Fleetwood Warranty Gripe!

[rajuncajun]

We have a new 07 Bouder 36Z and recently I finally got around to moving one of my Dish's receivers in to start playing with the satelitte (KVH on unit). Long story short, I couldn't get both 110 & 119 signals. Got Dish to send me a new receiver after going through their tech support, still nothing. The RV needed to go into the shop for another issue and these guys also were a KVH authorized dealer. Told them the problem and left the RV there. After a long affair, he found that (these are his exact words from the invoice) "satellite is not working because of required ground wire from B- to receiver not installed, rf board damaged from ac ripple. Fleetwood RV did not install required KVH B- receiver to ground wire." He ordered a new KVH which KVH will pay for even though it is a Fleetwood screw-up for burning unit. Now I'm trying to get labor charges reimburssed to me by Fleetwood, ~$300.00. Can you believe I just received my claim back from Fleetwood telling me they are not responsible because, "the satelitte receiver and ground is the customer choice to be installed after customer decides on what service to use". ????? I hope this is not the start of the beginning of Fleetwood pointing figures at someone else. Any thoughts, how to proceed???
Thanks....Ted

[rajuncajun]

We have a new 07 Bouder 36Z and recently I finally got around to moving one of my Dish's receivers in to start playing with the satelitte (KVH on unit). Long story short, I couldn't get both 110 & 119 signals. Got Dish to send me a new receiver after going through their tech support, still nothing. The RV needed to go into the shop for another issue and these guys also were a KVH authorized dealer. Told them the problem and left the RV there. After a long affair, he found that (these are his exact words from the invoice) "satellite is not working because of required ground wire from B- to receiver not installed, rf board damaged from ac ripple. Fleetwood RV did not install required KVH B- receiver to ground wire." He ordered a new KVH which KVH will pay for even though it is a Fleetwood screw-up for burning unit. Now I'm trying to get labor charges reimburssed to me by Fleetwood, ~$300.00. Can you believe I just received my claim back from Fleetwood telling me they are not responsible because, "the satelitte receiver and ground is the customer choice to be installed after customer decides on what service to use". ????? I hope this is not the start of the beginning of Fleetwood pointing figures at someone else. Any thoughts, how to proceed???
Thanks....Ted

[heavyequiptmentmover]

Your begining to learn,as I did,in dealing with them the last three years that they are great with lip service. Wound up fixing things myself.

[moisheh]

If this shop is the dealer who sold you the unit they should not have charged you anything in the first place. Your beef is with the dealer.

Moisheh

[Ecker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by heavyequiptmentmover:
Your begining to learn,as I did,in dealing with them the last three years that they are great with lip service. Wound up fixing things myself. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
________________________________________________
I had excellent response from FW on my Discovery. In fact, it was my experience they seemed to be willing to fix problems way beyond the end of warranty if they were serious. The Discovery Owners club (DOAI) had an appeal process worked out with FW copied on the automotive model. If its still in place and one is a member, one could use it. It basically required that you go through the normal process and if not satisfied then notify a club regional officer and it was moved through that channel to FW.

With regard to present complaint, it has been my observation of many postings that KVH has not been responsive and gets a lot of negative press. This appears to be an exception here and KVH seems to have performed. However, I don't think one can rely on the words written by a technician to be the gospel as to who did or didn't do whatever. In fact, I think that it is an unfortunate situation that technicians are generally not well informed; exceptions of course. I think FW may be correct here. They don't provide the receiver and thus it would be up to installer to do the work properly.

[rajuncajun]

Ecker,

The grounding from the KVH is something that should have been done by someone, not me the installer of the receiver. The FW was setup with the KVH and "at sales time" I was told all you had to do was plug the receiver in. Now I'm not that naive and knew a little about satelites in general to know there would be more to it then that, but to say it is my responsibility to ground the KVH is crazy. FW built the RV, they skipped out on properly installing the ground. But I'm learning lip service is lip service, lot of finger pointing, KVH was the only one throughout this that is changing the unit, actually they too could have made FW liable to pay the repair and took it upon themselves to change the part out. I just wish I wouldn't have had to pay to have the grounding put in place and the troubleshooting, that should not be my problem on a brand new unit!

[buck62]

When I got my new 2006 Revolution Fleetwood MH, I did the same thing connecting my Dish receiver and could not get both 110 and 119 signals. I called KVH and was asked if I had put a ground wire from the switch to the receiver, which I had not. KVH told me that Dish receivers require a ground and Direct receivers do not, they have a data cable already installed for Direct TV, looks like a telephone cable. KVH prefers Direct TV and I was told by their technician that most people use Direct TV so that is the way the satellite dome is set up from their factory. After I installed the ground wire, I was able to get both 110 and 119 satellites. I guess I was lucky that nothing got shorted out without the ground wire installed. I think KVH is just making the customer happy by replacing the unit, I have found their tech department outstanding providing support.

[dickfrompasadena]

I have a KVH on my 2007 Bounder and can only receive 1 Sat on my Dish receiver. I do have a cable with no connector in the overhead compartment that the Dish receiver is installed. Could this be a ground wire? If so, do I need to connect it to the receiver?

[buck62]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">dickfrompasadena </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
If the cable looks just like a phone connection cable it is for a Direct TV receiver. If it is a plain black wire, it probably is a ground wire. You can verify by looking at the back of your Sat switch and seeing if the same wire is attached. On mine I had to run a new ground wire. Also not sure what model you have, I had the L3 KVH dome with a sat switch that I had to push each time to get the different satellites and it would cycle through every provider satellites until I locked on the right one. The L3 does not have what is called "DVB" technolgy which uses a signal from each satellite to only lock on to the ones from your provider. Complaining to KVH technical support was told the L3 was old technology and the newer domes have "DVB" technology and when you change channels on the remote, the dome will toggle between the two satellites (110 & 119) automatically. There is an upgrade available from KVH that upgrades older domes to the latest R5 version. You need to change out the main circuit board, add a "DVB" circuit board and replace the sat toggle switch with a on/off only switch. It took me about 2 hours to do the complete change over and now all I do is change channels using the remote control and the dome automatically finds the correct satellite and locks on. So not being able to find the second satellite may be not toggling through each satellite until you hit the right one. Also I would call KVH technical support, they are really great at helping their customers, even telling them that they have old technology from their coach builder.