Full Timers - Where do you live when your RV is in the shop for an extended period

[harlyrdr11]

My wife and I are planning on becoming full timers this winter. I have seen various issues noted here and it appears it takes sometimes weeks to remedy even though GD has exceptional customer support. Where do you full times live when your home is in the shop?

 

[Ra&Ta350]

At home, we keep a small place so we can maintain our residence in Texas.

 

[Gator Jim]

We let the dealer know we live in rig and they have done the work in a day. May be not all jobs are that quick. One dealer said we could stay in coach if he needed it over night. We had friends that picked theirs up every night and then back to dealer in morning for three days.

 

[el Rojo]

When we traded in our Solitude for the Momentum there were a number of things that needed to be done. Each night the rig was pulled out of the shop and was plugged in on the dealers lot (next to others) and we would sleep in the rig, until early morning when it would go back in the shop area. We have three dogs....if we have to go in again, I would insist on this same arrangement (they would have to figure it out).

Pam (El Rojo's DW)

 

[C&H Conner]

Not full timing right now but have in the past.

We always planned a small side trip to somewhere we wanted to go that wasn't particularly RV friendly. Always explained the situation in advance with the service manager and got a "solid" time frame for repairs. You will notice solid is in quotes as sometimes it was done quicker, sometimes took a day or 2 longer than originally planned.

We ended up seeing Nantucket for 5 days while trailer was in for on repair. Martha's V for 3 days as a follow up to the same issue. Hit NYC for a couple days while they fixed blowout damage.

It takes some advance ground work but is a nice way to get away from the rig for a while and live like normal folks....
Which gets old REALLY quickly!

 

[Pipeliner_kyle]

Since I use mine for work, I end up staying in a hotel until completed.

 

[ADIRKS30]

I find reliable mobile repair guys, which is not always easy.

 

[Pat and Linda]

My wife and I became 'full-timers' Aug. 3, 2015 - (sold our house). Since then we have wandered through BC, Yukon, and a 2 day trip (by train) to Skagway Alaska. We are now in Northern Alberta, heading south - probably end up in Arizona. We have absolutely no schedule - no definite plans. The toughest part is trying to schedule work on the rig, or even ordering parts, when the dealers are telling you they are scheduling 2 - 4 weeks ahead, or the parts "will be here in 2 - 3 weeks." Have been posting about the problems we are having with the landing gear and stabilizer switches! (Front and back quit working within 4 weeks of each other.) Not easy to drop the rig for a day or 2 of site-seeing when dropping and reconnecting takes more than an hour - and a lot of 'sweat equity'. And these are the switches that "will be here in 2 - 3 weeks." Getting cold and wet where we are - no time to be messing with these ridiculous cranks.

 

[Bamaman]

I would suggest you take a number of short shakedown trips prior to going our of your selling dealer's retail area. Get any apparent problems fixed first.

Another suggestion would be to buy from a very high quality dealership with a reputation for having an excellent service department. There are just too many industry reports of 2 week or 2 month waiting lists for repairs that are very simple and easy to fix. And if you bought "back home", you'll most often stay at the back of their waiting list.

 

[L&L Jackson]

We'll be taking off soon, in a week or two, full-timing if our refrigerator is fixed with a new cooling unit. We've done two shake down trips, on the 2nd trip, the fridg was shot after working perfectly less than a month before. We let our service manager know that we are living in the rig (we were moving our things into the coach in preparation for our journey when the fridg failed to cool). We're home now, waiting, living in limbo with 1/2 our stuff in the coach and the other 1/2 here we've had to buy new toothbrushes, underwear - LOL (the dealership is over an hour away).

NOTE: It's not simple in some parts of the nation to gauge "high quality" dealerships. There are very few dealerships in our area and none of them have perfect scores for service based on internet ratings although neither of them had problems with the BBB nor could we find any lawsuits against them. We don't know a lot of RV'ers here, personally, to ask about dealers so we had to go with our gut and the way we were treated when we were shopping for our new 5th wheel, at two different dealerships. On our first outing we bumped into a couple who live near the dealership we ended up buying from and she said, "oh so sorry, nobody does business with them because they have horrible service." So, needless to say our fingers are crossed.

The fridg repair will speak volumes about our choice but, since we will be traveling, there's a slim chance we will use their services again which brings me to a question: is there an advantage to calling GD to connect with them ahead of time and let them know you're going to be on the road full-time ?