Harry Hood
New Member
Good morning. We bought our new 2300MK at the hershey show via General RV. I do a ton of research before any purchase and certainly before big purchases like an RV. I couldn't find much info about the buying experience at hershey, so I thought I'd document our experience here.
We were surprised that we didn't find some of the models we were hoping to see from various manufacturers. The General RV sales rep at Grand Design was by far the most helpful about guiding us to other GD models which we hadn't considered, but which she thought we'd like. In contrast, I don't remember which dealer was selling Rockwood, but when we asked to see a particular model which we couldn't find, he said it wasn't at the show then walked away from us.
I found that across all brands and dealers, the sales reps were not incredibly knowledgeable about the particular units. When we had questions, they did exactly what I could do myself - use their phones to look up the answers. But, it was nice that the manufacturers have representatives on site, too. We are able to talk directly to a GD rep about some concerns we had about one of their models and that conversation helped me decide that the 2300MK "full" imagine was right for us, verse the XLS unit we were also considering.
I suppose it's impossible to know for sure, but the "show" pricing seemed to me to be good. If you don't know, it seems there's only one dealer for each brand at hershey, so you can't shop around on site, but in retrospect, I wish I would have called at least one other dealer while we were there, to see if they would match or beat the show pricing on the phone. So this means you're essentially locked into buying from who's ever at the show, if you want to buy at the show.
We did, however, stop at a camping world a couple of months before the show just to see what they would offer on our trade-in. This gave us a baseline for comparison at the show.
After my wife and I debated between two GD units, we finally agreed on the 2300MK. Last time I bought at a show (a much smaller local show), the show pricing also included a waiver of all dealer fees. I expected the same thing at hershey and while working out our budget for this RV, I didn't account for dealer fees. Turns out, General RV wanted $3500 in dealer fees and this was shocking to me. I don't know if this is standard, or a little bait and switch to reel you in on the advertised show price, then make up the difference on the discounted fee with nonsense dealer fees. I didn't hide my displeasure and the salesperson assured me they'd consider any reasonable offer. Although, she said the fees related largely to shipping. I agreed to let her put together a proposal.
The first General RV proposal included the $3500, and it honored the show price displayed on the unit. I kind-of expected them to say they sold out of show pricing units and that they'd give us a jacked up price.
The offer on our trade-in split the baby between what I was hoping for in my mind, and what camping world offered, so I was relatively happy about the trade-in amount. I countered the first proposal by basically eliminating the dealer fee and I think I may have tried to go a little lower on the purchase price. We wound up negotiating an "out the door" price, so it became blurry how much the fees were verse the purchase price, but ultimately we made a deal which was just slightly over my ideal budget. I was satisfied with the deal, particularly because we got into a full imagine instead of an XLS, and going in to the show I thought a full imagine would take us out of our budget (though this is the smallest imagine).
We were paying cash, so after negotiating, the rest of the process was smooth sailing. Signing the deal with finance took about 5 minutes, if that long. I'm not sure how the process would go if there were financing. They said our unit was not ready yet from the factory and that we should expect delivery at least 4 to 5 weeks out. This wasn't an issue for us.
All in all, the process at the show, was smooth. In retrospect, I think I could have been a little more aggressive negotiating the price and I should have tried to get a little more on the trade-in. I think I could have done a little better, but we were tired, and ultimately the numbers were close enough to where we wanted to be that we just wanted to make the deal and go home.
Post-hershey things took a bit of a turn though. Within a couple of days, the finance person called and said another unit was ready for immediate delivery if we wanted. By this time, we watched every Youtube review of the 2026 2300MK. Having done so, we knew that there were some "Franken-units" out there - a mix of 2025 and 2026 features. I asked if the available unit was identical to what was shown at hershey and I told her why I was concerned, and she assured me that it was the same. I agreed to take the available unit.
Next, I wanted to talk to service about a hitch. The service manager was at first helpful and responsive, but she quoted an hourly labor charge. When I explained that I thought hitch setup was included in the dealer fees and, regardless, buying a trailer and hitch from them the labor should be included anyway, she said she'd check with sales, then she ghosted me for a week, as did the sales person who I was also trying to reach about the labor charge. Long story short, the labor charge was waived and though they couldn't get the hitch I preferred from any of their vendors (I couldn't find it either with the proper weight bars), I wound up with a blue ox, which I've been happy with so far.
Fast forward to pick up day. I think General RV tries to make you feel special, but it's a mix of feeling special, and feeling like you're on an assembly line. It's probably a better experience if you buy from the dealership directly instead of the show, but buying at hershey, the show experience continues through pick up. They are so busy with hershey orders that many of the employees are visiting from other General RV locations to handle the volume of pick ups taking place at the same time as yours. So at this point two weeks out from the show, many of the employees have been away from home for weeks and working non-stop. They were generally pleasant nonetheless, but we were shuffled between several employees with no single point of contact to deal with and we wouldn't have a point of contact at our "local" store moving forward shoud anything pop up. This was a little frustrating. Indeed, we've never again spoken to the sales rep we dealt with at hershey, and the finance person was back in Florida the day after the show.
Our walk-through was OK. The employee was friendly and made sure everything worked. But, when we stepped into the unit, it was exactly what I was worried about - the unit was different from what we saw at the show. The lights were the strip lights not the puck lights shown at the show. The couch was grey, not brown, and it didn't have cup holders in the arm rests. The kitchen backsplash was different, the bedroom headboard was different, and the window shades were different. Individually, many of these things weren't a big deal, but some were like the lights, and it was really the point of it all - that I specifically asked whether we were getting what we saw at the show, or something else, so we could make the decision whether to take the unit in advance, and not on the spot after traveling hours to get to the dealership. Also, the unit was supposed to come with a floating table, which we couldn't find, so it had to be ordered (p.s. we found it when we got home, shame on General for not knowing how these ship from GD).
I wanted to talk to a decision maker who could I deal with. The woman showing us around the unit really couldn't do anything but show us the unit. We agreed to continue the walk through process, but I told her I'd want to speak to someone about the different-unit issue before signing anything.
Only other remarks about the walk through is that they would not show us how to winterize this particular unit. She didn't know where the anti-freeze hose was, but she said even if she knew, she wouldn't show us. We'd have to pay for a winterization tutorial. I absolutely hate being nickled and dimed for stuff like that. For the last RV, the tech went through everything technical with us, including how to winterize the unit, and he would have let us video it if we wanted to.
Also, I tried to get on the roof, but they said I couldn't climb the RV ladder for insurance purposes. I insisted that I wasn't buying anything from them if I couldn't look at the roof, then they brought over a free standing ladder that I could use. And, we found a small leak from the fresh water drain, which they fixed while we were doing the paperwork.
After the walk through, we were led into the store. They give you a shopping cart with your name on it and they give you a store sales rep to follow you around. I suppose if you're new to RVing, the rep could be helpful to guide you with the stuff you'll need to get camping, but having someone walk around with us made us feel akward. We had about everything we needed already and I was just interested to see if they had any good deals - which they didn't. We told the rep we'd be fine without him, and he left us alone. If you spend more than $500 in the parts department, you get 10% off everything. With the hitch, we were over the $500 so we grabbed a couple of things we had our eyes on. The reason you have a cart with your name is so they can bring all your goodies to your RV for you, which is nice.
After shopping, you're queued for finance. We didn't wait long for our finance person. Before anything, I raised the issue with him about the different unit. I told him $1000 would make things right, expecting that, if anything, we'd negotiate to something like $500. Shockingly, after talking to sales, they agreed right away to the $1000. That this happened so painlessly and that with the 1k credit, I was almost right on my budget, I was really happy and if we just signed and walked out at that point, I would have forgotten about everything else and walked out of General RV, generally very happy. To be honest, I was hoping to just get maybe a couple of hundred dollars in store credit and I would have been happy, so the 1k in cash made me really happy to do business with General.
But, finance then gave the really hard sell on all the other nonsense- extended warranties, paint coverage, wheel coverage, etc. He was aggressive and it made it us uncomfortable. I expect some degree of this type of sales stuff, but I thought this was over the top and an end around way of clawing back the 1k I just got from them. We did not buy anything and walked away with a really bad taste in my mouth. Even if I thought something was a good deal, just out spite I would not have bought anything from this guy. I stupidly made a joke to lighten the mood about my wife being the weak link and that he couldn't sell me on anything. After that he basically ignored me and tried hard selling my wife directly, which I thought was disgusting. He could have just laughed and moved on and changed the mood, but he didn't.
After finance, they worked on the hitch and DMV stuff. After maybe 45 minutes, everything was ready and they golf carted us back down to our truck and the new RV. We met a service guy who went over the blue ox hitch with us. I'm sorry I forgot his name, but he was by far the most helpful of anyone we met that day. He went over all my questions and walked us through everything about the hitch. I tipped him for being so helpful and thorough, and he seemed to genuinely appreciate it.
My takeaway from this experience is that if you're a knowledgeable buyer looking for a good deal, I think buying at hershey can work. Be sure to negotiate everything and try to stay focused. If you need more personal attention, it may be more wortwhile to find the right dealership that can do some more hand holding from the initial shopping around to talking about tow-vehicles and hitches to doing a good and thorough walk through with you.
Sorry for the long post, hope this is helpful. Looking forward to being part of this GD community.
We were surprised that we didn't find some of the models we were hoping to see from various manufacturers. The General RV sales rep at Grand Design was by far the most helpful about guiding us to other GD models which we hadn't considered, but which she thought we'd like. In contrast, I don't remember which dealer was selling Rockwood, but when we asked to see a particular model which we couldn't find, he said it wasn't at the show then walked away from us.
I found that across all brands and dealers, the sales reps were not incredibly knowledgeable about the particular units. When we had questions, they did exactly what I could do myself - use their phones to look up the answers. But, it was nice that the manufacturers have representatives on site, too. We are able to talk directly to a GD rep about some concerns we had about one of their models and that conversation helped me decide that the 2300MK "full" imagine was right for us, verse the XLS unit we were also considering.
I suppose it's impossible to know for sure, but the "show" pricing seemed to me to be good. If you don't know, it seems there's only one dealer for each brand at hershey, so you can't shop around on site, but in retrospect, I wish I would have called at least one other dealer while we were there, to see if they would match or beat the show pricing on the phone. So this means you're essentially locked into buying from who's ever at the show, if you want to buy at the show.
We did, however, stop at a camping world a couple of months before the show just to see what they would offer on our trade-in. This gave us a baseline for comparison at the show.
After my wife and I debated between two GD units, we finally agreed on the 2300MK. Last time I bought at a show (a much smaller local show), the show pricing also included a waiver of all dealer fees. I expected the same thing at hershey and while working out our budget for this RV, I didn't account for dealer fees. Turns out, General RV wanted $3500 in dealer fees and this was shocking to me. I don't know if this is standard, or a little bait and switch to reel you in on the advertised show price, then make up the difference on the discounted fee with nonsense dealer fees. I didn't hide my displeasure and the salesperson assured me they'd consider any reasonable offer. Although, she said the fees related largely to shipping. I agreed to let her put together a proposal.
The first General RV proposal included the $3500, and it honored the show price displayed on the unit. I kind-of expected them to say they sold out of show pricing units and that they'd give us a jacked up price.
The offer on our trade-in split the baby between what I was hoping for in my mind, and what camping world offered, so I was relatively happy about the trade-in amount. I countered the first proposal by basically eliminating the dealer fee and I think I may have tried to go a little lower on the purchase price. We wound up negotiating an "out the door" price, so it became blurry how much the fees were verse the purchase price, but ultimately we made a deal which was just slightly over my ideal budget. I was satisfied with the deal, particularly because we got into a full imagine instead of an XLS, and going in to the show I thought a full imagine would take us out of our budget (though this is the smallest imagine).
We were paying cash, so after negotiating, the rest of the process was smooth sailing. Signing the deal with finance took about 5 minutes, if that long. I'm not sure how the process would go if there were financing. They said our unit was not ready yet from the factory and that we should expect delivery at least 4 to 5 weeks out. This wasn't an issue for us.
All in all, the process at the show, was smooth. In retrospect, I think I could have been a little more aggressive negotiating the price and I should have tried to get a little more on the trade-in. I think I could have done a little better, but we were tired, and ultimately the numbers were close enough to where we wanted to be that we just wanted to make the deal and go home.
Post-hershey things took a bit of a turn though. Within a couple of days, the finance person called and said another unit was ready for immediate delivery if we wanted. By this time, we watched every Youtube review of the 2026 2300MK. Having done so, we knew that there were some "Franken-units" out there - a mix of 2025 and 2026 features. I asked if the available unit was identical to what was shown at hershey and I told her why I was concerned, and she assured me that it was the same. I agreed to take the available unit.
Next, I wanted to talk to service about a hitch. The service manager was at first helpful and responsive, but she quoted an hourly labor charge. When I explained that I thought hitch setup was included in the dealer fees and, regardless, buying a trailer and hitch from them the labor should be included anyway, she said she'd check with sales, then she ghosted me for a week, as did the sales person who I was also trying to reach about the labor charge. Long story short, the labor charge was waived and though they couldn't get the hitch I preferred from any of their vendors (I couldn't find it either with the proper weight bars), I wound up with a blue ox, which I've been happy with so far.
Fast forward to pick up day. I think General RV tries to make you feel special, but it's a mix of feeling special, and feeling like you're on an assembly line. It's probably a better experience if you buy from the dealership directly instead of the show, but buying at hershey, the show experience continues through pick up. They are so busy with hershey orders that many of the employees are visiting from other General RV locations to handle the volume of pick ups taking place at the same time as yours. So at this point two weeks out from the show, many of the employees have been away from home for weeks and working non-stop. They were generally pleasant nonetheless, but we were shuffled between several employees with no single point of contact to deal with and we wouldn't have a point of contact at our "local" store moving forward shoud anything pop up. This was a little frustrating. Indeed, we've never again spoken to the sales rep we dealt with at hershey, and the finance person was back in Florida the day after the show.
Our walk-through was OK. The employee was friendly and made sure everything worked. But, when we stepped into the unit, it was exactly what I was worried about - the unit was different from what we saw at the show. The lights were the strip lights not the puck lights shown at the show. The couch was grey, not brown, and it didn't have cup holders in the arm rests. The kitchen backsplash was different, the bedroom headboard was different, and the window shades were different. Individually, many of these things weren't a big deal, but some were like the lights, and it was really the point of it all - that I specifically asked whether we were getting what we saw at the show, or something else, so we could make the decision whether to take the unit in advance, and not on the spot after traveling hours to get to the dealership. Also, the unit was supposed to come with a floating table, which we couldn't find, so it had to be ordered (p.s. we found it when we got home, shame on General for not knowing how these ship from GD).
I wanted to talk to a decision maker who could I deal with. The woman showing us around the unit really couldn't do anything but show us the unit. We agreed to continue the walk through process, but I told her I'd want to speak to someone about the different-unit issue before signing anything.
Only other remarks about the walk through is that they would not show us how to winterize this particular unit. She didn't know where the anti-freeze hose was, but she said even if she knew, she wouldn't show us. We'd have to pay for a winterization tutorial. I absolutely hate being nickled and dimed for stuff like that. For the last RV, the tech went through everything technical with us, including how to winterize the unit, and he would have let us video it if we wanted to.
Also, I tried to get on the roof, but they said I couldn't climb the RV ladder for insurance purposes. I insisted that I wasn't buying anything from them if I couldn't look at the roof, then they brought over a free standing ladder that I could use. And, we found a small leak from the fresh water drain, which they fixed while we were doing the paperwork.
After the walk through, we were led into the store. They give you a shopping cart with your name on it and they give you a store sales rep to follow you around. I suppose if you're new to RVing, the rep could be helpful to guide you with the stuff you'll need to get camping, but having someone walk around with us made us feel akward. We had about everything we needed already and I was just interested to see if they had any good deals - which they didn't. We told the rep we'd be fine without him, and he left us alone. If you spend more than $500 in the parts department, you get 10% off everything. With the hitch, we were over the $500 so we grabbed a couple of things we had our eyes on. The reason you have a cart with your name is so they can bring all your goodies to your RV for you, which is nice.
After shopping, you're queued for finance. We didn't wait long for our finance person. Before anything, I raised the issue with him about the different unit. I told him $1000 would make things right, expecting that, if anything, we'd negotiate to something like $500. Shockingly, after talking to sales, they agreed right away to the $1000. That this happened so painlessly and that with the 1k credit, I was almost right on my budget, I was really happy and if we just signed and walked out at that point, I would have forgotten about everything else and walked out of General RV, generally very happy. To be honest, I was hoping to just get maybe a couple of hundred dollars in store credit and I would have been happy, so the 1k in cash made me really happy to do business with General.
But, finance then gave the really hard sell on all the other nonsense- extended warranties, paint coverage, wheel coverage, etc. He was aggressive and it made it us uncomfortable. I expect some degree of this type of sales stuff, but I thought this was over the top and an end around way of clawing back the 1k I just got from them. We did not buy anything and walked away with a really bad taste in my mouth. Even if I thought something was a good deal, just out spite I would not have bought anything from this guy. I stupidly made a joke to lighten the mood about my wife being the weak link and that he couldn't sell me on anything. After that he basically ignored me and tried hard selling my wife directly, which I thought was disgusting. He could have just laughed and moved on and changed the mood, but he didn't.
After finance, they worked on the hitch and DMV stuff. After maybe 45 minutes, everything was ready and they golf carted us back down to our truck and the new RV. We met a service guy who went over the blue ox hitch with us. I'm sorry I forgot his name, but he was by far the most helpful of anyone we met that day. He went over all my questions and walked us through everything about the hitch. I tipped him for being so helpful and thorough, and he seemed to genuinely appreciate it.
My takeaway from this experience is that if you're a knowledgeable buyer looking for a good deal, I think buying at hershey can work. Be sure to negotiate everything and try to stay focused. If you need more personal attention, it may be more wortwhile to find the right dealership that can do some more hand holding from the initial shopping around to talking about tow-vehicles and hitches to doing a good and thorough walk through with you.
Sorry for the long post, hope this is helpful. Looking forward to being part of this GD community.
