Collier RV, Rockford

Louis and I went to the Chicago RV show.  Up to that point we were looking at getting a Casita, but the time frame was about 6 months from ordering to delivery, which seemed to be a bit much as we were looking to use the camper this summer.  I knew about the R-Pods in my research and thought that they looked nice from the ads, but I was leery as I didn't know much about the long term reliability of the vehicle.  While I didn't find anything negative about the R-Pod, I did find some online posts from people whose roof of the MPG was peeling, which made me a little leery about the R-Pod as it has the same type of exterior construction.

I knew that there were going to be some R-Pods at the show.  In fact, Collier and another dealer had set up three R-Pod models right next to each other.  Collier had a 177 and a 182G, and the other dealer had the 181G.  We walked into the 182G and fell in love with it.  We looked at the 181G and realized that it would only sleep two on the queen sized bed, and the little dining area seemed pretty small in getting plates, serving dishes, etc. on it.  The 177 was nice, but there was something about the 182G that just grabbed our attention--perhaps it was the garage on the back.  Okay, it was.  

We finally had a chance to talk to Mike and asked him a few questions about the trailer and were impressed by the answers, but we thought it would be best to look around at some of the other smaller trailers just to see what else was available.  The other trailers looked cheap.  One trailer's floor felt spongy, which just didn't seem right.  We chatted about the 182G and went back to talk to Mike.

Mike told us that we could put a deposit on the trailer, and if we changed our mind, we could get the deposit back.  I asked him some questions about my tow vehicle (a 6-cyn Mitsubisihi Outlander) and whether it would be okay to tow with it.  He pulls up information on my vehicle on his iPad to show me that it would work, but he felt that I should get a WDH for the trailer, which I knew would be likely.  He answered our questions well, and we felt comfortable dealing with him.

A few days later, I found that Couch's was selling the 182G for about $1500 less.  Couch was throwing in the R-Dome where as Collier's was not.  I emailed Mike and showed him the email from Couch's and asked him if there was something that he could do about the pricing difference.  He came back and said that they would throw in the dome plus $500, which brought the difference to about $300, and is storing it for us until May 1st or until we're ready to take ¡Podtástic! on the road.  That cinched the deal for us.

I emailed both Mike and the Keith (the finance guy) a lot between the time we settled on the deal and the time for us to come in to sign the paperwork.  Whenever I sent an email, they would answer back in minutes.  Keith even replied back on his day off just to let me know that he wasn't in the office but would get back to me in the morning with some figures I needed.  He did--at 8:30 am.  

Rockford is about 70 miles from our house, but I wouldn't hesitate for a moment in towing ¡Podtástic! there for work.  The shop is incredibly clean.  The parts area is well stocked.  Plus, we get a 10% discount on anything we buy from the parts area for as long as we have ¡Podtástic!.

I did a lot of research in making this purchase, and I couldn't be happier with the end result.