Alright - so I joined just to thank you all (and especially IAMICHABOD) for the amazing forum and wealth of information you guys have provided over 131 pages! Reading this eased my worries and encouraged me to buy 2016 28A from CA (which I just drove home today - Yeah IAMICHABOD - up that number :)).
I also wanted to join to contribute going forward and I will start with my report/insight in buying process.
First of all - I bought a "Pre-refurbished" unit (keeping fingers crossed) AND did not opt for either power-train or coach warranty (AGAIN - keeping fingers crossed). I am bit of a handyman and hope I can handle if anything comes up - and if not, the money saved can be applied to professional repair work.
To make up for taking the above risk - I did go through the unit with a fine tooth comb. And here is my insight (and warning) for that.
Refurbishment takes place in their Mesa location (as told to me by salesperson - so correct me if I am wrong); each location has units that get marked for sale (age/miles) and that's when they have those cheap one way rentals. So to some extent - I think there are additional cost/time related to refurbishment which reflects in about $4000 in price difference. So pre-refurbished models are cheaper but then of course you don't get the "refurbishment" treatment (I was told part of that was the "Majestic Decals" - someone correct me if I am wrong but my RV is plain - no signs no decals, possibly new tires (if needed), possibly new cushion covers, some coach repairs (if needed), any functional unit repairs (again if needed), new batteries (if needed?), and so on).
But here is the trick - if at the time of your purchase - if you go through everything and find things wrong - local location is more than willing to fix all that. This leads to similar (if not better than) refurbishment model. My guess is that there are two sources for these "free" refurbishment (if detected and requested) options 1) They have new parts available for rental unit repairs that they dip into 2) They simply swap with another unit sitting on the parking lot. Latter doesn't cost them anything (and the other unit would be going for refurbishment anyway). This happened with multiple of items missing or worn on our unit :)
Flip side of this is that you do not want the pre-refurbished unit which might have been scavenged this way. Let it go for full refurbishment :).
So yeah - we got a lot of things fixed/replaced this way (and a few things which he did the best he could). So keep that in mind - go through EVERYTHING with fine tooth comb and find everything wrong before buying it (if buying per-refurbished).
Now I have one question. Is $995 worth for a installed manual canopy? I have not researched after market so I don't know. If it is worth it cost wise - I can still get it installed.
Thanks again everyone and looking forward to some modifications (will update here).
