Quality Repair Center, Not

[dgwilson40]

I live in King County, Washington. Does anybody know where you can get quality work done on your 5th wheeler? I just had my Montana worked on by a larger Montana dealer here. I must say I was shocked at how they had written out the bill. No parts listed just a flat number on worked perform. No break down of parts or labor. Also I thought the work was not very good. The service wright knew very little about what was done. Is this the standard for rv repairs? I hope not. My question is who knows of a quality run rv repair facility in the Pacific Northwest area?

[Phil P]

Hi

I see you have run into the problems I have come across.

I have come to the conclusion that the selling dealers are not the place to get your Montana serviced.

Find a company that is not a dealer of new units they make their living repairing units. The dealer that sells new RV’s makes his money from the sales end and looks at his service department as “dealer cost of overhead” and is just as happy to not have you come back for more service work.

There may be some exceptions but I haven’t found one yet.

Keystone doesn’t monitor their dealer’s service departments and are just not interested in doing so.

The dealer I purchased our trailer new from didn’t have any RVIA service personnel on staff except for the service manage.

I showed up a dealer last year to purchase a new SOB for just at $100,000.00 and when they introduced me to their service manager I just politely apologized for wasting their time but their service manager was the one that cost me $20,000.00 because he didn’t do the work corectly and didn't handle the paper work correctly when he was manager for the selling dealer of the Montana and I would not do business with a company he worked for and drove away.

This fellow just happened to find me in a disused truck stop trying to find a camp ground for the night and he really explained to me how unqualified the service personnel were at the selling dealer and the dealer’s attitude toward the service department.

Phil P

PS: I found a good shop for the “house” portion of the trailer in Ft Lauderdale Florida but I will not let them work on the electrical system.

I found a good frame and undercarriage shop in Ft Pierce Florida.

And the best frame and undercarriage shop I have seen any where is in Missouri. LOL

[mhs4771]

X2 on finding a shop that is not a dealer. I found one at our Home Base, they do just repairs and installs, specializing in custom interior mods.

[dgwilson40]

Thank you for your feed back. I'm kicking myself for not checking the forums first. Live and learn I guess. I hope someone locally knows of a good place locally. I would like to make it to Florida someday soon.

Greg

[catskiner]

Please post your good or bad experences at www.rvservicereviews.com

[Overlord]

Demand an itemized bill for what they did, including diagnostics time, parts, and individual labor times for each fix, ....or, at least, have them physically show you everything they worked on. Don't go away until they do so.

Maybe they charged you for topping off your blinker fluid and replacing the muffler bearings too, how would you know what other bogus charges they added to the bill?! Shoddy business practices by them, for sure!

[Wheelhouse]

Muffler bearings, lol. I forgot all about those. I agree, make sure they inform you of what they charged you for and go over the bill. They could easily have forgotten something to do and still charge you for it in the lump sum bill. Don't forget to get the parts they replace so you can inspect them after. One thing I found when I had my fuel injectors replaced recently, they include the core charge, then they will return the core and keep the core charge deposit. That would have been over $400 for 4 fuel injectors. That goes for alternators, fuel pumps and such. Hope this helps someone.

[DQDick]

I keep an Excel sheet on good and bad reports on repair places. I don't know Washington at all, but here's what I have from good reports up there:

WASHINGTON
BUCKLEY WHITE RIVER RV
PASCO CHIEF'S RV
SEDRO WOOLLEY JR'S RV REPAIR AND REBUILD
SPOKANE BLUE CRICK RV SEVERAL GOOD REPORTS
TACOMA TACOMA RV MANY GOOD REPORTS
WENATCHEE D&L RV SEVERAL GOOD REPORTS

Please let me know if your dealer is one of these or if not what the name of your dealer is so I can add them to the not good list.

[sambam]

quote:Originally posted by catskiner

Please post your good or bad experences at www.rvservicereviews.com

Thanks for the post. I never knew the web-site existed. Interesting reading. I often wonder how the local shops stack up. Now I can find out.

[Bigsky3625RE]

If it was Tacoma RV they are horrible. I have too many posts about them. Do a search. I will never recommend anyone do business with them.

I actually went Polsbo up in Everett to get some work done before our two week trip last year. They were great. And they don't sell the Big Sky or Keystone and openly welcomed our business.

Yes the bill was itemized.

I haven't done any research on repair only places but will put that on my to do list.

[Drifty1]

I had the slide floor replaced on our trailer a couple months back. I had Northwest Coach Repair in West Olympia do the work. I got a price before he started work and he came real close to that price. I was satisfied with the work as it was a big job as it was a 12' slide. Contact Travis Moore at 360-705-9733 I think he is a fair and honest guy who wants our work... And he also has a nice clean shop...

[bigskyjimmy]

That's a bummer Bigsky3625re, I bought mine at Tacoma RV and had a great buying experience and I had a toilet go bad and they were very helpful getting it fixed on Warranty and communication with Keystone ,I researched them on the Internet as well before I bought mine and they got great reviews and have spoke to others who have bought theirs there and they were happy as well ,Maybee they have gone downhill since I bought mine in 2012

[DQDick]

Thanks for both the good and bad reviews, I've added them to the spreadsheet.

[Wheelhouse]

Try Poulsbo in Fife off Hiwy 5 at exit 149. I had a wire harness fire, called them and they said they would squeeze me in the next day. Took a couple of hours and charge was fair.
Also, as I was saying in a earlier post about core charges and upcharges, guess who missed it in the summary, me. When I got home, I went over the bill and called the parts dept and found a core charge was in place but not shown on the invoice. High pressure oil pump ($151 upcharge), Gasket kit ($45 upcharge) and fuel pressure regulator ($58 upcharge). Parts manager said he would credit back to my account. Check those bills.

[jimandlaurie]

I have to agree that as far as the Montana dealer, Tacoma RV. They are ok to buy the coach from ,but I wouldn't get our 3750 worked on there. I will go to an independent service for work other than warranty work. It's too bad that dealers are like that .

[F3fifty]

My service experience to date has been excellent with Curtis Trailers in Portland Oregon, which is a keystone dealer and made our purchase through them. Currently the trailer is at their location for a service repair and pending warranty claim approval. RV repair dealers are just like Truck dealers in my opinion and experience you can find terrible customer service though good workmanship and vice versa. With Curtis Trailers in Portland you get excellent customer service from the both service and parts departments and you can talk with the techs for clarification and questions. Though my next 5th wheel will in most likely not be a Montana especially if my current claim is denied and it won't be due to bad service from Curtis. In fact if I didn't have honest and good service from Curtis I would have dumped my Montana immediately after the warranty ran out. Kind of got off topic but it's too bad you have either a warranty claim or another service repair and you incur poor service from any repair location and it's good to know who these dealers are.

[rohrmann]

Just had a Norcold fridge cooling unit replaced here in Las Vegas. It went out while in Quartzsite last week. I tried to get it into CW Las Vegas, but they were booked up for over two weeks. They referred me to Desert Mobile RV Repair, 702-379-7966. I was very impressed with the work and how quick Mike and Mark were able to complete the repair. This is one for the good list

[twindman]

I also have some experience with the Tacoma dealership. I had frame flex issues in Olympia and Tacoma was the nearest dealer. Called service dept. and explained what was happening in the coach. Guy said I have never heard of frame flex!!!
Call my local dealer in Mesa and explained issues and he immediately said it sounded like frame flex. Guess where I took it to be fixed? Held my breath on the 1000 mile drive with a frame coming apart!!! Drove slow tho.