RV Maintenance Technician

darsben wrote:

You are better off having a mobile repair person with lots of experience look at the unit if you cannot.

What recourse would you expect to get from a mobile repair person? I suspect they will only warrant the work they do to correct the problem, not guarantee that there isn't anything else wrong with the RV.

Mike

What I am saying is that if you purchase a vehicle after a professional inspector looks at it and it has an obvious problem that should have been caught YOU HAVE NO RECOURSE.

This means that a certain percentage of inspectors WILL GAME THE SYSTEM and inspect poorly.
You will never know which ones
I FURTHER STATED
You are better off having a mobile repair person with lots of experience look at the unit if you cannot.

If you're looking at doing actual repairs, there is a school in Indiana for RV technicians. I looked into once. It was a couple of months long, full time, and it was designed to teach you to work on the house part of the motorhome. So no chassis stuff, which is pretty typical of most RV repair facilities anyway. Unless somebody knows something different, I've never even seen a RV repair shop, that also does chassis work, other than just oil changes and items like that.

I only considered it because I thought it would make a nice part time retirement job.

DSDP Don wrote:
That's easy to answer. They go by the premise that people should take personal responsibility for their lives and purchases, rather than always looking for someone else to blame!

You can't see what the main bearings in an engine look like without dismantling it or the condition of the tires without dismounting them. So they look for what is obvious and accessible and report. If you want a warranty, buy one from some aftermarket warranty company.

It sounds like you want a $350.00 inspection fee that gives you a five year unlimited warranty. That doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it.

I should have scrolled down more, you beat me to it.

darsben wrote:
The point being if they are Professional why do they limit their liability to a ridiculous low amount that makes it impossible for you to have any recourse.
You are better off having a mobile repair person with lots of experience look at the unit if you cannot.

Because they would charge you $15,000 to do an inspection if they were going to be libel for anything that breaks that they "may" have missed. And how would you know they missed? They can't pull the tranny and engine completely apart in an inspection. So all they can do is check it's operation and things they can get to. But if you drive the motorhome for a month and the engine blows up, how can you prove it's something they missed? Basically what I'm saying is if you want inspectors to be libel like that, then you wouldn't be able to afford what they would have to charge and you wouldn't hire them anyway.

darsben wrote:
I would never use an inspector for any RV I bought.
All the contracts state that if they miss something your only remedy is your money back.
So what benefit.

So you want them to do an inspection and then basically be responsible for anything that may break on the RV after you buy it? How long would they have to be responsible for your RV?

That's easy to answer. They go by the premise that people should take personal responsibility for their lives and purchases, rather than always looking for someone else to blame!

You can't see what the main bearings in an engine look like without dismantling it or the condition of the tires without dismounting them. So they look for what is obvious and accessible and report. If you want a warranty, buy one from some aftermarket warranty company.

It sounds like you want a $350.00 inspection fee that gives you a five year unlimited warranty. That doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it.

The point being if they are Professional why do they limit their liability to a ridiculous low amount that makes it impossible for you to have any recourse.
You are better off having a mobile repair person with lots of experience look at the unit if you cannot.

I don't see how you EVER argue that having someone do a pre inspection is of no value. Very few people can do their own inspection and ANY help in finding a hidden issue is valuable. Could an inspector miss something......sure, but that's better than no inspection at all.

Perhaps you personally would never hired someone because you can do the entire inspection yourself, but making a blanket statement about it having no value is way off base.

As a favor, I've done a couple of inspections for people on the forum that live in Alaska and one in Canada. What I found was enough for them to move onto another unit. I'm far from a professional inspector, but it was certainly of value to those buyers!

darsben wrote:

dougrainer wrote:

darsben wrote:
I would never use an inspector for any RV I bought.
All the contracts state that if they miss something your only remedy is your money back.
So what benefit.

They FIND the defects BEFORE you purchase. That gives you a heads up and negotiating power. Doug

Or they may miss a big item and you are stuck with no recourse against the person who did the work.

This is true of ANYBODY that you have do a pre-purchase Inspection on a vehicle. Doug