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February 2023 - Action and Inaction

On February first, I headed over to the Track Your Dream page to do the first of several refreshes of the page during my typical day. I froze for a moment when something different caught me out of the corner of my eye. There ... that status entry on the right. Something was different about it. Oh MY GOD ... there was a date for Euro Delivery now.

On February 1st, the Track-your-dream app starts showing us July 20 as our European Delivery date.


I quickly started pinging Luke:

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 10:49:12 AM
ALERT

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 10:50:17 AM
European Delivery ALERT

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 11:33:05 AM
Where is the Lukester........? Can you check your own TYD?

From: Luke Ward 2/1/2023, 11:46:26 AM
Sorry, I was in meetings.
July 20 nice!
Checking...

From: Luke Ward 2/1/2023, 11:48:05 AM
We have the same date. That's good.

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 11:47:38 AM
so there it is - an actual date

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 11:47:47 AM
not the best date, but much better than nothing

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/1/2023, 11:48:34 AM
I still hold out some hope that further wrangling might get it pushed up, but who knows

From: Luke Ward 2/1/2023, 11:49:45 AM
Well, a nice small taste of realism for us on this chilly February morning

From: Luke Ward 2/1/2023, 11:54:12 AM
The anticipation level is up a little notch.


Well, this was good - an important bit of concrete news about our European Delivery. We had no idea if this was provisional or a definite, etched-in-stone date. But it was very good for a number of reasons - primarily being that it meant that something in the larger Porsche info world (external to Porsche Centre London) had some notion of our Euro Delivery.
Luke's Thoughts
[on getting our Delivery Date...]
A day after talking about how I needed to fill the time between getting my allocation and knowing when we would actually be going to get our cars, Track Your Dream gets updated and lo and behold: Experience your European Delivery in Leipzig: 2023-07-20.

Like. For real.

That would make it somewhere around three full years since starting this whole rigamarole. It's like a huge expulsion of breath - even Andrew is feeling it. I think his exact words were, "Yes, feels very real now." Sooner would be even better, as July is when it starts to get busy on the roads over there and you know we want clear twisties.

But who cares???

It's REAL!

And we're going to Germany in July!

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this moment, check out his blog post)


We elected to not immediately ask Porsche Centre London for any details, not wanting to appear overly keen and wanting to give them space and time to inform us. We assumed they would be contacting us very shortly.

With an actual delivery date hovering on the horizon, we started the next phase of our preparation: preliminary trip logistics. This meant thinking about a rough trip timeline and starting to consider who we would invite along with us on our trip (more on that later).

A week went by since noticing our "July 20" Euro Delivery date. And still, no communication from Porsche Centre London. Was this because maybe - just maybe - Porsche Centre London was negotiating on our behalf for an earlier date, as we had pled for in earlier emails? Might they be in the middle of a back-and-forth, much like what happened in the fall of 2022 with respect to our allocations. No way to know. But our minds were clearly in a hopeful mood.

We started drafting an email that would serve as a gentle inquiry into what might be going on, and also to state that we had noticed a definite delivery date. We ruminated on it for a bit, making sure to note that we understood that nothing was set in stone, that nothing was definitive, but could you perhaps give us a touch more info so we can start doing some preliminary planning:

Hi, Tim Hope all is well.

On Feb 1, Luke and I both simultaneously noticed that the TYD app has flipped from showing a "Not scheduled" to "July 20" for our European Delivery date. Exciting! By any chance, do you happen to have any additional detail with respect to that, that you might be able to share? One of our drivers for inquiring about updated information is that we're in the process of organizing crew recruitment for The GTS Chronicles, and we're starting to get some questions about dates (reasonably so, since those involved need to make their own plans in order to join us). We do realize that Track-Your-Dream and other sources are explicitly not definitive and subject to change - nevertheless, this seems like a significant development. Thanks for your time and everything that you do,

...Andrew and Luke

Christina immediately replied. And I was immediately annoyed:

Definitely exciting to be getting closer to your gts's! Please do not take that day as a solid day. We have not heard back from Porsche for these days and it could be autopopulated. It's really important that nothing is scheduled until we hear from the proper sources.

So ... let's see, what could we divine from the above response: Well, for one, clearly my point about understanding that the Track-your-dream was not definitive was completely missed. Secondly, this basically put to rest the hope that Porsche Centre London was holding back from us because they were doing some back-channel wrangling for us. They were stating that they had heard nothing (and likely by extension, tried nothing). From my texts below, you can tell I am not particularly pleased with this response:

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/9/2023, 6:53:39 AM
Rather annoying tone-deaf form letter type response

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/9/2023, 6:54:27 AM
I am not replying to that. We clearly stated we know that TYD dates are subject to change. Let's see if Tim adds any useful color to this hollow response.

From: Luke Ward 2/9/2023, 7:21:04 AM
the only nugget we got there was that they haven't heard from ED yet.

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/9/2023, 7:22:14 AM
Yes. She could have just said that and nothing else. Instead of ignoring the rest of our email.

From: Andrew Lavigne 2/9/2023, 7:49:14 AM
I guess... to be honest I feel like she treats us like children sometimes. 3 seconds of reading our email and she should easily be able to get the gist of what we are saying, which is: - we noticed a date - we realize TYD is unreliable, subject to change (therefore obviously we're not going to book anything) - we're feeling the pressure to make some plans so we're just inquiring IN CASE you've heard stuff.

I mean, is that really all lost on her?

ok maybe 15 seconds of reading.

Luke and I fume a bit more over this interaction for the next couple of days. Our fuming is soon cut short, though, by another email from Christina at Porsche Centre London. This one is much more official: It appears that they have now decided to release Euro Delivery info to us in a more official manner. Although there was much about this particular communique that felt like a modified form letter:

Porsche has reserved July 20th in Leipzig for both of you. However, these deliveries are NOT confirmed yet. The configuration of your orders can have no further changes later than Friday February 17th (PAG must lock the orders). Once I confirm the above with Porsche, I can proceed to request that PAG gives final confirmation for the deliveries.

Due to the current uncertainty surrounding production timing, we can no longer confirm European Delivery dates until the vehicle is produced (order is in V300 in PVMS). For these orders, that is estimated to be on March 31st for Mr. Lavigne, and June 2nd for Mr. Ward at this time. Once we receive confirmation from PAG for the Euro deliveries, we will advise.

This essentially means they have July 20th for both of you but you cannot book flights/etc until they have confirmed the date after v300.

Kindly review both of your specs attached for your builds and reply with a note stating they are correct.

Huh. So, immediately, a contradiction jumped out at us in this email. Ok, so the July 20th date was tentative; NOT confirmed; yada yada. Got it. Secondly, due to some [sufficiently unspecific/omitted reason], Euro Delivery dates could not be fully confirmed until after a customer's vehicle goes V300 (which means it has been built).

Ok, so far so good ... BUT WAIT ... wasn't Luke's Boxster scheduled to be V300 sometime on or after June 2? Didn't that mean, based on the above statement, that Porsche couldn't confirm the July 20 date until after June 2? Seriously? No planning, no flights, until some point in early June? For a trip that would start only five or six weeks after that? Like, give me a break. That wasn't acceptable.

Reading between the lines, this was probably not the case. Probably Christina had been quick and a bit careless on the copy-paste for this one and didn't make accommodation for the fact that this was an exceptional dual-Euro-Delivery case. Probably we would have confirmation after my car (the Cayman) had gone V300, at the beginning of April. But we couldn't know that for sure based on how this was written. Or maybe this was a hint that we might still be able to get earlier dates, hope upon hope? Anyway, now everything was under a cloud of uncertainty again, due to this wording. No booking or detailed date planning until early June? Seemed ridiculous. Sigh ... guess we were gonna have to undertake another round of back-and-forth, probably have another find-out-what's-really-going-on Zoom call.

But one item was nice and clear in Christina's email: the bit about having to finalize our builds - and finalize them for good. We would not be able to make any further changes, even though our freeze dates were technically still a ways away. Maybe this was because of the special nature of double-Euro-Delivery? In any case (and fortunately), just a week before, both Luke and I had already examined and communicated the most recent changes we had wanted to make to our builds (we had been waffling back and forth on a number of items). Our final changes had been:

Andrew
  • Add Lane Change Assist
  • Add Carbon Fibre inlay to shifter
  • Remove deviated stitching shift boot
Luke
  • Add Lane Change Assist
  • Remove Stainless Steel Pedals
  • Add in some mats for Dave Renner
Saturday Morning Freeze Discussions
Our changes were almost cost-neutral. In my case, I was forced to choose (a weird configurator rule) between either a carbon-fibre inlay on the shifter, or a deviated stitching shift boot. I couldn't have both. I had discovered that there was an aftermarket retailer for custom shift boots, so I figured ... go with the cheaper shifter inlay and do the boot when I finally received the car. For Luke, I think he had decided that he wanted something more "functional" than the stainless steel pedals, and also had heard that those pedals could be slippery. And the ability to help Dave out with obtaining some OEM-custom-spec floormats was nice, too. Dave had been such a champ for us, and it was the least we could do.

Luke and I were out having breakfast on a Saturday morning (Feb 11th) when the final emails came in from Christina asking us to do one last confirmation of our builds. Having submitted the above changes just days before, we did a quick over-breakfast re-review of each of our builds, quickly replied that they were correct and that we were officially done making any further changes. We considered our builds final. PP66GXR9 for Luke and PPWPRDP0 for Andrew.
Mid-February 2023 - One last kick at the can

In general (lack of clarity regarding us being able to trip plan notwithstanding), we were generally happy about the recent developments regarding European Delivery. The locking of the builds, the official contact from the dealership about the dates, all of that was good. We weren't so happy with the uncertainties introduced by the seemingly careless wording of things, the general "no"-ish stance on absolutely anything that wasn't bog-standard this-is-the-way-we-do-it process. So, in all a mixed bag, but trending towards goodness. The bottom line was - things seemed to be proceeding towards our cars getting built and us receiving them in Europe. But, because of that progression, and because of the large size of this project, this telling-of-our-dream-trip, we had started putting out feelers for potential crew members, with our employers about vacation, with various logistical bits and pieces that we needed to start working on now. And a blanket 'just wait, don't plan anything' directive was not making us feel very happy.

We felt a touch more empowered by the simple fact that now that we were firmly entrained in "the process". I imagined that we were sitting on a conceptual conveyor belt next to a large square warehouse with P-O-R-S-C-H-E written on the side, and the belt - which had heretofore been moving along outside, had now finally taken us inside that mysterious Porsche-labelled warehouse. At this point, we were probably going to come out the far side, rather than getting kicked back out the front door. We felt that maybe we were at a position where we could be a touch less fearful, a touch more bold, in asking if anything could be done to make minor adjustments.

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:07 PM
A thought is starting to occur to me with respect to our stance on Porsche Centre London

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:08 PM
We're pretty close to being far enough down the path of purchase that they probably can't just blow us off if we decide to apply a little more pressure.

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:09 PM
As in, start changing our tone slightly and wording things more forcefully when it comes to trying to explore if certain things can get done (like moving your build for example) or if/when we can start talking with ED and/or whoever else. Because we have a project, we're real customers, we have things we need to plan and work out.

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:10 PM
I guess 'probably' is the key word there.

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:11 PM
We can perhaps take a more insistent tone.

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:11 PM
But we sure don't want to jeopardize things.

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:12 PM
Let's connect with Christina and take it from there, yeah?

Luke's tone was clearly more cautious than mine. But I think he may have misread me a touch ... I was not advocating holding a meeting where we would come in guns blazing, demanding this and that. Far from it. It was just that we had been walking on proverbial eggshells for more than two years now, shuffling around like a couple of beggar boys asking for alms, fearful of some deliberately vague process that held all leverage and really didn't care much whether we stayed on-board, or departed. I felt more like a normal customer now, one that a salesperson would prefer not to lose, because it might actually now look bad or cost them something they cared about (such as the extra allocation, we had learned, that are given out to dealerships for each Euro Delivery sale they make - a very valuable thing for them).

I mean, all I wanted was to genuinely *explore* the possibility of a minor tweak to Luke's build and to our Euro Delivery date. Nothing big.

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:12 PM
I can't imagine them wanting to lose us at this point. It would look very bad.

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:13 PM
Especially since our asks are not really all that unreasonable

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:13 PM
Agreed yes

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:14 PM
I mean really all we want is: (a) some minor adjustments to build and delivery, and (b) the ability to start planning our trip

From: Andrew Lavigne - Feb 11, 2023, 8:14 PM
Even 2 weeks of adjustment would be great. Is that really so hard?

From: Luke Ward - Feb 11, 2023, 8:16 PM
Yup ...I think we can build on a call with Christina to a) express that to her (which will do little I expect other than set the stage for a followup) and then likely b) follow up with Tim after that.

February 21, 2023 - Euro Delivery Planning Call

So, Luke started the process for a "Euro Delivery developments" Zoom call, which we held on February 21, 2023.

Christina expounded on some useful details about the complexities involved in arranging the dual European Deliveries. She explained a little bit about the need for the early build locks and that there was an intermediate PVMS code called "Locked by PAG - V215" that applied in our case. She addressed our concerns about the weird wording in an earlier email that said that the Euro Delivery date couldn't be confirmed or held until the cars had reached V300 (which meant beginning of June for Luke's car). Basically, there was no chance of anyone taking our July 20 delivery slot.

We brought up the topic of perhaps getting a slight change to Luke's build and maybe asking for a slightly earlier delivery date, but she basically shut that line of thinking down entirely. And as far as travel plans went, it was what we had been thinking. The statement of "don't plan anything" was meant more as a CYA (cover-your-ass) statement in case some customer flies off the handle after making some plans before something completely unexpected happened. Unexpected things happen all the time - we realized that. And so we now felt comfortable that everything was pretty firmly in place, and we could indeed start planning, booking flights, organizing itineraries. It was just that Christina couldn't officially say "go ahead".

Although we had no luck on our hope around an earlier date, we did manage to get Christina to get on board with a couple of minor items that could help The GTS Chronicles media initiative. She agreed to make some inquiries regarding collaboration, and also to leverage the power of her own Instagram feed in some way. That was very nice, and very welcome.

In the conversations around European Delivery and how it might intersect with our media ideas, we talked up our earlier interactions with Porsche Euro Delivery Canada. It was interesting to see how Christina seemed to dance carefully around the issue, trying to avoid mentioning Michael (Maternicki) by name and in general attempting to hand-wave away any idea of us collaborating directly with them. It seemed pretty obvious that something happened between Porsche, Porsche ED Canada, Michael, and Porsche Centre London dealership. Such a shame, really.

Presently, the meeting wound up. Overall, it had actually been surprisingly informative and productive. In the interest of promoting the highest likelihood of the the things we discussed actually getting done, I took it upon myself to publish and share the minutes from the meeting:

February 21, 2023

Hi, Christina, Luke

Given the many topics covered in our meeting today, I thought it best that I draw up a set of minutes and actions from today's meeting regarding our double Euro Delivery.

Minutes:
  • The 100% iron-clad confirmation of the European Delivery date can only come after Luke's car goes V300 (comes off of the assembly line), and the official European Delivery packages won't be made available to us until that time;
  • When the time arrives, Luke and I may travel down to Porsche Centre London to pick up the packages and do the necessary paperwork, etc;
  • Changes to the delivery location or of Luke's car's build date are extremely unlikely - the logistics are too complicated and there is no affordance or mechanism to do it.
  • It looks like by all reasonable indications, July 20th is our delivery date, in Leipzig. It is very unlikely to change, barring something really unforeseen (e.g. like the cars fall off of the truck while en route to Leipzig or something crazy like that);
  • There is no danger of the July 20th date being given to another party between now and Luke's car's V300 status;
  • Officially, Porsche directs us not to buy plane tickets or make any other sorts of travel bookings until the European Delivery package is made available to us.

Actions (sorry Christina, this time these all ended up being yours):

  • We both have our hearts set on being able to take the complimentary Zuffenhausen 911/718 factory tour and getting a really close connection with how our cars come to life (we would stop in Stuttgart on the way to Leipzig to do this, as well as visit the Porsche museum). However, the Porsche website indicates that the Zuffenhausen 911/718 factory tour is not available for the remainder of the summer after Friday, July 14, which would seem to pose a major problem for a July 20 Euro Delivery date. Christina thinks that it might still be possible that a Zuffenhausen factory tour for Porsche 718 Euro Delivery buyers may still be possible after July 14. Action: Christina to inquire about this on our behalf.
  • Now that a delivery date is visible on the horizon (and is not that far away), Luke and Andrew are keen to find out if Porsche would be interested in lending some media / content generation expertise or collaborating with us on The GTS Chronicles in some way. Action: Christina to send email on our behalf to Porsche Euro Delivery / Porsche Marketing probing for interest. (for convenient reference if needed - our pitch video: https://vimeo.com/706403745).
  • Christina thought it might be useful to poll Instagram followers for input on what type or types of content internet viewers might like to see in The GTS Chronicles, with respect to Porsche European Delivery, and has graciously offered to help. Action: Christina to create IG poll.
Finally, Luke and I want to thank you for the meeting today - it was quite useful for us and helped clarify the current situation nicely.

...Andrew and Luke


Immediately after publishing the meeting minutes, I went and had a look at the underlying data in Track-your-dream. And there, almost as if on cue, I saw that my car's status had been updated to V215 (the internal code for "locked by Porsche A.G."): 

{
   [...]
   "modelName":"718 Cayman GTS 4.0",
   [...]
   "vehicleStatusImporter":"V215",
   [...]
}


So that was good. A clear correlation between what she had shared and what was happening in the actual data for our orders. Excellent confirmation.

To sum things up on the delivery timeline front after describing everything that had transpired in January and February, I can say this: we got zero traction on anything related to moving Luke's manufacturing date, and by extension, the Euro Delivery date. In fact, Tim Bamford (the sales manager at Porsche Centre London) had gone from being very communicative in early January to being completely silent afterwards. Our carefully-worded email to him on January 17 was never replied; Luke's emails and voicemails to Michael Maternicki at Porsche ED never got a response; and our queries with Christina on the matter were shut down without any mention of whether or not anyone had even attempted to raise the idea with Porsche. It seemed to us that someone (whether that was just the dealership or whether it involved people higher up on the ladder) did not want to entertain anything but the bog-standard process. So, that was that. Almost with complete certainty, our delivery date was going to be July 20, 2023, in Leipzig.

footnote: Quite a bit later, I did some further research and digging with respect to how European Delivery dates get chosen. What I discovered is that there is indeed a bit of a dialog back-and-forth between the Porsche European Delivery coordinator and the dealership. Specifically, the dealership proposes a desired date for the Euro Delivery- you would hope based on discussions with customer(s), but maybe not always. The delivery coordinator then offers up available delivery dates to the dealer. The dealer then works with the customer to arrive at a date (presumably from within the available dates), and at that point, after feeding the choice back to Porsche Euro Delivery, a final confirmation gets sent to the dealer with required paperwork. So ... couple of points here. Porsche Centre London didn't consult with us AT ALL about delivery dates. There was just a "we're working on it, please wait". Now maybe the double-delivery aspect made things more tricky, who knows. Still, there was not even an attempt at dialog, nor any kind of real transparency about what was going on, reasons or justifications for why it might be deviating from the norm, or any acknowledgement of the specific challenges of our scenario. Transparency. That's the word I want to emphasize. And specifically, the lack of it throughout this process.
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