RV Shopping

I am totally tired tonight. But it was a productive day.


Since we had never ridden or driven a Class A I thought it would be a good time to take a few test drives.  I had been to the Winnebago dealership before the 4th. and I liked the look of the 2011 gas 30' and 32' that they had there.  


Craig agreed to go look at them with me, even though I knew he wants a diesel.  


He drove the 30' and said it handled well, and was easy to turn and back up. I drove it a little in a parking lot and found it handled OK as well.
 But to be honest, neither of us could stand the rattle and shaking of everything inside.  I also noticed quite a bit of air noise around the passenger side window. It felt like an earthquake and we were on a fairly smooth road.


Craig declined the opportunity to drive the slightly larger one.  


We have talked a lot about new gas vs. used diesel, and this just put more negative on the gas side.


The other dealer in the area that has some Class A's is a place called See Grins.  They have just moved to a much bigger location in the last two weeks.  I didn't like the salesman I talked to last time, but I knew it was a source we needed to be in touch with during our search, so we stopped to see what they had. I am also disturbed by the fact that all of their prices are way higher than anyone else's.  Personally I hate to have to dicker, but when dealing with "used" that's the game.


I hadn't made an appointment because I wanted to connect with a different sales person.  (Which we did.)


We told our new salesman what we were looking for:
Diesel, 2006 - 2008, 30' - 35', preferably Winnebago or Tiffin, and that we were just in the beginning stages of our search.  


He asked about our budget and I gave him a suitably uninformative answer.  He showed us two RV's.  The first was a little Monaco that was a bit on the small size.  We talked about Cargo Carrying Capacity (Yes Karen I am looking at that carefully!) and when we figured it was only about 1500lbs.  we moved on.


I told him at some point that one of our objectives for the day was to be able to test drive a diesel.  But he said something like he only let the customers who were "further along in the buying process" to test drive.  So I guess because we were not ready to buy today, we weren't going to get to try one out.


Then he showed us a 2004, 34' Itasca Meridian.  We both did like it, but the asking price was way out of line.  There was nothing else on the lot that was of interest to us.


We exchanged information, and went on our way.
Before we did I asked a lot of questions about warrantee and what See Grins would do for us.  


I really heard a whole lot of double talk.  "As Is" but they "try" to do right by the customer.  I would rather hear words like 30 or 90 day guarantee, but none were said.  They are a consignment lot, so basically you are working with a middle man to a private seller.  Not quite what I want to be doing.


But when we got home, Craig totally surprised me by suggesting we make an offer on it.


We went online and came up with several comps to help determine what to offer.  It is way below what the seller has posted.


I called the salesman and asked a few more questions, and told him I was not happy with not being able to drive it.  He asked us to come back and we could do so.


So as things stand now, we have an appointment to drive it tomorrow.  


I'm really not sure if we should offer or not. 


 It definitely needs new tires and new batteries.  Any offer would take that into consideration, and be contingent on a professional inspectors evaluation, and a review of service records.  


I'm pretty sure the seller will reject the number we have in mind.  It should be interesting! 


The best thing about all the online browsing I have done, and the RV shows I have gone to, is I know that if we pass on this one, there will be another pop up very soon for our consideration, actually we found several among our comps to think about.


I'll keep you posted...