Guess Again

We watched the UPS truck pull up to the Camping World facility around 11 AM yesterday. We thought that things would begin to happen now that our parts were here for the hydraulics repair. Wrong! Joel - service manager - called and said that the truck didn't have the parts on it so he was going to contact Lippert Components to find out what happened. It turns out that: 1- the parts were not shipped, 2-they are not even built and/or ready to ship, 3- my credit card was charged $55 for overnight shipping for these parts, 4- there is no indication when these parts will ship. You probably can guess that there is a hole in our roof where I went through. This changes everything.

The early prognosis is that the parts will not be ready to ship until January 3rd, at the earliest, since that's when these folks at Lippert return from their New Year's break. Of course, I need to be in Orlando on January 4th for an interview at Disney World, so that won't work. We also cannot travel with the jacks in their present state unless I use the temporary "fix" with the bungee cords again. Joel is going to find out this morning if there is another Camping World near Orlando that can handle the repairs and he would then just transfer all the paperwork to that store. Hopefully, they will also have a campground where we can stay while the repairs are performed. In the meantime, he will take our fifth wheel into the shop and finish up the other minor repairs today so that we can get on the road by tomorrow.

It is difficult to understand how something like this can happen. This company has known about the problem with the jacks since early December, when I tried to get a mobile tech service to come out and fix the problem before we left Campbellsville. At that time, they got the VIN for the fifth wheel and all the details of the model we have. There is no way that they could not know the hydraulics configuration before diagnosing the problem. To have someone commit an overnight delivery of parts to us, collect my money, and not even have the parts in stock in inexcusable. I am at a loss right now to figure some way to let the world know about the poor customer service from Lippert Components. Right now though, we need to finalize a plan to get the work done in Florida.

We should know the final arrangements today and we are ready - believe me, we are ready - to get out of this freezing weather. It went down to 26 overnight and is 33 degrees right now. The end is in sight...