As the motorhome turns series post #2

Considering Purchasing an RV? Be Prepared for Repair and Maintenance Woes.

Our challenging experience is, sadly, not uncommon.

I’m sitting here in the Lazy Days Service Department waiting area. They have free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. They have comfortable sofas and chairs. They have a few tables where you can sit and do one of the many puzzles available.

A 65-inch TV adorns the wall and shows nothing but the Hallmark Channel. It’s November, which means nothing but Christmas shows all day long. It adds insult to injury when you are expected to sit here for hours on end. Thank God for my computer and headphones.

This post is the second one in my “As the Motorhome Turns” series. In the first post, I shared the repair woes we’ve experienced since we traded in our 2018 40-foot Fleetwood motorhome for our 2017 45-foot Entegra Anthem. It became so lengthy that I decided to make it a series.

We are here for a service appointment with an almost $3000.00 price tag. If you don’t show proof of maintenance, your warranty company can call your policy null and void. We also needed to get a laundry list of issues taken care of. Some are minor, like the four nightshades that won’t work. They need new motors and should be covered by our expensive warranty.

The bedroom slide is quite a different issue. It started making some strange noises when it was pulled in completely. Snap, crackle, and pop are good sounds when you’re eating Rice Krispy’s Cereal, but it’s not something you want to hear when bringing in your RVs slide. 😖

We arrived on November 16th because we were supposed to be ready for service at 7:30 a.m. on the 17th. We checked in and were informed that our service representative was out sick. The poor girl who took on Lori’s workload had plenty of her own customers to deal with and was feeling poorly herself. She told us our technician was working on another rig and would let us know when he could get to ours.

Patience is not one of my strong suits. When we hadn’t heard anything by 1:30 in the afternoon, I had Tommy call our fill-in service representative to inquire when work would get done. She informed us that the service department would not be looking at our motorhome that day. Mind you, we had to make our appointment months in advance to get in. Can you say frustrated? 😒 She assured us that someone would be looking at our motorhome the next day and advised us to have the motorhome slides in and the water disconnected by 8:00 a.m.

On Friday morning at 7:30, I set up Paddy’s playpen in the service waiting area. We had the motorhome ready to go, and it was moved into one of the rows outside the service area at 8:00. I don’t believe anyone looked at it until after 10:00. I was irritated, to say the least. I finally saw a man working on it around 11:00. John, our mechanic, might have started on it a little earlier than that. As it turned out, he was knowledgeable and helpful. He took Tommy out to the RV to explain the issue with our front tire, which seemed to always have what looked like oil on it.

While looking into the tire issue and getting the maintenance work arranged, John noticed that our oil pan had a deep scrape in it. It wasn’t a big problem yet, but it would become one soon if not addressed. Tommy had evidently run over something without realizing it. This was, of course, an owner error and won’t be covered by the warranty. John was gracious enough to tell Tommy where we could order the pan ourselves and have it delivered to Lazy Days at about half the price they would charge us.

John did what he could do on our rig on Friday, and by 1:30 in the afternoon, it was parked back on our spot. He told us that he planned on starting the maintenance work on Monday. If all went well, the work would be handled in a few days, and they could get the warranty work started. The service department is closed on the weekends, so no work was getting done until then.

On Monday, our service rep, the mechanic, and his assistant all called in sick. There is a terrible flu bug taking this place by storm. 🤧The people in the service department behind the desk are stuck breaking lots of bad news to disgruntled customers. The lovely ladies smile and remain gracious and empathetic despite dealing with angry and disgusted people all day.

It was now our sixth day here, and no work was going to get done. USA Travel Care still hadn’t responded to the service requests. This meant that minor issues, like the shades, could not be repaired even if they had an electrician available. There are many employees, each with different skill sets, and many of them were out sick. The mechanic doesn’t look at or work on electrical or structural issues. The structural guy doesn’t do mechanical work, and so on and so on. If one cog in the wheel is broken, everything starts to fall apart. It’s a disaster!

On our seventh day here, the service technician, Mark, checked out the slide issue. It was structural, which meant it wasn’t covered by our $18,000.00 warranty. I’m sure my mouth was on the floor when the service manager, Mike, explained this. It was obviously not something we could avoid. When Mark explained that he might be able to fix the problem without removing the slide, I hoped we would finally be catching a break.

He told us that his fix would be an all-day job. If it didn’t work, he’d have to take the slide off, which would mean that we would have to spend at least one night in a hotel. Our warranty covers a hotel stay for a covered repair. This was not a covered repair. $174.00 an hour for approximately 16 hours of work, was costly enough without throwing in a hotel bill. Not to mention what a pain it would be.

The biggest drawback of the full-time RV life is having to move out for a large repair. If you have animals, this problematic situation is magnified. Paddy’s playhouse in the service department is a pain to set up and he’s not enjoying the predicament. Adding the stress of checking into a motel with him is not something I even want to contemplate.

Mark was hopeful about his fix but told us he wouldn’t know for sure it would work until he took everything apart. He instructed us to remove everything from under the bed and all of the bedding by 7:00 a.m. the next day so he could get to work on it first thing. Since the service center wasn’t open until 7:00, I set Paddy’s house up the night before.

Tommy had just finished dumping our tanks when Mark walked up to our rig at 7:10. I was thrilled that he hadn’t succumbed to the bug taking out half of the service department. He got to work on our motorhome and quickly discovered that the issue was more extensive than he expected. He thought removing the slide completely might be the only way to resolve the issue.

I was close to tears when our service rep, Lori, said she thought it would take a few days to fix our slide and that we would have to stay in a hotel. Mark interjected that he hoped to get it done in one day but we might need to stay in a motel for a night anyway. It felt like the good cop, bad cop routine.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The mechanics were still out sick, and there was nothing else we could do that day. Lori asked if we wanted work done on Friday or to wait until after the holiday weekend. I asked her to please schedule some work. “If we have to be here, we may as well be getting something done,” I told her.

We returned to the Three Flags Resort to join some friends for Thanksgiving. They always have a fantastic potluck. It was nice to have somewhere to go for the holiday besides the Lazy Days parking lot.

On Friday, I checked with Lori to see when we needed to be out of the rig. She informed me that they didn’t have any mechanics to work on it. After being here for nine days, our motorhome was worked on for about six hours. They can’t do anything about so many folks calling in sick. 🤒 I get that, but it doesn’t keep me from feeling frustrated beyond belief.

Another weekend passed, and here I am in our little sitting area. We’ve been here since 7:00 a.m. It’s 12:30, and we still don’t know if Mark can fix the slide without taking it off. I made a hotel reservation but canceled it because I’d prayed hard that it wouldn’t be necessary. I felt like having a reservation for a hotel room showed a lack of faith.

I have no idea how long this process is going to take. We have reservations in Fort Meyers for the Fire and Glory tent crusade at the beginning of December, and we will not miss it for anything. The way things are going we’ll be returning here to finish the work. We spent Thanksgiving here and do not want to spend Christmas here too.

There doesn’t seem to be a Readers Digest version of this story. We have to deal with the woes of RV repairs and maintenance if we want to continue with the lifestyle we love. If you are considering it, you should be aware of the pitfalls.

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY an RV manufactured during COVID.

The horror stories we’ve heard from people here that purchased a brand-new rig only to spend months dealing with significant repairs are mind-boggling. The RV industry, which already had many challenges, has been ravaged by COVID. Being unable to find qualified employees to build those suckers is compounded by parts shortages. I don’t see that situation improving soon.

Thanks for joining me for my tales of woe. If you’d like to read more of my RV travel stories or those of the many fabulous writers on Medium, become a member. I will receive a small commission if you do. Thanks, and God Bless, Cat