bigfeather
Member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2011
- Posts
- 17
Bob, have your problems with your GT been resolved by now or are you still fighting them? You're not alone out there and this lack of customer satisfaction on the part of the factory is prevalent at the low-end up through the multi-million dollar high end coaches. Makes one want to never buy new... but instead buy one that has a few years on it but that has been well maintained and buy from an owner, not a dealer. Dealers are full of themselves and will say and promise anything to get us to buy... just because they sell Winnies does NOT mean they know anything about the more serious problems and how to fix them. We have a 2012 Tour. Took us 3 years of "working with" Winnebago before we finally threw up our hands and said screw them! We discovered a young man in Tucson, AZ who works independently but who figures these coaches out and gets it fixed. He's got a family to feed and relies on satisfied customers to keep food on the table and roof over their heads so he works his butt off to identify the problem, verify the problem, test the components, determine the faulty component, and repair or replace what's broken. I took ours in to La Mesa RV there in Tucson with a list of 43 items that needed to be fixed, and I had factory approval on them all. They succeeded in fixing NONE! After 6 hours of being there, they brought it to the gate and told me I had to leave or be locked in for the night. I drove across the street to their competitor Lazy Days... who does sell Winnies in FL but can't compete with La Mesa. But after I got shut out at La Mesa, Winnebago approved them to take care of me and they did but they left the galley slide extended and tried to drive it into a service bay so there you have another situation: You can't fix stupid! Their management didn't give a hoot about priorities and we wound up being delayed for over two weeks while they *****-footed around parts issues. Anyway, once we cleared there we still had AquaHot intermittency, a shore power transfer switch that sometimes wouldn't kick in, and a dozen other "frog hair" items like windshield night shade that fails somewhere between up and down, and an awning that powered out but wouldn't come back in sometimes. So, another camper recommended Robert. Robert came out and right off knew there was a problem with the shore power transfer relay because the box was HOT to the touch. The wiring inside was shorting just enough to burn off insulation and ultimately dead shorted it. it was obvious that the factory had not torqued the lugs for the shore power cord to the main relay... OOOPS! They left the contacts loose when we went back to Forest City to work off other problems including replacing a defective shore power reel. Lack of QC? Oh yeah! Anyway, Robert used common sense and practical know-how to fix us up by using the generator's transfer relay as the main shore power input to get us powered back up while we waited on parts to finish the job. He also had the fix for the AquaHot which had been an earlier AH Recall Item that LaMesa RV knew nothing about. The main thermal sensor was not properly sealed when manufactured in Taiwan... so it tripped out the AH at most inopportune times. Robert looked at his iPod and said he had one in his van. 15 minutes later he had it fixed. I won't ever buy another brand new coach and Winnebago has pooped in their own mess kit when they allow LaMesa the leeway they give them to devalue customers and make it always about "your fault, not ours". Our Tour is purring and operating fine but there's one thing about this thread that is a mistake... you cannot get a face-to-face or a personal call through to anyone at Winnebago with any clout and for damn sure you won't get an engineer to use one of these coaches him/herself so they can experience bumping their head on the cabinet over the mid-ship sink when they wash their face or trying to put a DISH DVR or Hopper receiver in the entertainment cabinet above the passenger's front seat that's been made 4.75 inches too shallow because they put a false wall in there for electrical plugs and video feed wall-throughs... and this problem still exists 4 years after my 2012! I fixed mine, because they wouldn't custom build me a cabinet back in 2012. Their service dept likes to pass the buck to suppliers and vendors. I'm done with them!! I'll take the cost of buying a new one to keep mine in great shape over the remainder of my life and do totally without the bull they lay out about warranty service and dealer capability. It's too stressful to have to put up with it and by handling it myself, I can walk away at any time I think I'm being lied to or taken advantage of.
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I need time to comprehend what is being written here.
