Entegra or Dealer Service

[BurninDiesel]

We have a 2017 Cornerstone that we purchased from some very nice people..Brett Davis and Angie from NIRVC. Today I had to sit and ponder our 565,000 Dollar purchase after 6 months and I felt I had to share our experience not out of malice only of a certain grief over their rapid growth (NIRVC) and changes in top management at Entegra and I thought.. wherein.. lies the Cog in the wheel? of getting our Coach fixed! The breaking point was today on our way to my scheduled DR's. appointment in New Orleans after prepping for departure our Vanity slide failed to retract after Service in Dallas and I explicitly asked for the recall to be performed. Answer... cant get parts from Entegra! That was also my pulled short straw! Three other issues from July NIRVC Delivery in Atlanta... awaiting ok from Entegra they said...we left! There is a history here and I will not go into it at this time but I wish to give my thoughts on the manufacturer/vendor/dealer cohesion. I have stepped into what I have likened to a cow pasture at 6:30 pm on a hot August evening in Texas. Naturally a lot of forum members have had different experiences depending upon various monetary return customer associations or worries about resale values due to negative reviews.

1. In my opinion NIRVC is overwhelmed by rapid growth and sales have outpaced their Service department.
How do I know? I was Director of Medical Diagnostic Service Europe for Johnson and Johnson overseeing their Techincare Division which dealt with it's CT, Ultrasound, Nuclear Imaging . So I might be considered knowledgeable in Technical service/ logistics but we dealt with life and death. Admittedly different. Eddie Brayley GM at NIRVC Dallas has really come through with parts we needed and he somehow expedited and saying they would pay for a repair tech to install the parts locally..good luck where we live. He is also aware of our current dilemma and referred us to Entegra and asked us to keep him in the loop, which we have. Nice gesture and kudos

2. Vendors..Spartan seems to always be there year after year for failures which re- occur far too often year after year.. as well as Aqua-Hot..same. Minor vendors are another matter..that's Joyce's expertise and we all know she handles that well.
3. Entegra...I worry about their QC putting out these Coaches and management/ corporate changes and from experience that is a moving target. Right now I have learned that any part requested by Dealers has an overseer other than Entegra so if you go in for service at a Dealer you may wait a day or two for confirmation/approval and two to three or more days for delivery and then an available tech and you suddenly have missed a week or two in a parking lot with Power hook up/ water and no sewer except you drive around the corner to dump and by the time you return someone else may have taken your spot! I call that the shitz!! My Advice..Go back to Middlebury for appointment Service. We cannot now and have to wait until tomorrow to see if a local repair will even attempt a 2 to 4 hour.. pulling the pin so we can get the slide in and then travel to service if a dealer will even accept us close by to perform the recall/replacement of motor and brake promised to be delivered by Entegra today. Joy! Now I know why there is a two year warranty as it may take that long to get issues fixed if you go through the Dealer network. My advice..Go to the "Mother ship" for service and not advised in the Winter.. Just my pissed off opinion upon missing a very important Dr. visit! Sorry for my reality.

[brobox]

Ralph, Sorry to hear your situation, been there done that with a different dealer. That dealer was also the "dealer of choice" back then, but then got WAY over loaded. There is another problem, too many like us going to "the Mother Ship" and they are now over loaded as well. Our PDI took a month, lack of technicians for the amount of service, and getting parts from vendors.

[Johnnypac]

Ralph, no different at Entegra in Middlebury. They do not stock parts there either for the most part. When we went for repairs there they had to order parts and we had to wait from them to be shipped to them.

[brobox]

Learned about the parts situation while on the factory tour. All of the parts for a MH are ordered at the time the order is placed for that coach. All of the parts from different vendors are delivered to a staging area just when it goes into production which could be as long as 4 months. Entegra does not have a large warehouse of parts and has "just enough" in service to get by with for most repairs. If that part is not in stock, you wait until the next day (hopefully) for the part to be delivered. That "holdover" customer runs into next week schedule PDI's and the over crowding starts.

[Gary.Jones]

Ralph

Sorry to hear of your situation and your frustration..... It doesn't really help to know that others have been in the very same position.

Now, I don't think that this changes your situation much, but there have been several threads on here in the past 6 months that fully discuss the various ways that a failed slide can be dealt with on a temporary basis and you may want to consult those threads for a short-term fix to get yourself to a dealer or to get underway in an emergency situation. If you use the search box up at the top near your name that shows a default of iRV2 as the search area (not the web) you will quickly come up with those temporary fixes.

My memory on the classics (and I think that although you own a newer coach, the problem you are having (one of them) is the slide motor. The previous threads discuss swapping a motor from another slide, and they talk about simply pushing the slide in manually with a couple of men and then how to hold it in-place while you travel. A dealer should at least be able to help you make a temporary fix. There were some other issues in the thread. I think from my quick reading, you are pretty sure that it is not the shear pin that has sheared, and IS a failed motor. I carry spare shear pins in case the shear pin is the problem.

Now, as to the supply chain for spare parts, and the dealer network, I have written lots on those two issues over the past several years and I will not disagree with any of your statements and opinions. I have been there and thought that. There IS a problem with spare parts and there is another problem with dealer support and repair issues, and some of us live in an area where we are not close to anyone who can be trusted to perform quality repairs, etc. etc. etc. I know a lot about dealer repairs and mobile tech repairs since I have needed more of them that I ever thought I would need in my 22 months of ownership..... this really IS a problem. However, as you point out, this is not a life and death situation in most cases, but it is a "trip cancelling" or "plans completely scrambled" situation, and that seems as terrible at the time that they occur.

And as others have said, trips back to the Mothership, while critically needed in some cases as the work that needs to be done can ONLY be done there (one of my situations), they are also overwhelmed in my opinion, and even with expanded facilities, they are overloaded when I have been there. And unfortunately, some problems that are fixed even there, are not really fixed. Be sure and check every repair that is made immediately and make sure that the problem is fixed, because there are times that they are not fixed and it has to go right back to the shop the next day to get it resolved. I believe that they try very hard, but some techs are better than others, and some check their work and others don't, and that problem pervades the whole industry, from factory to mobile tech in a pick-up trying his best to deal with a situation he probably doesn't have the tools or knowledge to deal with. A number of things need to change, and with a demotion of the Entegra President position and now a product manager who reports to an overall President whose background is with lower end pull behind trailers, that is the the situation that has most of us worried. I understand an administration desire to flatten an organization, but there are some decisions that are counterproductive, and my personal fear is that this is one of them.

Gary

[Gary.Jones]

Oh, one more thing..... one of the things that I think has been a "burr under your saddle" was the situation where if you leave a spot at a service center, you might not get it back. However, that same situation can obtain in Middlebury. They do have 20 powered spots and they are very nice (and thank you Entegra), and your tech will try to return your coach to the same spot he/she took it from that morning, but there are no "Reserved" signs in Middlebury and there is nothing that guarantees that you will get back to that spot, or even get any spot.... While I was there last, there were 22 motorcoaches there and 20 powered spots. Two of them were not Entegras, and were part of their other motorized divisions... I never saw a coach there for its scheduled PDI kept out of a spot for more than a day, but I saw coaches there for a scheduled repair that could not get to a powered pad. Problems on the repair end of the RV - Motorcoach industry is a problem over the entire industry.

Gary

[lowejug]

That sounds super frustrating for sure.. I don't blame you for being upset,,,that's a lot of money and to not have red carpet experiences when things do go wrong is not right ... funny thing is Entegra is the best in the business across the board in all departments.. the industry is a real circus for the amount of money these things are... not any better with any other brand.
In fact ... much worse... hope it gets fixed to your satisfaction and they re-instate your confidence...

[DSL417]

Had along talk with both Joyce and the new President of the Entegra division over the parts situation (and had earlier discussions about a year ago about authorizations for warrantee repairs). They know they have a serious parts responsiveness problem...they became acutely aware of it during the showcase Octoberfest 16 in Vegas. I know they are working on it. I think it is based upon them being a Just in Time manufacturer where when a part is really needed at factory repair or in the field, they borrow (at risk of slowing) from the factory line...because OEM parts from the 4000 distributors is slow, both in distance and responsiveness.

Approvals of dealer repair is another thing though....AND DELAYS OF THIS ARE UNACCEPTABLE (LISTENING ENTEGRA). Unfortunately, we don't see the interaction fr this, so we don't know; but the finger pointing continues, and as an owner, we are tired of it.

I empathize with owners issues and the timing WRT a trip planned; however, scheduling at dealers (in the wrong part of the country for the season) is not wholly workable. How do you maintain a workforce double you size year round so you can support emergency repairs. Same applies to the factory service....whether during this period of rapid sales growth or otherwise. Spent a lot of time talking with Brett (NIRV); his service is at the core of his business plan, not sales. If he is the best right now and that is his focus, I guess dealers where sales is the focus can only be worse.

As one of the full timers, our challenge is a little different. We have to find ways to get around the OP's type of issues. We delay repairs, do some of them ourselves and find workarounds. In this case, take a slide motor from the bedroom slide and move it to the vanity would be an example if the vanity slide out is needed and get by while the part is ordered...to avoid a trip delay. Or order the part directly from the manufacturer via Amazon. and get reimbursed (we can do this as a one off, where a parts department simply can't take that approach as a process). Then install it yourself or get a mobile guy when it arrives.

Sorry for length, JMHO and my thought process when something breaks as virtually all the OEM things that break often can be obtained through Amazon faster than going through the factory or the dealer, and usually cheaper.

[BurninDiesel]

Thank you all for replying and as of this morning I have News!! We found a local RV repair guy and the slide is in!! He calls it the "Spaceship and it took all of an hour and right now he is putting the motor and Pin back on so we can get down the road for the recall. We are in the process of getting scheduled to go to to a Dealer and Entegra says they have the parts and will ship as soon as we can get in. We also managed to have this guy come back and install the new sanicon hose and new Door handle provided by NIRVC Dallas. I can see from your posts we are not alone and will have to learn to adapt to doing these fixes on our own, locally except the re-calls. Once again Thanks for letting me "Bang your ears"! I feel better now. Thanks, Ralph

[Marcosdad]

Brett Davis told me that he reserves 15% of his service time for "emergencies" and that it stays fully utilized. He too is frustrated with the parts and approval time lags. On a somewhat related note, has anyone been to/seen NIRVC's Arizona location yet? I wonder how Cowboy is doing.

[HarleyOutlaw]

Originally Posted by Marcosdad

On a somewhat related note, has anyone been to/seen NIRVC's Arizona location yet? I wonder how Cowboy is doing.

Just looked it up and the Phoenix location is 404 miles from me right now. Was wishing it was closer

[RubiconTrail]

Originally Posted by HarleyOutlaw

Just looked it up and the Phoenix location is 404 miles from me right now. Was wishing it was closer

My understanding is they have a "place", but only a skeleton crew and no inventory in Phoenix. They didn't want to give me the address when I called last week ,but promised to contact me the minute their service portion of the business was open.

[HarleyOutlaw]

Originally Posted by RubiconTrail

My understanding is they have a "place", but only a skeleton crew and no inventory in Phoenix. They didn't want to give me the address when I called last week ,but promised to contact me the minute their service portion of the business was open.

I found the address on their main web site. Clicked on the Locations tab and it's listed there as of today. Based on your intel I won't be wasting a trip just yet.

[BurninDiesel]

As an Update we have managed a January 5th reservation at Lazy Day's Tampa to fix the slide recall of which Entegra has promised the Parts will be there and another priority recall for the pedal accelerate/ decelerate problem with the 2017 ISX 600. If you have not received this recall we just got it.. Yummy!!! All Safety recalls have to be performed by Entegra or Certified Entegra Dealers signed of on by Entegra! I'll let you know how that Service worked out! Very nice people with full hookups! Hope they work out better for us. After that we will be heading to Naples RV Resort just to re-group and settle down after our last Service calls to Vegas and Dallas. Ya'll have a wonderful Holiday/ Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! God Bless!