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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Not once.\u00a0 Every time the compressor starts up the inverter is overloaded and switches off.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Fine.<\/p>\n
So we duly dropped the RV off.\u00a0 The next morning we got a call “reminding” us that there would be a separate flat-rate diagnostic cost of $67 per item.\u00a0 So… 8 items, $67 each… $536.\u00a0 I dropped two items – sticky windows which I felt pretty strongly could not be fixed; that is just how the windows were.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But I didn’t.\u00a0 They did fix the knob while diagnosing it, so there was no additional cost there.\u00a0 But not dropping the shades issue was just stupid.\u00a0 A waste of money.<\/p>\n
But what did I learn about the two critical issues?<\/p>\n
My diagnostics cost was $405.\u00a0 That is over $400 to learn… nothing.\u00a0 A total waste of money.\u00a0 Worse, we learned that they would make no attempt to fix either issue until the insurance company ruled on whether the problems were covered.\u00a0 We would have to pick up the RV and bring it back in a few weeks.<\/p>\n
I am not eager to do that.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As for the inverter, if I determine that it is, in fact, faulty, I will deal with the insurance company myself.<\/p>\n
I really don’t want to go back to Camping World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We thought this would also be … Continue reading