When we bought our fifth wheel in May 2015 we purchased an extended warranty plan that would give us “stem-to-stern” coverage for 6 years. Recently we found a reason to use the plan: a cable on one of our black water tank valves broke, making our half bath unusable. We thought this would also be a good time to address our chronic inverter problem: the inverter that exists solely to power our residential refrigerator while traveling (to keep our food cold) has never, ever worked. Not once. Every time the compressor starts up the inverter is overloaded and switches off.
Jett had a list of 6 other things that she wanted to have a RV technician look at and, based on the results of the diagnostic work, we would decide whether to fix them. So we made a date to haul the RV the 80 miles to the Camping World in Colchester NH with the expectation that they would keep it for 3 days, fix the 2 critical issues and give us estimates for fixing the others.
The only mention of a cost for the diagnostics was a statement that if the repair was not covered by the warranty then the diagnostic cost would be ours. Fine.
So we duly dropped the RV off. The next morning we got a call “reminding” us that there would be a separate flat-rate diagnostic cost of $67 per item. So… 8 items, $67 each… $536. I dropped two items – sticky windows which I felt pretty strongly could not be fixed; that is just how the windows were. I should have dropped the living room shades issue as it would have been cheaper to just replace the shades rather than paying $67 to learn that the shades needed to be replaced. I also should have dropped the problem with the awning tilt control as the control part – a knob – could probably be replaced for under $20. But I didn’t. They did fix the knob while diagnosing it, so there was no additional cost there. But not dropping the shades issue was just stupid. A waste of money.
But what did I learn about the two critical issues?
- The “diagnostic” work on the black water tanks seemed to consist of the technician pushing on the control cable on the #1 tank (we have 2) and correctly determining that the valve was jammed open. I could have told him that for free. He apparently never tried the control on the #2 tank (the broken one). I guess it would have cost me an extra $67 to have him try both controls (they are right next to each other). He correctly determined that to fix the frozen one would require dropping the bottom shield and replacing the valve. Again, I could have told him that. What did I learn? Nothing. We didn’t even get the broken valve issue correctly reported to the insurance company.
- The technician said that the inverter was failing due to a weak battery. This makes absolutely no sense because (1) the problem existed even when the battery was new and (2) the error code on the inverter indicates an overload, not a low voltage. If the technician had any diagnostic skill he would have put a new battery into the loop and tested the inverter again. His writeup said that we should replace the battery (less than 3 years old – they should last at least 5 years) and bring the RV back so he can try again. Idiot. No useful information at all.
My diagnostics cost was $405. That is over $400 to learn… nothing. A total waste of money. Worse, we learned that they would make no attempt to fix either issue until the insurance company ruled on whether the problems were covered. We would have to pick up the RV and bring it back in a few weeks.
I am not eager to do that. I think I need to do my own diagnostic work and, perhaps, hire an on-site RV repair guy to deal with the black tank issue. As for the inverter, if I determine that it is, in fact, faulty, I will deal with the insurance company myself.
I really don’t want to go back to Camping World.