Warranty issues.
OK, I've been around the RV biz for 11 years now, prior I was in the Car biz for 17 years. This industry is traversing the same lines the American car industry has. In 1982, customer service was a necessity rather than a part of your buying/ownership experience. CSI (Customer Service Index) was unheard of. If the internet was as prevalent then as it is today these forums would read the same. The car industry finally came around to understanding they would lose their customers to foreign manufacturers if they didn't get a handle on quality and service.
NOW...as for the RV biz.... My opinion only.... not the dealership I work for or the manufacturer or anyone else...MY OPINION... :
This INDUSTRY..not Keystone... is at least 5 years from being able to manufacture a unit with the quality and standards needed to make the buyers have a semi happy ownership experience.
Some things to remember for the consumer:
1. These are basically temporary housing on wheels.... appliances, metal, wood, etc.... are not basically meant to be bounced around down a highway. If our state and federal highways were all 100%... a number of problems wouldn't arise... a perfect world we do NOT live in!
2. The manufacturers buy their parts from OTHER manufacturers, (eg: Dometic, Norcold, Coleman, Lippert, RCA, etc..etc..) the warranties are from each manufacturer and are facilitated by the dealer and the coach manufacturer.
3. Unfortunately, because MOST manufacturers haven't understood the concept of "genericizing" <~probably not even a word...but it will make my point. In 2002, I had a manufacturer that built 14 models of trailers, of those 14, there were 14 seperate decal packages, 52 seperate window sizes, nearly 30 different cabinets, and numerous other ridiculous amounts of NONuniform parts that could have been incorporated by using maybe 5 or 6 different windows, and making the parts more generic, like why not make a decal kit that could be used on all Travel Trailers, just design it with the backing paper so you could cut it off at the length of your trailer and BOOM..repair easy.... <~this would be too simple... I know. One manufacturer FINALLY scratched their heads and did just this last year. Their parts problems cut in half, because they had less of a chance to make mistakes by sending wrong part.
4. Another unfortunate problem is the manufacturers look for bargains, just like us consumers do, and buy maybe a mill run or end run of a carpet that maybe is being discontinued, GREAT deal..except when someone in management isn't smart enough to hold back enough for warranty repair. Then when they DO run out..they have to replace the entire carpet in the coach...WOW...did they really save any money? NOPE
5. Understand that most dealers, IF they had the proper parts, could triple the output of trailers leaving the service facility. The fact that I saw comments stating that Keystone tells customers that parts ship in 2 days.... (cough) BS!. pardon my french. If that were the case, I would have at least 25 more units busting bugs rather than collecting dust on our lot waiting on parts.
NOW for solutions:
1. Manufacturers need to have a more efficient way of parts inventory, and the people working to pull these parts and ship them need to be more astute and be SURE what they are shipping is correct. Our service/parts personnel even take pictures and send to the parts departments, we still have at least 30% of parts ordered coming in WRONG! We fade the heat, but the manufacturers blame the dealer.
2. The manufacturers need to do what the car industry does, be able to plug in a customers VIN number and it tell them WHAT parts are actually on this coach, that way it SHOULD ? be nearly impossible to ship the wrong part.
3. Have a more clear relationship with the vendors they use to get these parts from. Dealerships are at the mercy of the individual manufacturers of the parts... I hear, more than once, how the supplier can't get the parts to us/them any quicker.
4. The manufacturers need to have a computer system, similar to car industry, where the individual dealers can actually access the parts database and order the parts electronically, rather than sending emails. What happens now is the dealer ascertains the problem, orders the parts, and from what I have found, no less than 3 seperate people handle either the paper or the actual part coming to the dealer, yet 3 seperate chances of having something WRONG! If they dealer ordered the part electronically, and the part number is correct, then someone with a 3rd grade education that can read a box that has the part number on it.... could pull it and send it.
The ultimate problem is the INDUSTRY as a whole, these problems are prevalent in nearly every manufacturer ..NOT JUST KEYSTONE...
If the Japanese ever decided to get in the biz... and we have "toyota" or "nissan" RVs... it would force their American counterparts to actually do some of the things mentioned above.
OK, i'm off my pedestal
Waiting patiently for the onslaught of hate mail ! HA!
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