Negative Publicity for GD

[Sissys Folks]

We are interested in replacing our current rv and were impressed with the Imagine 2600rb we toured a few days ago. I have been reading in the GD forum and find that for the most part GD owners are very happy with the products. I read complaints Pi**ed Consumer about GD products and find major diversions. I recognize that many of the Pi**ed Consumer input is from customers new to rv's. Our upcoming purchase will be our 5th rv purchase in nearly 40-years so we expect that there will be a few problems but wow, what I read in the Pi**ed Consumer concerns me.

Please reassure me that our anticipated GD purchase is the right decision.

[ramcneal]

We are interested in replacing our current rv and were impressed with the Imagine 2600rb we toured a few days ago. I have been reading in the GD forum and find that for the most part GD owners are very happy with the products. I read complaints Pi**ed Consumer about GD products and find major diversions. I recognize that many of the Pi**ed Consumer input is from customers new to rv's. Our upcoming purchase will be our 5th rv purchase in nearly 40-years so we expect that there will be a few problems but wow, what I read in the Pi**ed Consumer concerns me.

Please reassure me that our anticipated GD purchase is the right decision.

I always take folks who make major complaints about a product that many, many others enjoy and are mostly trouble free with a large gain of salt. Some people just want to be pissed off and nothing is going to make them happy. Will your purchase of a Grand Design be trouble free, unlikely as you would know having owned 5 other RVs. I would be willing to bet that if you do have an issue the chances are far greater that it'll be a subsystem (refrigerator, water heater, A/C, etc) that Grand Design doesn't have control over. So far, I've not had a need to call Grand Design myself, but it's apparent that others who've had the need to call have received prompt service from Grand Design. The other factor which can sour an opinion of any RV manufacturer is how you're treated by your local dealer where you purchase the unit.

I believe you'll be happy with a Grand Design RV.

[livinthelife]

We are interested in replacing our current rv and were impressed with the Imagine 2600rb we toured a few days ago. I have been reading in the GD forum and find that for the most part GD owners are very happy with the products. I read complaints Pi**ed Consumer about GD products and find major diversions. I recognize that many of the Pi**ed Consumer input is from customers new to rv's. Our upcoming purchase will be our 5th rv purchase in nearly 40-years so we expect that there will be a few problems but wow, what I read in the Pi**ed Consumer concerns me.

Please reassure me that our anticipated GD purchase is the right decision.

Grand Design RVs are really no different than most of the mass produced RVs. The biggest difference comes in the customer service, after purchase. That and the new RV owner's learning curve related to RV dealers and service on the myriad of things that can/will go wrong after you buy. Many new owners don't understand that an RV dealer, unlike, say, an automobile dealer, has no pride in product. They are there to sell RVs. Service - that's a whole other thing.

[f100owner]

Unhappy consumers are the ones mostly likely to voice their opinions. Happy consumers less so.
But as you are aware an RV is a rolling earthquake and things will break. The manufacturer stands behind it product pretty well from my observation and limited experience. I would focus on your dealer and make sure they have a good record. The dealer will make or break the owner's experience.
That being said the more complex the unit, the more that can go wrong. The many components have many vendors and some are better at supporting their part of the puzzle than others.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[geotex1]

Let me give you a perspective. If you take the sum total of members across the various GD themed forums (90 I believe it is up to), then compare it to total number of GD units sold, you will find no statistical significance. Some folks don't like to hear that, but it is reality. It holds for every single internet forum out there, and is even sharper of a point if you filter out duplicate memberships. Toss in the consideration that society in this day will take initiative to complain far more quickly and readily than offer complement, then you should take what you read and apply your own filters. All I can offer in advice is to be an informed consumer that is well-rounded. So, what you read in a forum is one element, what you see and feel in-person when shopping is another, how your questions are answered by manufacturer reps is yet another, and so on. You can take such evaluations to a very scientific approach even developing pairwise comparisons and plotting the Pareto. Do not just go with what you read on forums because in such social groups it is incredibly common for proliferation of hearsay as fact, and then when you drill into it's truly more fiction...

In personal experience, my wife and I are not emotional buyers. Not. At. All. We researched 5th wheels for a couple years. We arrived at our preferred floorplan, and then compared it across all major brands. We purchased the GD. It ticked most of our boxes, and at the price point surpassed the competitors. Did higher prices units have more glitz and tech - absolutely, and priced accordingly. Further, every camper we have owned except one was purchased new, and our 3350RL has had the absolute least amount of PDI and shakedown issues of them all! Is it flawless? Nope. Will something break? Yep. Being an engineer I am not an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a realist. To expect anything different is not realistic IMO&E.

[Aridon]

You'll be fine.

A lot of the complaints I see are from princesses (applies to male and females) that expect perfection and can't pick up a screw driver to save themselves grief. If you've been RV ing you know that you can take a look at any manufactures forum and see what the trending issues are. Many issues are minor, should be found in pdi, fixed with an upgrade (g tires) or just part of the experience.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy from any manufacturer if the floor plan was right. Grand design has been a joy to work with and I'd buy another if the situation was right. That said, I'm agnostic, they all have issues and being you're a veteran of the life you already know that.

[Second Chance]

We've been full-time in our GD Reflection for going on 4-1/2 years. We've had a few issues - mostly early-on - and GD stepped up to the plate and took care of them. GD Customer Service even authorized a mobile tech to replace the wiper seals on our slides and covered the parts and labor, even though the seals were out of warranty. This was just because the tech was doing a structural (slide floor) warranty repair and told GD that the seals needed replacing. This work was done in an RV park by a mobile tech while we were sitting 200 yards from a GD dealer we won't do business with. Can you beat that for customer service?

Short story long (I'm not very good at the Readers' Digest version of anything), our new fifth wheel coming off the line in a couple of weeks is a Grand Design. 'Nuff said.

Rob

[WhittleBurner]

I wouldn't let the occasional unhappy person sway you away. For each of the ones that can't be pleased there are likely 1000 or more who are happy. There's are many GD units out there so there is bound to be a bad coach or 2 and someone will end up not happy. Would we buy another GD, yes we would.

[jim1521]

Do your own due diligence. Our first travel trailer was a GDRV 313RLTS. We just purchased a new fifth wheel for going full time (our 2nd RV). Grand Design did not make it on our short list for the new one.

[SGT ROC]

In personal experience, my wife and I are not emotional buyers. Not. At. All. We researched 5th wheels for a couple years. We arrived at our preferred floorplan, and then compared it across all major brands. We purchased the GD. It ticked most of our boxes, and at the price point surpassed the competitors. Did higher prices units have more glitz and tech - absolutely, and priced accordingly. Further, every camper we have owned except one was purchased new, and our 3350RL has had the absolute least amount of PDI and shakedown issues of them all! Is it flawless? Nope. Will something break? Yep. Being an engineer I am not an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a realist. To expect anything different is not realistic IMO&E.

Kind of the same here. We had owned two TT's prior to this. One was purchased used, the one we traded on this 5th wheel was new. We casually looked at 5th wheels for several years. We started looking seriously in January of this year. We went to several Different dealers, traveling a minimum of 2 hours one way to a maximum of 3 hours. We looked at virtually every manufacturers offerings. Believe it or not the last dealer we looked at was the only one with GDRV units - which we knew nothing about. We told the sales person what we were looking for and he pointed out several units, GD being one. Our choice went from a previous Manufacturer to GD after looking at the floor plans. The 31MB had most of what we were looking for. We went home, and I went to work researching the brand. I was impressed with what I found, especially the service, so we made the deal with that dealership. We stayed with that dealership because they treated us better than the others. We have had very minor issues that both the dealership AND GD were right on top of, even a little over the top. Everything manmade will have problems. How those issues are handled make the difference. Grand Design is top tier.