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eHoefler's avatar
eHoefler
Explorer II
Dec 10, 2013

Dealers not wanting to do warranty work.

I have a Handyman Service in our area. It is a one man operation that fills a void in our small community. I do RV repairs when called among all the other stuff I do. There is no RV dealer of any kind in our area, the closest is over an hour away, if you know the roads. We are on the west side of Table Rock Lake, a vacation destination for RVs as well as weekenders. I was called upon by a weekender that has his Forrest River product setting on a site here. They had a skylight leaking. It was cracked, the unit was 2 months out of warranty. The selling dealer is out of business, they had no one to turn to. I suggested they call the manufacture, and see if they could help or at least let us know how to get a new skylight. Forrest River stepped up and said they would not only send us the parts at no cost they would pay the labor for them. We all thought that was fantastic. I got all the info to send them the bill. I promptly sent Forrest River an invoice for the labor by email, and received a confirmation. 4 weeks had gone by, no check. I sent a reminder, Forrest River replied "Our payment terms for checks are NET 60 from the date of receipt of invoice which would put you at about 1/14/14. Or by ACH we pay NET 30, if you would like the payment sooner via ACH I’ve attached the necessary form. The work was completed on 10/31/13, I could send them all my bank account information if I wanted to get it sooner. I will be damned if I am going to send any one my bank account information. It is no wonder no one wants to work on anything the factories have to pay for. If I had to by parts and provide labor to them interest free for 60 days, I don't want to do the work either!!
  • In the middle east for twenty years, it was very evident that the two biggest problems a contractor faced was getting the contract,, and then getting paid for the contract. Labor, materials, permits housing all the rest was easy in comparisom.
    With call centers and electronic transfer, its all engineered to hold value in the bank of bigger business as long as possible.

    pops
  • eHoefler wrote:
    I have a Handyman Service in our area. It is a one man operation that fills a void in our small community. I do RV repairs when called among all the other stuff I do.


    Sheesh- talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!

    Not only does this mfr. agree to cover the parts for this OUT OF WARRANTY work, they agree to pay for your labor as well- this despite the fact that you don't even exist as a brick-and-mortar operation. And you post on here to complain about their long-established payment protocols?

    Welcome to the Real World of over-the-counter business practices!
  • wait till they tell you that you are not certified through them therfore they wont pay.
  • even dealers who sell their product have this problem. it is not just FR but they all are slow payers.
  • You now see one of the problems with doing warranty work. Wait till you see the labor rate they pay is almost always less than it took to fix the problem. They all have there own pay scale for repair time and per hour labor amount!

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