Forum Discussion

saguaro's avatar
saguaro
Explorer
Mar 17, 2019

Buying travel trailer by phone w/o visiting dealership?

An acquaintance recently bought a small travel trailer at a dealership 300+ miles away. He is happy with the trailer and happy with the dealership. I've decided I want one too and I know all the des...
Huntindog's avatar
Huntindog
Explorer
Dec 01, 2019
drsteve wrote:
73guna wrote:
Bought my tt 600+ miles away saving around $3000.
Had some minor warranty work local dealers were unwilling to do.
Keep in mind local dealers are not obligated to do your warranty work if not purchased from them.


Somewhat OT, but the reason don't like doing warranty work is that the factory makes it a PITA for the dealer. Any significant repair must be preapproved by the factory, and there is often a wait for parts. The customer wants to go camping, so now they have a guy calling wanting to know what the holdup is. Also, they will get paid what the factory deems sufficient regardless of the time spent... it's not like taking your Ford or Chevy in for warranty work.
That wasn't my experience.
When I bought my Sabre (a Forest River Company) in 2010 in Sylvania Ohio. After doing the paperwork, the power jack had a problem. It was a different brand than the Atwood I had on my previous TT, so I asked them if I could upgrade to another Atwood if I paid the difference. They agreed. They did not have what I wanted in stock, so they set me up with a hand crank jack for the trip home, and said they would ship the Atwood to me.
We stopped off to tour the factory, then headed back to Phoenix. at our first nights camp, we were outside looking it over, and noticed a problem with the fridge. I immeadiatly thought we were going to have to return to the selling dealer.. Gave them a call. and they wanted to know our route home, so they could set up the service for us enroute.

IIRC, it was in Springfield IL.
When we arrived, this dealer had an open bay reserved for us. Two techs got right to work, and we were back on the road in 30 minutes!
It really felt like a NASCAR pit stop.
3 days later we made it home, and the Atwood jack arrived 6 hours later.

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