Who's Looking Out for Our Interests?

tll wrote:

rk911 wrote:
your premise assumes that every TT, TC, MH and 5'er is junk...different levels of junk but junk nonetheless. I don't agree with that premise. there is a vast difference between junk and maintenance requirements. how many problems that we read about have their toot cause in poor maintenance, maybe no maintenance (I personally know people that NEVER change the oil in the vehicles) or who otherwise abuse their vehicles.

Maybe "junk" is to strong of a word. I do understand the maintenance aspect. I just want things assembled properly in the first place.

2112 wrote:
Buy Used !!!

If we all did that there would be no manufactures.



I have been in the marine industry for 35 years. If you wanted to buy a 18' boat, you could by a $15,000 entry level Bayliner or a $25,000 higher end Cobalt. There would be a vast difference in construction quality. Not so in the RV industry. If you wanted to purchase a 25' TT and compared several manufactures with the same floor plan and construction methods, you would find that the pricing was all fairly similar. You can find pricing differences in regards to warranty length or upgrades, but not when really comparing apples to apples. Where is that RV manufacture that offers the average consumer a top quality TT?

Funny you should mention Bayliner. Years ago I bought a Bayliner the same year some boating magazine named it "boat of the Year". Needless to say, that magazine must have had the best interests of boat repair shops in mind. That Bayliner was every bit as crappy as any Travel Trailer you can buy today. I eventually moved up to a Sea Ray and paid a steep price for quality and in my opinion it was worth it.
I am not sure there is a demand to pay for quality in the RV business, especially at the travel trailer level. You can buy quality in Class B, Class C and especially Class A. Just have to be willing to open the wallet wide. Some people do, but many don't. That's why there are more Damon and Forest River Class A's sold than Newell and Foretravels.
As for publications that would eviscerate the quality of all RVs, I think another poster hit the nail on the head. The manufacturers volunteer their rigs for review. If all they got back was a bunch of bad press, they would stop really quick. Consumer Reports is a bad example. They buy all the items they test. They can afford to buy a refrigerator and sell it after they are done, they lose a few hundred bucks at most. They can even resell their cars at only a few thousand dollars of loss. But a used Class A motorhome is going to lose 10s of thousands of dollars going from new to used. Test and compare 5 of them and the losses are in the hundreds of thousands. Got to sell a whole lot of magazines at $10.00 to just make it to break even. And that would only get you reviews on 5 of what are probably 1000 different Classes, makes and models.