with news of more delays would have been better than what I got. There are large companies are more than capable of doing this–what can’t GM.
