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Commentary

Irving Has Been At The Dealership For A Month

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You can read about our issue with Lazydays and their service department here. I don’t need to rehash the details. We found another highly rated dealership to have Irving serviced and we dropped him off on November 8th.

Unfortunately, on the way up to the dealership, about 1.5 miles from reaching the destination, a rock hit the windshield and put a crack in it. So, in addition to the other issues we needed to have looked at, we had to submit a claim to our insurance company for a windshield repair. RV windshields are not something that dealers keep in stock, so one had to be ordered. That took two weeks. Some panels also had to be ordered for the inside driver side walls which took some more time. We are closely approaching a month at the dealership and we got a message from our service advisor saying that the windshield is in and they may have it installed by the end of the week.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any trips planned during the holidays, so a month wasn’t such a big deal. However, we had the coach plugged in at home and kept it climate controlled so that we could keep the moisture at a minimum. We are definitely going to go over the coach to make sure we don’t have any issues before we take it home.

If you haven’t had your coach in for service yet or you are thinking of getting a coach, we have learned that getting service is a VERY long process, so be prepared to be without it for a while.

Commentary

Lazydays RV and Our Service Experience

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I have already written about the state of the RV industry’s problem with service departments and specifically Lazydays RV in Seffner, FL. You can read that post here.

Our saga with Lazydays continues as it relates to the service appointment we have scheduled for Monday, October 24th. Amber has been trying to get in touch with our service “advisor” since Monday, October 17th. Since this will be our first ever service appointment, she wanted to know what we should expect as far as waiting for the RV or dropping it off, the plan for getting our issues addressed, etc. With no call, she was getting pretty upset and commented on this Facebook post mentioning that their customer service is beyond poor. A service manager replied with her contact information and Amber called her and left a message.

When the service manager and Amber did speak, she assured us that having an appointment would guarantee that a service “advisor” would look at our issues at our appointment time and a technician would look at it at some point during the day, but the issue with our slide may be a harder issue to diagnose and may require parts that take a while to order. I even talked to her and made it clear that if we only found out what was wrong with our slide (if anything) during our appointment and parts needed to be ordered, we’d consider it a success. We would then bring it home and return when the work could be done. After the call, we decided to drop Irving off on Sunday and see what we found out on Monday.

We headed our for our normal Friday night dinner out and out of the blue, Amber received a call from our service “advisor”. I heard part of the conversation since I was getting Christopher and I a table and situated. When I heard something like “…so we could get a mobile RV service tech and it would be the same thing…”, I figured the call wasn’t going well. Our food had been delivered to our table and Amber was still talking to our “advisor” in the lobby, so I knew it was a tense conversation. I told her that her food was getting cold and I knew there was trouble by the look on her face.

Her first sentence was something like “…he basically told me the complete opposite of what the service manager told me…” He told her that if we brought our coach to Lazydays on Monday and waited, he could not even guarantee that a technician would look at it that day. He said that three people who had appointments today (Friday) did not get their coaches looked at and had to be moved to Monday. He also mentioned that it’s possible that our coach would not even be looked at for 4-5 days after dropping it off. Amber also said that he had a terrible attitude, although he was, at least, trying to be civil.

My pet peeve…being lied to. Even the though the service “advisor” is abrasive, no doubt from working in an insane environment, I believe his rendition of the story more than I do the service manager based on other stories I have heard on RV forums. This means that the service manager was simply telling us what we wanted to hear, most likely so we wouldn’t bomb their Facebook posts with negative comments. I would do that, Amber would not.

The bottom line. We will NOT be taking our RV to Lazydays for service. I have a zero tolerance policy for a complete lack of customer service and being lied to. It’s probably going to be tough to find a reputable service provider for our coach, but I am willing to try. If consumers continue to take this disrespect, this lack of service will not stop.

Commentary

The RV Industry Is Letting Its Customers Down And They Don’t Seem To Care

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As many of you know, we have had our coach since June. There were some issues with it that we got fixed during the delivery stay at Lazydays and there are a couple of minor issues that we need to have taken care of when we get around to making our first service appointment. Unfortunately, during our last trip to St. Augustine, a new issue popped up. Whenever we go over a rough road where the coach bounces up and down, there is an ugly noise coming from behind the driver’s seat, we think it’s the slide.

Our next trip is scheduled for the first week of November and we figured we’d get Irving in for service before then. So we call Lazydays and the first appointment we can get is at the end of October. If this isn’t bad enough, the person Amber talked to said that if parts are needed, it could take weeks to get them.It was at that point Amber brought up a great point. We were given a year parts and labor warranty, but if we can’t get a service appointment for a month and it takes weeks to get parts, we really don’t have a one year warranty.

Part of me understands that Lazydays is the largest RV dealership in the world, so they must have a massive amount of customers to service. However, they also have a ton of service bays, so they should be able to service a large amount of customers at time. Another part of me believes that Lazydays cares more about selling RVs to people that giving them amazing service and that makes me angry.

So we made our service appointment, but Amber wanted to call Winnebago to see if there are any other options available, mainly a mobile RV service provider. She described the issue with our slide, which is our biggest concern at the moment. The person she talked to mentioned that the problem she described was something they hear about a lot and directed us to YouTube to find some videos on lubricating our slide gibs. She also asked whether the long wait for service appointments and parts were common. He said it is. Even the Winnebago representative said that the first appointment at their factory wasn’t until the end of November.

How exactly are all the things I have mentioned in this post acceptable to the RV manufacturers? I read on forums all the time that people do their own maintenance because they don’t want to lose the use of their RVs for long periods of time. This is really the issue here. How is a one year warranty a one year warranty when you may potentially lose the use of your coach for a percentage of that year for a potential manufacture defect?

I am actually thinking about seeking a legal opinion on this matter, but I am not optimistic.