Bump In The Road

Originally the weather forecast said that rain was going to be here this afternoon. We left, for the Webster Flea Market this morning around 10:30. While driving there my phone rang and turns out it was the repair shop calling...the place we were supposed to take our rig on Wednesday. Seems the main mechanic there went in the hospital over the weekend and won't be back to work for several weeks. UGH !! Can you believe it ? Unbelievable but there has been a full moon out and ya know that things go awry when there's a full moon. So.....we called Tri-Am RV Center, in Ocala and scheduled an appt there only we can't get in till Feb. 24th. Great, huh ? We had called them previously when we learned that the RV tech couldn't handle this large a job but they couldn't get us in till Feb 15th....guess we should have put ourselves on the schedule then. Now it'll be even later unless we get a call from our work to ship out to a new assignment and then we'll leave without getting the repairs completed. I think the thing that is really disappointing is that when Linda originally called Peterson Industries, our manufacturer, on the day the tech was here a guy in the service dept said he would do some calling around and see who might be able to get us in to work on the problem. You'll be surprised to know (or not)that we didn't get a call back from him. I feel like now that the original bumper to bumper warranty has expired, owners are left on their own to fend for themselves. Either that or that customer service isn't what it used to be in this business. Neither reason is acceptable. Businesses can make or break their business with the customer loyalty that they create. Pointing a customer in the direction of another service center is a reasonable expectation from a manufacturer.

In the meantime, we're hangin' out here. A lot of rain coming in this week. The weather man says it's an El Nino year which means rain comes in every five days. We're planning to go over to Old Town sometime this week which should be fun. I was there ten years ago and I really liked all the unique shops and the setting. Just need to time it right to get there in between rainy spells. We'll post more on that once we get there..

Camping World...

Had an appointment, at Camping World, at 8:30 this morning to get valve extenders put on the inside of the dually on our truck. We resorted to this after trying to install several different ones ourselves. Holy Cow, what a tight space ! Not only was it near impossible to get anything in the slim opening between the outer and inner tire but then to screw something onto a valve stem that is pointed at an awkward angle....whew..our fingers were not tiny enough nor nimble enough and I was creating way too many new vocabulary words in trying to attempt it so I made an appointment to have the "pros" do it. Don't ya just hate having to pay a "professional" to do something that you feel you should be able to do ?" Just burns me up but like Clint Eastwood says, "A man's got to know his limitations" and I sure know mine...if something's gonna work, it will usually be on the third attempt.I gave this three tries and it wasn't workin'.

So, the task that they told me would take thirty minutes took about an hour and a half. At least I didn't have it as bad as the guy I was sitting and talking to from North Dakota...he had made this morning's appointment last week but when he showed up this morning they didn't have him on the schedule. Mind you this is on top of them "attempting" to order the parts for him two different times and him having to wait close to six weeks to finally get the parts in for his truck (getting new helper springs on his pick-up. He had an appointment, like I said for 8:30, but at 9:15 his truck will still sitting where he had left it out front. They finally took it in. He was still sitting in the lounge when I left. Nice guy....learned about the great game in N. Dakota...pheasants, deer, elk, turkeys...but no bear.

The job on the valve extenders seems to be fine but I wonder how common the problem is that my fellow RV'er had this morning. Failure to place orders for parts that a customer orders...failing to call the customer when the parts come in...not putting the customer on the schedule. Not a good way to create "happy campers" in your customers AND perhaps a contributing factor in why Camping World (as part of Affinity)is on the "bottom rung" report with a high likelihood of failing within the next year. Hmmm....time will tell what happens to them. Maybe they should contact AIG and see if they can help them out.