If your getting ready to buy , this is a good thing to listen to.

[bartlett]

This video has some great information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIuCaWP_TU

[GENESIS]

sigh........

There's 18 minutes and 52 seconds of my life that I won't get back.

Tom

[TomHaycraft]

sigh........

There's 18 minutes and 52 seconds of my life that I won't get back.

Tom

Can you give us the Clif Notes version?

[GENESIS]

Can you give us the Clif Notes version?

OK....so my meds hadn't kicked in and that was uhhh......very....uhhhh.....cheeky response as the Brits would say.

He really only has about 4 or 5 points to make. And IMHO....he coulda dispensed with the pontificating ad nauseum. To me, his points were kinda common sense. Maybe he thinks RV owners are one brick shy of a full load - I dunno. Anyhow....from memory.

1. Take a certified RV inspector with you to inspect the RV before you sign on the dotted line. Dealerships have no clue what, or if, or how much a unit has problems and they don't care. Their only focus is the sale. **see number 5 below

2. Manufacturers Warranties are useless. His basis is that RV's don't come under Lemon Laws (in most states) like cars do and therefore there's no "legal" pressure for the RV manufacturers to up their quality game like the auto guys have had to do. Methinks there's some truth to that reasoning. We've all opined, at one point or another, how "I wish this Edsel transmodigression brake system would be more like what the car companies do". One cannot deny that the Feds, through the FMVSS laws, have impacted the way car companies build/test/certify/warranty/service their product. Whether those laws are good or bad is debatable but that's for another thread.

3. ALL RV's will have problems. They are houses on a frame that's mogated down the road. But...the "house" portion doesn't have to be built to very rigid building codes like houses, which, are inspected by a "building code inspector" - i.e. a person with no loyalty to the product so therefore (theoretically) his "inspection" is unbiased. The frames, don't have to adhere to FMVSS, DOT, PDQXYZ like the car industry does. And there might be some truth and advantages to his claims. To wit: Since the Pippy Longstockings RV (PLRV) company had to have their state/city/county building inspector issue them a COO (Certificate of Occupancy) before they were allowed to even move into their bagillion square foot facility AND PLRV has to adhere to all manners of Fed/state/city/county regulations, why is their final product in some seemingly separate category of things that go bumpitty-bump down da road? I dunno. But I think that's a valid question.

4. Don't buy new - buy a one or two year old cream puff that someone thought they were gonna use more than they thought, but they didn't, so they're motivated to sell (that's salesman speak for "you can capitalize on their predicament"). Plus, the unit might have all the Farkles installed that you would want and would have to buy.

5. Forget dealerships servicing what they sell. Most of them don't have the ability to service the unit anyways, so they send your unit back to the factory leaving you high & dry for 4 months while it's fixed. And oh yeah.....you're still making payments for those four months.

That's about all I remember or even WANT to remember. Jeez....anyone reading this will have wasted 8:73 of their life!!!!

What that idjit left out of the equation - and these are the sole musings of YrHmbAnObedntSrvnt - one cannot put a price on the experiences, the folks you meet (some you didn't wanna meet), a child's laughter, seeing your daughter catch her first big Bass, dogs running around acting the fool, your grandson taking down a 6-point buck with his Daniel Defense DDM4 chambered in .308 Lapua using a Nikon BDC 300 and a.......well, you get the picture. Bottom line - it's a hole in the Earth just as a boat is a hole in the water just as a Piper Cub is a hole in the sky. No sane, rational person would ever buy any of them. And that's what makes "us" special. And I ain't talkin' bout short bus special. You know whut I'm sayin'.

Tom

[D2Reid]

Bartlett, thanks for sharing. The guy does make some informative points. If you are an RV novice these points will be a bit of a shock. But he espouses them as absolutes, which they are not. There are thousands of RV'ers that have a great experience with their RV. You don't hear from them to much, they are too busy enjoying themselves.

I only made it through 8 minutes before I turned it off. Back in high school we studied this thing called yellow journalism. Because of the explosion of information that has become available in the last 40 years I have become quite sensitive to people that speak only about gloom and doom and how bad something is.

RV'ing is like the rest of life, there is good stuff, there is bad stuff. Sometimes more bad stuff happens to you than other people. The key is to concentrate on the good stuff.

Dallas

[TomHaycraft]

OK....so my meds hadn't kicked in and that was uhhh......very....uhhhh.....cheeky response as the Brits would say.

He really only has about 4 or 5 points to make. And IMHO....he coulda dispensed with the pontificating ad nauseum. To me, his points were kinda common sense. Maybe he thinks RV owners are one brick shy of a full load - I dunno. Anyhow....from memory.

After being entertained by your dialog, no need to watch the video!

Clearly, the RV industry is a different beast. Bottom line, as long as we buy them, they will churn them out. There is no motivation or competition for the US RV industry to improve. Before buying my first RV / trailer, I did a lot of reading, knew (somewhat) what I was getting into. Ownership of that one (a 2013 Keystone Springdale, 5th wheel) gave us 4 years of enjoyment and set us up well for the step up into the Reflection. There was a common denominator of frustration and under-engineering in both trailers, the axle / suspension / brakes. With a trip into Indiana early this Summer, I will have the MORryde IS and disk brakes installed. Never again will I own a trailer with the 50-year old undercarriage.

Thanks again, bottom line, prospective owners need to educate themselves and ... buyer beware.

Tom

[el Rojo]

After being entertained by your dialog, no need to watch the video!

Clearly, the RV industry is a different beast. Bottom line, as long as we buy them, they will churn them out. There is no motivation or competition for the US RV industry to improve.

Tom

Tom, I believed that to be true until Grand Design came along. Not that every RV they build is problem free but the warranty and customer service they provide after the sale is changing the industry. Other companies have had to increase their customer service to keep up with Grand Design. I believe it's like the 1970's or 1980's when the Japanese started shipping their cars to the US and forced the US manufacturers to up their QC level in their cars to meet the competition.

Just my 2 cents.