A warning for those in the UK thinking of delaying until March 23

[1500 GT]

Received my update yesterday as did many others I'd guess. Notified of a November build so assuming December availability. I had already decided back in May 22 that I would rather delay until March 23 rather than accept a winter delivery. I e-mailed my request and had a polite reply in May to say that my request had been noted. E-mailed today and received the following reply.

Thank you for your email.

We have previously logged your request to delay delivery.

We cannot promise that we will be able to accommodate specific requests for delivery months. Your order will be moved to 2023 delivery, we will be able to provide a better estimation for delivery in the new year.

Let me know if there is anything else that I can help with.

Kind regards,

LOTUS CUSTOMER CARE

Tel: +44 (0) 330 0948047

So, asking for a delay of 2 months now could potentially lose your place in the queue?

 

[Beady]

That was as always gonna be the case - question is - do ya feel lucky

 

[VL3X]

I don't see why this is a big problem for them. If someone wants to move to a different date, just move their place in line and move everyone else up.

I guess it's difficult for Lotus since they are keeping track of everyone's order with pen and paper and literally checking boxes as they go.

 

[TomE]

I've seen similar feedback from people who have called Lotus about deferring. Lotus are basically saying you can't defer to a specific month.

So you have to throw yourself on the mercy of the production schedulers, with the possibility you could get Jan 2023 or Dec 2023 or anything in between. It seems rather inflexible.

 

[1500 GT]

I've seen similar feedback from people who have called Lotus about deferring. Lotus are basically saying you can't defer to a specific month.

So you have to through yourself on the mercy of the production schedulers, with the possibility you could get Jan 2023 or Dec 2023 or anything in between. It seems rather inflexible.

It's not great, and on one hand with the current rate of progress I'm thinking agree to November / December and I might actually get a March slot. I would have thought they would be able to easily just re-allocate a build slot and bump the guy next to me up the queue, just depends though how many people might be looking at March due to the plate change. I'd be happy with anything this side of May 2023.

 

[Mctaff]

I’m not thinking about asking to delay until I get my 30 day call…. If it’s in October / November then I might ask about it then.

Realistically I’m assuming there’s at least a couple more months delay going to hit without me doing anything

 

[CheshireCat]

I also have a November notification, suggesting a welcome Christmas present. It's going to be my daily driver so I will welcome the car as early as it is available. By the spring I will have gently explored its cold temperature limits and look forward to warmer weather.

As it happens I have appreciated running a Boxter through the summer months so que sera sera.

 

[PaperLawyer]

Just received a call From Customer Care to lock in my spec. Had the same conversation re my Nov build/Dec delivery - seeking to push back to Spring 2023 simply means the lottery of a delivery at some point in 2023. PPF will be offered and priced when paying up with 30 days to go.

 

[Flashback]

I’m not thinking about asking to delay until I get my 30 day call…. If it’s in October / November then I might ask about it then.

Realistically I’m assuming there’s at least a couple more months delay going to hit without me doing anything

I'm thinking the same with mine - November production for December delivery doesn't have to slip much more to become spring '23 delivery, given the way dates have moved so far.

 

[FederGigant]

I don't see why this is a big problem for them. If someone wants to move to a different date, just move their place in line and move everyone else up.

I guess it's difficult for Lotus since they are keeping track of everyone's order with pen and paper and literally checking boxes as they go.

If "someone" wants to delay his or her order, that shouldn't be an issue of course. But if everybody is doing it, because nobody wants the car in the winter, it's another thing. That's probably why you can't do it at all.

 

[emiraspain]

This was 100% predictable, knowing what Lotus have said so far re changing orders and knowing the parts situation and random delivery / production dates, slightly out of deposit order in the end.. .
I may be wrong, but if I had a GT3 on order (much more limited run car this is true) and I said to porsche, I dont want it until spring instead of winter, would this work? I dont know, Im asking... I guess not too many will know the answer, but interesting to know if your dealer would keep your allocation for a few months later.....certainly not once you had locked your spec in about 6-8 weeks before hand.
Anyway, whether Lotus are wrong or right for not allowing us to do it, I think we need to move on quickly, there is nothing we can do and if I were Lotus, I would probably be doing the same thing...... With potentially several hundred wanting to change from November, Dec, Jan, Feb and even March delivery, it would be a nightmare for them! And I for one, dont want them having any nightmares at the time they are making my car

 

[Mctaff]

If by a nightmare you mean:

1. open production scheduling system
2. update date for 27 orders
3. Press go
4. System reschedules automatically in a few seconds, alerts you of any big issues, then emails any affected customers, once you confirm you’re happy with the new schedule


Then yeah…. woooahhh…. scary computer stuff

 

[Mctaff]

….. however I have a suspicion their multi million pound production centre works a bit more like this

Dave: “Geoff I’ve got 27 UK orders to reschedule. I’ve spent two hours looking at the 2713 yellow post it notes for UK orders there on the wall…. and I can only find 23 of the orders.”

Geoff: “Ah Dave, surely you know we ran out of yellow post it notes ages ago…., you need to check the pink ones too”

Dave: “ but pink is for the US and there’s another 1788 of those!”

Geoff: “Yeah sorry covid/brexit has really messed up post it note availability…. It’s caused us 2 months of production delays until we realised we could use pink ones instead.

Oh and by the way, the hot weather is starting to dry up the glue… you need to check behind all the cabinets too as they have started falling off the wall”

….

 

[timbo999]

Its a spreadsheet... I'm pretty sure its a spreadsheet, as when I didn't get a response last year to my deposit payment I was sent an email with what was clearly a cut and paste of an Excel spreadsheet (just my row).

It may have been developed into something more sophisticated since... or not.

 

[TomE]

It's scary you know so much about how they do it @Mctaff - have you been on the factory tour?

 

[TomE]

To be fair, they do have a production scheduling system and a customer management system that seem to be connected to each other.

I know they can re-run scheduling fairly quickly, as they were talking in January about needing to move from doing it monthly to doing it every 1-2 weeks because of the pace of changes in updates from suppliers.

I strongly suspect the resistance to changes is to reduce the to and fro with their suppliers, at a difficult time when they are probably focused on keeping those suppliers on track. If you've told them you want 100 Homelinks in Sept, 150 in Oct and 90 in Nov then changing that every week is confusing and disruptive.

I asked today if I could delete Homelink to bring forward my build from Oct to Sep. The answer was no, that would actually push my delivery sometime into 2023, but they couldn't say which month.

I queried why they didn't want to leave something out and get a car delivered earlier and enable Lotus to get paid sooner. The response was "any changes result in delivery being put back into 2023". So switching privacy glass, changing caliper colour, omitting tracker all kick you into some undefined point next year.

Despite what some emails said about specifications for Nov build not being locked until mid Aug, I've been told today if you are in that batch and make any change to your spec then you will also get bumped into 2023.

Lotus once again demonstrating that they are a production-focused company and not a customer-focused one

 

[Leonard]

To be fair, they do have a production scheduling system and a customer management system that seem to be connected to each other.

I know they can re-run scheduling fairly quickly, as they were talking in January about needing to move from doing it monthly to doing it every 1-2 weeks because of the pace of changes in updates from suppliers.

I strongly suspect the resistance to changes is to reduce the to and fro with their suppliers, at a difficult time when they are probably focused on keeping those suppliers on track. If you've told them you want 100 Homelinks in Sept, 150 in Oct and 90 in Nov then changing that every week is confusing and disruptive.

I asked today if I could delete Homelink to bring forward my build from Oct to Sep. The answer was no, that would actually push my delivery sometime into 2023, but they couldn't say which month.

I queried why they didn't want to leave something out and get a car delivered earlier and enable Lotus to get paid sooner. The response was "any changes result in delivery being put back into 2023". So switching privacy glass, changing caliper colour, omitting tracker all kick you into some undefined point next year.

Despite what some emails said about specifications for Nov build not being locked until mid Aug, I've been told today if you are in that batch and make any change to your spec then you will also get bumped into 2023.

Lotus once again demonstrating that they are a production-focused company and not a customer-focused one

No messing with the Borg Tom
Accept your fate and hope the valve caps don't get backordered #assimilationornothing #Startrek

 

[Eagle7]

To be fair, they do have a production scheduling system and a customer management system that seem to be connected to each other.

I know they can re-run scheduling fairly quickly, as they were talking in January about needing to move from doing it monthly to doing it every 1-2 weeks because of the pace of changes in updates from suppliers.

I strongly suspect the resistance to changes is to reduce the to and fro with their suppliers, at a difficult time when they are probably focused on keeping those suppliers on track. If you've told them you want 100 Homelinks in Sept, 150 in Oct and 90 in Nov then changing that every week is confusing and disruptive.

I asked today if I could delete Homelink to bring forward my build from Oct to Sep. The answer was no, that would actually push my delivery sometime into 2023, but they couldn't say which month.

I queried why they didn't want to leave something out and get a car delivered earlier and enable Lotus to get paid sooner. The response was "any changes result in delivery being put back into 2023". So switching privacy glass, changing caliper colour, omitting tracker all kick you into some undefined point next year.

Despite what some emails said about specifications for Nov build not being locked until mid Aug, I've been told today if you are in that batch and make any change to your spec then you will also get bumped into 2023.

Lotus once again demonstrating that they are a production-focused company and not a customer-focused one

Honestly, right now they're probably thinking that producing cars and shipping them to their customers IS being a customer-focused company. Considering everything that's been going on, and what's at stake here, they desperately need to start producing and shipping cars. If they'd been building and shipping these things all year long, your request might not be that big a deal, but under the current circumstances, I'm not surprised they're trying to focus on getting production off the ground. They need to ship cars and start bringing in some revenue. Once that's underway, they might be able to be more flexible.

 

[BeHappy]

To be fair, they do have a production scheduling system and a customer management system that seem to be connected to each other.

I know they can re-run scheduling fairly quickly, as they were talking in January about needing to move from doing it monthly to doing it every 1-2 weeks because of the pace of changes in updates from suppliers.

I strongly suspect the resistance to changes is to reduce the to and fro with their suppliers, at a difficult time when they are probably focused on keeping those suppliers on track. If you've told them you want 100 Homelinks in Sept, 150 in Oct and 90 in Nov then changing that every week is confusing and disruptive.

I asked today if I could delete Homelink to bring forward my build from Oct to Sep. The answer was no, that would actually push my delivery sometime into 2023, but they couldn't say which month.

I queried why they didn't want to leave something out and get a car delivered earlier and enable Lotus to get paid sooner. The response was "any changes result in delivery being put back into 2023". So switching privacy glass, changing caliper colour, omitting tracker all kick you into some undefined point next year.

Despite what some emails said about specifications for Nov build not being locked until mid Aug, I've been told today if you are in that batch and make any change to your spec then you will also get bumped into 2023.

Lotus once again demonstrating that they are a production-focused company and not a customer-focused one

But isn’t there examples where Lotus have changed a locked spec and it hasn’t affected delivery dates ……

 

[TomE]

Honestly, right now they're probably thinking that producing cars and shipping them to their customers IS being a customer-focused company. Considering everything that's been going on, and what's at stake here, they desperately need to start producing and shipping cars. If they'd been building and shipping these things all year long, your request might not be that big a deal, but under the current circumstances, I'm not surprised they're trying to focus on getting production off the ground. They need to ship cars and start bringing in some revenue. Once that's underway, they might be able to be more flexible.

What you’re describing is exactly a production-led company - get cars out in whatever spec and in whatever order gets numbers up quickly

Never mind how customers feel about the sequencing, delays or inflexibility. Because if they don’t like it and cancel, there are enough other ones to stay busy.