Thor Forums

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by EA37TS

That is the way it is across the industry and with most manufacturers and dealers. If you buy a RV somewhere else your local dealer does not have to perform warranty repair on it and there is nothing you can do except leave and try another dealer. Most dealers are not willing to accept the reduced labor rates and time to repair for units on which they did not make the sales profit. There are some exception to this and in most of those cases the unit will come in on a resource available basis meaning it gets done after all of the dealers buying customers are completed first.

Go ahead and save a few hundred dollars by buying a rig 500 miles away but be prepared to drive 500 miles for warranty service from the selling dealer.

Thor has a disclaimer about using local dealers on their web site. The warranty for my coach even says to contact the "selling dealer" for warranty repair and if they are not available to call Entegra for assistance.

It was the same way with my Forest River a few years back.

Wow, we got extra lucky then. The irony is that every Thor that we tried to buy there was something wrong that was supposed to be covered by selling dealer that we never got commitment it would be repaired. Thanks to this site we walked from both of those deals. Then the 29VE Winnebago comes along. The one that we bought had more options built in that the local dealers did not have; so we fly 1200 miles to Florida and drive it back over 5 days shakedown trip. We save $1,000s and the plane tickets and gas cost to get back was chump change compared to the savings. However; we found some things we missed during PDI. No way we drive 1200 miles back to Florida; but it never came up as Winnebago put us in touch with a local dealer that we did not buy from; and that dealer is taking care of all of the warranty work. On my side since the local dealer Service was so good, I had them quote & install my EC-30 and Disconnect Switch. Of course I paid their rate. Given what you are saying, I may have helped myself because I gave them all kinds of positive on Google Review.

I can only assume the extended warranty plans would be even worse? I am so glad I didn't buy one. I will say this, Winnebago is constantly trying to get us to go to Forest City Iowa for any kind of service we may need. That is good drive from Dallas as well, so I hope my local dealer keeps taking care of us. In 9 months; we will be at the regular rate (out of warranty); so I would think it would be good business for a RV Service center to build the relationship.