Factory Warranty - No Go

[JandC]

Irlpguy, your suggestions are noted. When I have a mobile tech out next to deal with my furnace I will have a whole page of information collected from members here, plus my own observations of what the furnace has been doing.

As far as getting something in writing on Keystone covering additional roof issues in the future, that may now be a problem. I received a e-mail back from Keystone Customer Service Rep Jamie Salazar. He states that Keystone has no record of Lazy Days ever submitting a claim on my roof staples, nor do they show anything in their records that I have ever claimed an issue with raised staples.

So here we go. Someone is lying somewhere! I know for a fact that Keystone is lying because I called 2 weeks ago and spent 10 minutes on the phone with Customer Non-Service finding out that they would not cover my staple issue in the first place. So after that whole conversation, with that rep telling me that everything was "in my file and if there was a problem in the future they would be there to take care of it", and now we have the basically saying "what? We have never heard about any staple issues with your unit".

Of course Keystone Customer Service may not be the only dishonest liars in this whole situation. Lazy Days service reps don't always do what they say they will do either. So my next step is to call back up there and re-confirm with them that they had submitted a warranty claim on my behalf for the staple issue to Keystone. I would like to think that they would have a paper trail of that submission since it would have taken place 3 weeks prior to my warranty expiring. We will see.

[Tom S.]

quote:Originally posted by Ozz

I work with parts suppliers and factory reps with my HVAC and Electrical business, I always take them something, beef jerky, candy, sometimes I send an ice cream vendor out to a warehouse. Sue and I have sent flowers to the office workers where we do a lot of business. Do you think I get lousy service and a bad attitude from them? Not on your life.
Sometimes it pays to grease the wheels when you want great service. people that supply services and parts get so much bad attitude it turns them a bit bitter, everyone wants something, and many times they don't know what diplomacy is. Often, I ask how can I make this the easiest for you, when trying to get something done.
If Salizar is the key, find out who his.. or her supervisor is and email them with a praise of Salizar's work. I bet you get good response then. It works.
If I had the staple problem as you described, I would get a large syringe and needle, fill it with some epoxy and inject it right next to the staple, then the staple would stay in. Think outside the box on the repair, then just dab roofing repair caulking on the tiny hole.
The furnace problem sounds like a flame sensor, possibly dirty. Loose wires and bad contact on wires will do the same thing. A long shot would be a bad board.
If you can get to the flame sensor, clean it with a green scotch-brite pad, or use fine emery paper. I have cleaned about 50 of them this winter, usually that is my first check and usually that is the problem. The flame sensor is a stainless rod, or pin that tells the circuit board that the flame hits it, is proving a ground, and it is safe to leave the gas valve open. Now, this is on residential and commercial heating, but the same principal is involved in Rv furnaces.
Take care and good luck.

Hey Ozz, maybe I'll try taking donuts to the local police department....

[Ozz]

Ha! good one there Tom

[Jimmer]

just an update on the roof staple issue. I am having the same problem with roof staple issues. Fortunately mine is still under factory warranty. I received an email from Keystone Rep that is in sales and he mentioned that they do not use staples on the 2015 Montana's they use screws to fasten the aluminum piece. My problem is so bad that the aluminum curved piece that goes up from the side to the roof is loose. You can push up and down on this piece. It is up 1/4 of inch on right rear. The piece is loose on both sides from front to rear. I don't believe pushing down the staples will do any good. The proper repair would be to remove the rubber membrane on both sides and remove all of the staples and replace with wood screws, put tape over the screws and then reglue the roof down. I have an appointment in April with my selling dealer and it will be interesting to see if the repair is done correctly. I have sent picture to the selling dealer and have asked them to contact Keystone to make sure they get all of the proper approvals necessary. It is such an obvious workmanship problem I just do not understand why Keystone would turn down a repair whether it is just out of warranty. It seems like the problem is worse on the 2013 and 2014 models. I travel with two buddies that own Montana's a 2010 and a 2012 and their roofs look perfect. It makes you wonder what happened in 2013 and 2014.

[jcurtis934]

My guess is that with the upturn in the economy, a lot of new hires were added to the workforce and with high production numbers things can't be done with care. John

[K0LCB]

I think the new roof ribs are made out of a carbon fiber compound

[DebbieM]

quote:Originally posted by JandC

I am going to have to take back everything positive I have said about Keystone Customer Service.

Backstory: two major issues, furnace still not working correctly and more staples coming up on roof. Lazy Days said this morning if I wanted to bring fiver back in they would take more photos and re-submit. I told them I wasn't interested in pulling fiver 3 hours each way for them to take pics that I could take myself.

Called Customer Service at Keystone. Couldn't get in touch with Jamie Salazar, so I just spoke with another kid. Furnace has been looked at by 2 Montana dealers, neither one of which can seem to fix it. His suggestion, take it back to another dealer, but if they can't find anything wrong or it doesn't malfunction when they check it I will be charged instead of Keystone. Now that's a good customer service attitude!

They will not pay to have roof fixed just because some staples are pushing up. So my question "so I just wait another month or so until water starts pouring in through the ceiling and then call back". He assured me that the membrane is so tuff that staples will not come through in 9 out of 10 cases, and actually most of the time expansion and contraction causes them to go back down. Wow, I may have been born yesterday but I sure wasn't born an hour ago. I did hold my tongue and confirmed with him that if my roof decided to be the 1 in 10 that did leak, then in a year or two would Keystone replace it. He said they would.

I am done with the idiots at Keystone Customer Service! Thanks goodness I purchased an extended warranty, which goes into effect later this week.

[DebbieM]

Hello,
We are having this problem right now with our new 2013 Montana 3582RL. It is still under warranty. We brought it in to have some very minor repairs before the factory warranty is up. They were very concerned that they found the roof planking starting to separate and curl away from the roof joists. There is also staples lifting up from under the roof membrane. Our RV repair recommend that the membrane be removed to inspect what could be the problem. They suspect that the OSB planking could've been installed wet causing the warping and separation were seeing now.

Keystone is denying this and their fix is to run the A/C for 7 days and the staples should just go back in to place. They say this is a normal moisture issue. The RV repair folks think this is the stupidest thing they have heard and that we should call them directly and say we insist the roof be replaced and that they reimburse us for our hotel costs also.

I'd love to hear what others think before we call Keystone back. I can't imagine this is normal. Anyone else see this on their rig? If so, does the staples really go in and out due to moisture/humidity/expansion? We have pictures of the roof too. If it matters, we have been fulltimers since 6/2014 when we bought this unit new. We have traveled from CA north, to the east along the coast and now towards the south. I check the roof each month. I have never seen this problem until now when I saw his pictures.

[RKassl]

I am really sorry that I looked at this posting. We just got back from our local Montana dealer. The wife and I were shown the 2015 3791RD. We were in absolute awe, 5 sliders, 42' in length, the interior was incredible to say the least. My wife was so impressed, I think she would have signed on the dotted line trading in our 2005 2955RL.

But after reading this thread, I am really turned off at Keystone based on all of the actual comments and experiences of you folks. For the life of me a guy doesn't mind paying the big bucks for a quality product but if the company will not stand behind their products that is a huge negative that I don't know we can swallow.

Right now our 2005 looks awfully good!

[Tom S.]

quote:Originally posted by RKassl

I am really sorry that I looked at this posting. We just got back from our local Montana dealer. The wife and I were shown the 2015 3791RD. We were in absolute awe, 5 sliders, 42' in length, the interior was incredible to say the least. My wife was so impressed, I think she would have signed on the dotted line trading in our 2005 2955RL.

But after reading this thread, I am really turned off at Keystone based on all of the actual comments and experiences of you folks. For the life of me a guy doesn't mind paying the big bucks for a quality product but if the company will not stand behind their products that is a huge negative that I don't know we can swallow.

Right now our 2005 looks awfully good!

Just remember this: people seldom post on the web how great their 5th wheel is, but they sure will post if they have problems. That isn't to say these folks don't have problems or that their problems aren't bad, just that I do not believe they represent the majority of owners. Look up any product you want and you will find someone who hated it. Amazon ratings are a good example of this. You'll almost always find someone who rated whatever Amazon ad you look at, as a piece of crap, even though 99% of the users rated it high. Again, I want to reiterate that I'm discounting the other folks' problems, just pointing out I don't think they are the norm.

[richfaa]

I agree with TomS. However the problems we do not have do not affect the use of our RV. According to what we hear at the fall rally there are more than 60K Montana's out there and I am sure the failure rate is low compared to the number of Montana's out there. I would to see the stats on the failure rate of High end users like my self and many others. I know that at the fall rally there are a lot of folks having repairs done.

Take a look at forums of other brand Rv's and you will see the same issues that we have here. Build quality is poor across the Brands. IMO the quality of the Montana Division has gone down over the last 3 or 4 years as has the quality of service. They do look to this forum and they do listen to MOC members as we who attend the Fall Rally know. This is the place to communicate with Montana. This is the place to communicate our problems. If we do not tell them they will not know .We don't need to tell them what they are doing right we need to let them know what needs to be done better.

I will no longer do that on this forum but will continue as I have always done and communicate my concerns with with Montana.

[grayghost03]

So, you don't think their dealers tell them. I think they know a lot more then you give them credit for, this forum and the fall rally is a drop in the bucket. They probably pick up a lot of good ideas for mods from the Fall Rally input, but they know about the problems. The fall rally give them the opportunity to stroke a few customers and give you a warm fuzzy feeling. That's about it.

[DebbieM]

Our repair rep told us today that when they remove the membrane it actually peels off some of the OSB since it is glued to it. The membrane should not be reused as it gets stretched. They said even if Keystone gives us the ok, they will only repair it by putting new OSB and a new membrane in. We'll know more Monday as they said they still wanted us to run the A/C for at least 4 hours first.

quote:Originally posted by Jimmer

just an update on the roof staple issue. I am having the same problem with roof staple issues. Fortunately mine is still under factory warranty. I received an email from Keystone Rep that is in sales and he mentioned that they do not use staples on the 2015 Montana's they use screws to fasten the aluminum piece. My problem is so bad that the aluminum curved piece that goes up from the side to the roof is loose. You can push up and down on this piece. It is up 1/4 of inch on right rear. The piece is loose on both sides from front to rear. I don't believe pushing down the staples will do any good. The proper repair would be to remove the rubber membrane on both sides and remove all of the staples and replace with wood screws, put tape over the screws and then reglue the roof down. I have an appointment in April with my selling dealer and it will be interesting to see if the repair is done correctly. I have sent picture to the selling dealer and have asked them to contact Keystone to make sure they get all of the proper approvals necessary. It is such an obvious workmanship problem I just do not understand why Keystone would turn down a repair whether it is just out of warranty. It seems like the problem is worse on the 2013 and 2014 models. I travel with two buddies that own Montana's a 2010 and a 2012 and their roofs look perfect. It makes you wonder what happened in 2013 and 2014.

[JandC]

quote:Originally posted by grayghost03

So, you don't think their dealers tell them. I think they know a lot more then you give them credit for, this forum and the fall rally is a drop in the bucket. They probably pick up a lot of good ideas for mods from the Fall Rally input, but they know about the problems. The fall rally give them the opportunity to stroke a few customers and give you a warm fuzzy feeling. That's about it.

As a customer that has not attended a fall rally it really doesn't mean much to me to hear how wonderful they are about fixing stuff when you are camped close to Goshen. What would matter more to me as a customer would be them simply honoring their warranty and not trying to jerk me around in an attempt to get out of fixing something as major as a defective roof.

I have asked them in writing how they can refuse my roof repair, along with others on this forum, but gladly repair the roof issues of folks attending the rally. I got a e-mail back simply stating that I could have the dealer re-submit another claim. No mention or explanation of why they repair some and why they try to get out of repairing others.

[richfaa]

If it is repaired under the one year warranty keystone does have a record. If it is self repair or just reported on this forum there is a good chance they do not. When I talk to customer service I ask that my issue be recorded under my VIN and read back to me. We have a very long history under our VIN. They do record "modes" at the fall rally and over the years many have been implemented into the Montana's. IMO it is a cost vs benefit thing if the mod is low cost they will do it if it means big bucks they will not. The fall rally is hard to explain. Yes they do, In general do repairs there although I can say I have not always got my way with repairers at the rally. The vendors also give breaks and do repairers but this is done at all brand rallies. It is IMO good marketing for the manufacturer and the vendors but those who can not get there do not see the benefits.

I do not understand turning down a warranty repair under the one year warranty.To my knowledge that has not happened before the last 3 or 4 years.
It does appear from post on this forum that Keystone is refusing more warranty repairs than they once did and are not addressing issues like staples through the roof, Holding tank failures like they once did. Organizations change this is not the Keystone organization We entered into in 2006.

[Phil P]

quote:Originally posted by JandC

As a customer that has not attended a fall rally it really doesn't mean much to me to hear how wonderful they are about fixing stuff when you are camped close to Goshen. What would matter more to me as a customer would be them simply honoring their warranty and not trying to jerk me around in an attempt to get out of fixing something as major as a defective roof.

I have asked them in writing how they can refuse my roof repair, along with others on this forum, but gladly repair the roof issues of folks attending the rally. I got a e-mail back simply stating that I could have the dealer re-submit another claim. No mention or explanation of why they repair some and why they try to get out of repairing others.

I was in Shipshewana (18 miles away) when I called Keystone and wanted to go to the service center. The first thing the customer disservice fellow said was they didn’t have a service center (the second time they lied to me) when I informed him that this forum had many post about there being one I was told I would be arrested if I came on the property.

I will say this one more time. As long as Keystone is using the dealer as a “completions” center If Keystone was interested in the end user they would do something about the dealers that have a service department in name only.

Phil P

[JandC]

I guess the bottom line is there just does not seem to be any support from either Keystone or many of the dealers. I agree with Phil P, about the only thing most dealers are doing is trying to sell the new units and picking up a buck.

I am starting to think that Keystone hires about anyone off the street to act as Customer Service Reps. I suspect many of them have never even been inside of an RV let alone a Montana, for all I know they are just pulling information from a format on a computer when customers calls the center about warranty issues.

One thing I know for sure, I am done with telephone conversations. Everything I have expressed with them after the initial rejection on the roof issue has been by email. I am saving and printing everything that they now say they will, or will not do.

Richfaa, I have to congratulate you on being as brand loyal as you have been. With your history of purchasing Montana products and the issues you have had recently, Keystone should have authorized a mobile tech to immediately complete all of your repairs and possibly even paid for you guys to stay in a motel while they were being completed!

I know many on here read Trailer Life. You have to wonder how long it will be before folks that have experienced warranty rejections by Keystone will start firing off letters to that magazine. It wouldn't take too many months of repeated letter complaining about this type of customer service before their sales numbers may start tumbling.

It is important to every owner of a Keystone Montana that they start doing much better. If their sales do falter due to bad customer relations and they start to get a bad quality reputation, then the values of all Montana's start to fall, newer ones and older ones.

Okay, I feel a little better now.

[richfaa]

I am really not brand loyal. Like I have said if I thought there was a better brand in the price range we would have it. We have always had good service from Keystone on issues with both our Montana's but I see a change in their organizational philosophy in terms of Customer service and management. I can point to circumstances that started the change but I will not. I am sure many old timers have figured it out.

We are done with Keystone customer service . We will do what needs to be done correctly on our own $$. We figure somewhere between 1 and 2 K will get us a quality RV .We will be asking Keystone to provide documentation that the Holding tanks are installed to Vendor spec's so we can present that to the Extended warranty company in hopes that they will cover some of the cost. We know they are not so they will not do it but I want them to...not do it.

I would still recommend Montana as a "Best bang for the buck" product. If considering a purchase do your homework read this forum and read the forums of other RV brands. Our Extended warranties have saved our butt to this point.

[DebbieM]

Hello,
I just wanted to give you all an update. After going back and forth with Keystone (and having the RV Repair folks behind us), Keystone has denied the roof repair. We ran the A/C for several days as Keystone suggested, and nothing changed. Seems like nothing to do but move on. The RV Repair place gave us a copy of all reports including pictures and suggested we take it to another shop in a few weeks. Crestview RV in Buda, TX did a great job for us. They fixed a few minor things and did their best with the roof. We will be in AZ in April and will take it to a dealership in Phoenix for a 2nd opinion on the roof.

--Debbie

quote:Originally posted by DebbieM

Hello,
We are having this problem right now with our new 2013 Montana 3582RL. It is still under warranty. We brought it in to have some very minor repairs before the factory warranty is up. They were very concerned that they found the roof planking starting to separate and curl away from the roof joists. There is also staples lifting up from under the roof membrane. Our RV repair recommend that the membrane be removed to inspect what could be the problem. They suspect that the OSB planking could've been installed wet causing the warping and separation were seeing now.

Keystone is denying this and their fix is to run the A/C for 7 days and the staples should just go back in to place. They say this is a normal moisture issue. The RV repair folks think this is the stupidest thing they have heard and that we should call them directly and say we insist the roof be replaced and that they reimburse us for our hotel costs also.

I'd love to hear what others think before we call Keystone back. I can't imagine this is normal. Anyone else see this on their rig? If so, does the staples really go in and out due to moisture/humidity/expansion? We have pictures of the roof too. If it matters, we have been fulltimers since 6/2014 when we bought this unit new. We have traveled from CA north, to the east along the coast and now towards the south. I check the roof each month. I have never seen this problem until now when I saw his pictures.

[JandC]

Debbie, I answered the email. There has to be some reason why Keystone RV is consistently denying warranty repairs on these roof staples issues all of a sudden. Do they suspect that there is going to be hundreds and hundreds of these 2014 models that came out of the factory with defective roofing installs?

Or, is this just another example of a new management style where they attempt to make more profit at the expense of quality?