Nobody will repair my 6 mo old Dometic AC! Any suggestions?

[kahoona]

Hi
Last October our 3 yr, 1 month old Dometic 1500 btu A/C conked out while we were on vacation in the Keys. We were very lucky and flagged down a service car from a local RV dealer who tested it, sold us a new one and installed it within hours for around a thousand installed. This was on a Saturday no less. It was the only game in town and we were happy. Three weeks ago we were in Miaka State Park on the west coast of Florida. The temperature was 89 outside and 88 inside.We had 98% humidity. The new unit failed. The compressor runs. There is little cooling. There was no ice. The generator did not make it run any better. The thermostat was fine. We did OK without it. Now back home I am trying to get it repaired under warranty. I called every dealer within an hours drive. Some said no. Some said that they had one special guy for warranty work and he would call be right back. Never got any call backs from Waits RV, Land Yachts and Palm Beach RV. I called Dometic and after holding I asked someone to explain the warranty procedure and what I needed to do to get service. I told her about the refusals. She said "well, the way warranties work is you got to talk to the local dealers. not me." I repeated that none of them would talk to me and she said "If you want special service you got to email Dometic". I went back to the map and found a Florida Outdoors RV center just over an hour away. He said that I could make an appointment about 4 weeks away and then I could bring it in but I would have to pay for all work or replacement myself and then I would request a refund from Domenic. It might tale at least a week to get it back because Dometic would have to ship one and they would have to ship the old one back.
I am going to try the email but I kind of doubt it will do any good. It kind of looks like my only choice is going to be to drive back to Key Largo where I bought it. That is at least 5 hours away. They will replace or repair it in one day and I can go back the next day. That's 3 days and 10 hours of driving!Holiday RV's is doing all that they can and is a great outfit. I highly recommend them but I wish I did bot have to go that far to get warranty work done on a defective product particularly when many of the customers are on the road.
Can anyone suggest any way to get Dometic to honor the warranty here in North Palm or something I can do to get a working A/C? My wife says we need to carry one of those portable room a/c units in the rear compartment as a spare since this is our third failed dometic on the road!

[Golden_HVAC]

kahoona wrote:
Hi
Last October our 3 yr, 1 month old Dometic 1500 btu A/C conked out while we were on vacation in the Keys. We were very lucky and flagged down a service car from a local RV dealer who tested it, sold us a new one and installed it within hours for around a thousand installed. This was on a Saturday no less.

It was the only game in town and we were happy. Three weeks ago we were in Miaka State Park on the west coast of Florida. The temperature was 89 outside and 88 inside.We had 98% humidity. The new unit failed. The compressor runs. There is little cooling. There was no ice. The generator did not make it run any better. The thermostat was fine. We did OK without it. Now back home I am trying to get it repaired under warranty.

I called every dealer within an hours drive. Some said no. Some said that they had one special guy for warranty work and he would call be right back. Never got any call backs from Waits RV, Land Yachts and Palm Beach RV. I called Dometic and after holding I asked someone to explain the warranty procedure and what I needed to do to get service. I told her about the refusals.

She said "well, the way warranties work is you got to talk to the local dealers. not me." I repeated that none of them would talk to me and she said "If you want special service you got to email Dometic". I went back to the map and found a Florida Outdoors RV center just over an hour away. He said that I could make an appointment about 4 weeks away and then I could bring it in but I would have to pay for all work or replacement myself and then I would request a refund from Domenic.

It might tale at least a week to get it back because Dometic would have to ship one and they would have to ship the old one back.
I am going to try the email but I kind of doubt it will do any good. It kind of looks like my only choice is going to be to drive back to Key Largo where I bought it. That is at least 5 hours away. They will replace or repair it in one day and I can go back the next day. That's 3 days and 10 hours of driving!Holiday RV's is doing all that they can and is a great outfit.

I highly recommend them but I wish I did bot have to go that far to get warranty work done on a defective product particularly when many of the customers are on the road.


Can anyone suggest any way to get Dometic to honor the warranty here in North Palm or something I can do to get a working A/C? My wife says we need to carry one of those portable room a/c units in the rear compartment as a spare since this is our third failed dometic on the road!

I can not follow the post when it is one huge paragraph, so I did not read any of it yet.

My guess is you can not find a local RV repair place to repair your rooftop A/C - probably because they can not make a profit at that sort of repair. When I worked for a HVAC contractor in San Diego, they charged the customers a fixed amount for each repair. We would call in with a estimate of hours, parts list, and the office would put it in the computer, and give us a price for the customer to approve, or call the landlord for approval. Then we would go to the next job, parts be ordered, and someone would return to fix it later. Thus we kept busy each hour of the day, 8 hours billing about $75 per hour.

I repaired my close friend's A/C. It had a easy to find leak on the expansion tubing, and I was working on a saturday. It did take me a hour to run home, get a bunch of tools (about $800 worth) and return with a can of freon. Took another 4 hours to complete the repairs, install a freon fitting, and evacuate and recharge it. With R-410, you also must install a freon dryer too. They gave me $100 for the job. My supplies cost about $50, back when R-22 was only $80 a can, now it is over $350 per can.

So I can see how a dealership wants to pay it's mechanics $35 an hour to work at the normal shop rate of $100 - $150 per hour. They can fix chassis A/C or rebuild generator engines, or all types of other RV repairs. But they are reluctant to repair roof top A/C either because they do not have a mechanic competent in those repairs, or they would rather have the highly skilled worker not working at the rates that places like Dometic want to pay for a warranty repair.

You can try calling some local refrigerator repair places. If they sell used refrigerators, normally they have someone who can change out the compressors, and make leak repairs, install a freon dryer. It is basically the same repair, just 12' on the roof. I would not try the yellow pages, those larger companies will not normally be the ones where the mechanic answers the phone and makes all the repairs. You want a smaller company who does not have so much overhead.

Good luck in finding someone.


Fred.