Texas: Our experience with RV upgrades and maintenance

As I mentioned in our last post, we were heading into one of the local dealers to get some RV maintenance done, along with installing some items.

Our experience

Sigh. I wish we had better news, but yet once again, it was not a happy experience. We did everything we could to make sure that the dealer was aware that our RV was our home. We verified 2 days in advance that they had received our washer/dryer.

The service appointment was for 9 a.m. on Monday, with service items that would take two days. It took the dealer almost four days to complete. Why did it take so long? Their excuse was short staffing – not our problem. We figure they didn’t even start working on our RV until at least Tuesday (remember, they were supposed to be done with the RV by the end of Tuesday), when I called at 11:30 a.m. for an update. I was promised a callback. No one called by the close of business on Tuesday, so at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, I was standing in front of the service desk, asking for an update. I got the runaround and excuses, but was told that I would receive an update at 3 p.m.

We were supposed to check out of our hotel on Wednesday. Clearly that wasn’t happening, so I added another night to our hotel stay.

No one called with an update by 3 p.m., so I called at 3:30 for an update. I was told that we would be able to pick it up by lunch time on Thursday. As you can probably guess, they did not make their lunch time promise. We arrived at the dealer at 11:30 a.m., having checked out of the hotel. By the time the technician working on our RV delivered the paperwork to the service manager, it was 2 p.m. We got back to the RV park at 3 p.m. and unpacked the Jeep.

The recently hired service manager was not happy with our experience – he checked us in on Monday, but was gone Tuesday and Wednesday. He had no idea until I showed up on Thursday that anything had gone wrong with delivering our RV. Shame on us for being fooled again. There is really a niche out there for a service provider that actually understands RVers who full time. I would have rather rescheduled than gone through this again. It was an expensive experience – service, 4 hotel nights, and 4 dinners at local restaurants because the hotel only had a mini fridge and a microwave.

The washer/dryer upgrade

Previously, we had a stackable washer and dryer. Now we’ve got a combination washer and dryer that does much smaller loads, but keeps us (mostly) out of the laundromats, except for large items.

We plan to build or insert some storage above the washer/dryer, so we can store some items that are currently in the way or taking up room elsewhere. We ran our first load as soon as we hooked up back at the RV park, but it wasn’t without issues. The technician installed the washer/dryer unit, but didn’t turn on the hot and cold water spigots. The load errored out on the first try, because no water was coming into the unit. We turned on the water, and they didn’t install the spigot all the way, so we had a short leak because it wasn’t sealed. We tightened things up, and started the load again. Success! But wait, there’s more. We went outside to check on the Jeep and noticed water by our wet bay. The brand new waste valve assembly just installed by the dealer has a slow leak, and the gray water from the laundry load was slowly leaking out of the RV. Sigh. We’ll need to have a mobile RV repair person come out and get it sealed properly. Hopefully we don’t have to replace the brand new pieces that were just installed.  🙁 So no more washer loads until that is fixed.

Our conclusion

Any future upgrades will either be done by a vetted RV repair person or by us.