We thought the Saga of the Awning was over, but it’s not. Turns out the RV dealership replaced the cheapo awning they initially tried to pawn off on us with HALF a new Dometic awning. They bought new fabric and hardware and strung it all up on our old roller, all without telling us! Problem is the roller doesn’t work properly after being blown down in the storm. So now we have a lovely-looking awning that won’t properly raise or lower. And we’re pissed. They didn’t just screw us over once, but twice!
We tried calling to get the thing fixed, but every time we did, the owner wasn’t available, so last week we sent a letter certified mail and demanded they take care of it. We got the postcard back indicating they got the letter, but we haven’t heard back from them. No surprise there.
Well, I have been paying for legal insurance for four years, and now I think it’s time that I put it to good use. I believe I will give them a call and see if they can perhaps persuade the dealership to do the right thing, and the right thing at this point is for them to come fetch their awning back and refund our money in full. We don’t trust them to do the work the right way. The worst part of it is that they left holes in the side of the RV from where they put the first wrong-sized awning on and then later removed it. So not only are we still out a functional awning, the body of our camper has been damaged.
I’m not big on suits, but I don’t like being taken advantage of. That’s clearly the case here, and I don’t like it at all. Lex is particularly livid. Every time she takes a look at the awning, she gets angry all over again. Can’t blame her, either.
While we’ve been trying to get the awning situation remedied, we’ve also been trying to get the mobile repair service to come back out and take another look at our holding tank valves. He came out once before, looked at them, and declared them fine. Well, they are clearly not fine. I can’t open or close the black water valve without a hammer now, and something somewhere is leaking into the underbelly pan.
We’ve been lucky that we haven’t had a hard freeze yet. Once we do, this whole sewage leakage thing is going to become a tremendous problem. I’ve called the onsite repair service THREE TIMES over the past two weeks, and he won’t return my phone calls. Once I actually got him on the phone, and he said he’d call back later in the day. He never did. The next two times, I got his voicemail, and he never returned those calls, either.
EDIT: The mobile RV service (Let’s call them Service A) finally called back today (Monday, 11/16), and he explained that he’d had a death in the family so had gotten behind on his calls. I feel bad that I’d jumped to conclusions about him, but given the negative experiences we had recently, it’s no wonder. We’d actually already found another service (Service B) yesterday and made an appointment with that service. Service B had cheaper rates, but they didn’t take warranty work like Mobile service A. So when Service A called us back, we decided to go with them. I called Service B back today and very politely canceled our appointment. I don’t want to alienate that company in the event that I need to work with them at some point in the future. So tomorrow afternoon hopefully we’ll have a solution to our sewage issues. *crosses fingers*
Sadly, since we can’t count on him or the local dealership, we’re going to be stuck calling Chesaco (the dealership from which we bought the RV) and making an appointment with them. I don’t care for their service department. It’s not that I’ve ever had them do work for me; it’s that their guys at the service desk are really rude. Again, I don’t want to give my money to anyone who isn’t interested in dealing with me…or at least who doesn’t have the courtesy to pretend they do. But I’m running out of options.
Hitching up the RV to take it to a shop is a difficult proposition. Not only does it take hours to get it ready to go, but we have to hope they can do the work in a day; otherwise, we’re stuck without a home for the night. Plus I don’t like the idea of leaving my RV overnight with (rude) strangers with all my personal possessions inside.
There is one other option, one I don’t fancy. I can try to fix it myself. Urgh. I imagine it’s not all that hard, actually, but there’s likely a belly pan full of black water under there. And it’s been raining for days and the ground is nothing but mud. Blech.
Still, the parts aren’t that pricey. I imagine we’d save a good bit of money if I did it myself, but I’m afraid of breaking something and ending up with a bigger problem than I started with!
It sucks that I have a perfectly good extended warranty but can’t find or can’t trust anyone in this area to honor it properly. This particular repair would definitely be covered, meaning I’d only have to come up with $100.
In other news, on Monday of this week, we ran out of propane. Four days before payday. That means the propane would have to wait until Friday (yesterday), in the meantime, it was a cold, wet week. We went ahead and bought another little electric space heater, and it actually did a fine job, at least while the weather was hovering around 40-45 degrees. Yesterday, I went and got the tanks refilled. Even so, we’ve decided to use the space heaters as our main heat and the propane as a back-up. We’ll put the thermostat on 50 or 55 at night so the underbelly will stay warm. The little bitty space heater in the bedroom actually keeps it broiling. We have to keep the heater down on low if we don’t want to start our own sweat lodge. We can’t run both space heaters at once, though. It’s too much of a draw on the power. I imagine when it gets sincerely cold (subfreezing), we’ll be running both heater and furnace. For now, though, the electrical heaters will help us save on propane. If I rely solely on propane heat, I’ll end up spending at least $120 a month on the stuff. I think I can cut it in half if I supplement with the electric (which is already paid for as part of our lot rent).
The most interesting part of not having propane wasn’t trying to stay warm but figuring out how to cook with a microwave, an electric kettle, a rice cooker, and a waffle iron. I actually did a pretty good job, making arroz con pollo in the rice cooker one night and making waffles and sausage another. We actually cheated and went out to eat Thursday night. I suppose I still have some skills leftover from the last time I lived in an RV when I had no stove but a hot plate, microwave, and a toaster oven instead.
Yesterday I also went out and bought a kickass ladder by Cosco. It is a folding extension ladder that can be used either as a 17′ extension or as a traditional ladder. Very cool! I picked up the light bulbs I needed to fix the scare light outside and put my new ladder to work the second I got home. Never have I relished changing a light bulb quite so much. The scare has been burned out for weeks, and it’s a real hassle to see when walking the dogs without it. Don’t like feeling around in the dark to try and pick up poop, you know?
I suppose I should go get our RV repair manual and start reading up on how to fix those danged valves. Looks like I’m going to have to get handy fast.
Tags: bad business, diy, propane, repair, rv