Newbie pondering purchase - Event Date: 07 Mar 2014

I am in the process of elimination, choosing our "retirement"RV.have looked at a lot of different posts,RVS.Have narrowed it down to a used Rpod 172 at a dealer about 3 hours away or a new Retro 175 here.Hubby is a sheet metal worker,and is ??? about fiberglass.Also read a lot of very negative posts on pissedconsumer.com about Forest River (but only a couple about Rpods)Any advice?You all seem pretty happy with your pods!

I will say that, on that site, they have "160" complaints about "Forest River". Many of the ones I read were not (really) about FR, but about dealing with the dealer. It's been said before, a good dealer is worth a heck of a lot more than a good trailer. A broken trailer can be fixed, a broken dealer will stay broken.

Forest River sells a TON of RV's, and in my world view, once you account for people who just can't be or won't be happy, and owners with buyers remorse and other issues making noise, I think the overall owners experience is way better than what you might glean from that site alone. In my experience, we have a pretty good dealer, and what dealings we have had with FR directly, in no way shape or form reflect what many of the people on that site report.

That said, anything made by man CAN have problems. I don't know if you are thinking about full timing, it kind of sounds like you may be, and I am not sure many couples could spend that much time with so little room, something to think about. And we do know couples who ARE fulltiming, or at least snow birding in small campers. It can be done, but it isn't for everybody.

I think most TT's are fairly "moddable", if owners want to and have the skills, but it does seem to me that either the pod lends itself vary well to mods, or the owners of them are more willing to do stuff to them.

We looked at a retro at the last show, liked it, but in our view it had a couple things about it that we didn't like, mainly, don't underestimate the value of a slide out. We have one TT with a slide and one without, I am positive, no matter what our next one is, it WILL have a slide. I like fiberglass rather than a metal exterior (unless the exterior is smooth polished aluminum), and fiberglass has been used successfully in cars and TT's and airplanes for DECADES.

Welcome. 

Originally posted by SOTF2958 Thank all of you very much for your advice! I found a nice,gently used(twice) 2013 182g at a great price and am going for it!they are all so nice it was hard to pick a favorite floor plan!I going to enjoy being part of this group:)