We took our pod out to Vancouver Island last September after we bought it in July 2013. We had only taken it out twice locally prior to that. We had a bearing seize on the winding road from Gold River and Campbell River, BC. Shot the hub cap off, smoked like mad and set the wheel off kilter. We must have been on the road for 15 minutes? 

Bent spindle and needed a new axle. The pod was hooped and couldn't go anywhere, so it stayed in Campbell River waiting for the axle to come in from the US. 

We had a heck of a battle trying to get either Guarantee RV, Forest River or Lippert to cover the costs or help us get our pod back to us in Alberta once it was fixed. First Forest River offered cover some of the costs, then Lippert stepped in, but Guarantee refused to cover any costs...

It went from that to forest river and lippert backing out completely, and on and on with no progress when finally, Guarantee RV said they would have one of their staff go out and get it. 

We got our pod back at the end of January. 

Anyways, our experience with them and our brand new under warranty trailer getting stuck on the island half way through our vacation last year wasn't very nice. It must have been a real pain in the ass for that guy to drive all the way out there, and get paid for it. 

Our buying experience was negative. We felt deceived and had to get assistance from the Alberta RV Dealer Association in order to obtain the items listed on our agreement. We live in Calgary, and if we were to buy another RPod, we'd drive to another city. If you want details I can give you names, dates and verifiable facts. Love the RPod, bitterly disappointed in the dealer.

 

You are welcome David, glad that you enjoyed them. It's not that far away from you, all you need is lots of time. (and CG reservations  ) Our unit is parked for the winter until the end of May, it's going to be a lonnnng winter.

 

Take care,

 

In the meantime it is October and where has the summer gone? I had sort of promised to do a review on our new unit but that has become redundened, it has been discontinued after only one model year.

 

I will say though that we are extremely pleased with it, like all new units it had a few minor issues but they were addressed without hassle. Prime Time deals with warrenty issues totally different from Forest River, even so they are under the FR umbrella.

 

We made no long trips this season but stayed in Alberta, it's not like there is nothing to see or do here.

 

If anyone is interested this years pictures are here: http://www.pbase.com/hlohmann/alberta2011

but be warned, there are many.

 

It won't happen here (being stoned).  The preferred methods of torture with this group are flogging and/or being doused in boiling vitriol.

 

If you look below, you'll notice that I don't even own a FR product now.  They haven't thrown me off here, yet.  I believe you'll find 99.99% are just fine and very accepting.  They are crazy about their Pods, but like to see other campers too.  I think we all enjoy the fellowship of others campers and your great pictures!

 

Take care,

 

Long story short: got an appointment with Campkins RV in Whitby, they checked things out and informed me that both drums were defective and needed to be replaced. They had none in stock and I was not willing to wait 10 days to get new ones from Forest River so I authorized them to turn them down as far as they needed to. While there Campkins fixed the fridge as well. ( It had stopped working on 12 volts.) Campkins did the whole thing under warranty, not a penny changed hands, another A1 dealer.

 

A few month later after we had been home from our East Coast trip for a while an invoice arrived from Campkins for the full amount of the service call (I don't have the exact amount handy but about $480.00) because Forest River had denied the warranty claim. I paid Campkins, after all they had done the work and were owed that money.

 

I submitted that invoice to the selling dealer, Guarantee RV in Calgary and they in turn submitted it to Forest River and again the claim was denied. The reason seems to be that there is no warranty on turned drums, that the drums were turned in the first place to rectify a defect  seems to have escaped every one.

 

After that Guarantee RV handed me a cheque for the full amount that I had paid to Campkins RV. It was unexpected but very much appreciated.

 

After our return from our trip (before all this happened) we had traded the 171 for a 2010 Prime Time Tracer 205M. Even so that Prime Time RV is part of the Forest River family their attitude towards warranty service is totally different, they bend over backwards to keep the customer happy. If something is wrong and you rather fix it yourself, they'll send you the parts. I had complained that the fresh water tank capacity was only 19 gallon when the brochure said that it should be 38 gallon. Guess what, they send me a 40 gallon tank and told me were it could be installed. Can't beat that.

 

Take care,