General RV experience

[isp4265]

My wife and I visited General RV (Huntley, IL.) store on 04/16/22. We had also been at the store 2-3 months prior and looked at Tiffin 32SA. Back then, we called ahead and the salesman, David Mann, had stated they had the RV and it would be ready at 1pm to look at. We drove over an hour to look at the unit only to be able to see it closer to 3pm because of dead batteries. Long story short we didn't feel the Tiffin had been well taken care of. Now on 4/16/22, we looked online and it appeared they had a Newmar 3226 on the lot. We drove another 1 hour plus to find out that unit wasn't there. (our bad for not calling ahead, thought we could trust the website). We arrived and were assigned to Darrell. Not sure last name. After Darrel told us the unit wasn't there, we asked to look at other units. Darrell's response was, (after going to talk to Mr. Mann) "are you guys just killing time"? We said no, we just aren't sure what we wanted and wanted to look around. Darrel stated he couldn't help us as he had an appointment at 1pm. (We were there around 12:30-12:45 so why were we assigned to someone that could only help us for 15 minutes??). My guess is if we would had told him we wanted to buy something today, his 1pm appointment would have magically disappeared. He said we could look around without him but all the units were locked up. What kind of business model is this??? My guess is when Darrell went and spoke to David Mann, David told him we were probably not serious buyers which is totally not true. Why would we drive 2-2.5 hours round trip (2 times) if we were not serious.......especially when gas is 4.39 a gallon!!!!! We were shocked by this remark and that he didn't want to help us. I am sure we are not the first patrons to be unsure what they wanted. Again, we were looking at class A's, not a $20,000.00 towable. (not that it should make a difference). If we are going to spend over $100,000.00 we want to do our due diligence so we get what we think will fit us best.
I'm sure General RV can get away with this when the market is so hot, but when things get back to normal, or worse, (and it will) I am not so sure this approach will work for them.
I can tell you because of this encounter we will NOT be back! Shame on General Rv's business model and Darrell for not taking us serious and blowing us off.
We will purchase a newer Class A RV within the next 6 months but it won't be from GENERAL RV that is for sure.

[NXR]

I'd relate my experience trying to buy one of two brand new Winnebago Class A's, a Vista LX35F and an Adventurer 35F three years ago at a different General RV but yeah, you already know how that story ends.

To be fair to Sales, most of the difficulty was how their Service department operated when we talked to them. Like at a different dealer, the Service department killed the sale.

The main difficulty I had with Sales was that the General RV location was part of Costco's Auto Program and the salesperson flat out lied about their contracted requirements for pricing. I even showed him the email from Costco that explained how the plan worked and he still denied it.

BTW, who knew that Costco's Auto Purchase Program also covers some RV dealers? I didn't. I found it out by accident.

https://www.costcoauto.com/rv/enterz...tourl=%2frv%2f

Ray

[ShelbyM]

Sounds as if they were busy with scheduled appointments. It's true that a former tire kicker may turn into a paying customer. However, it's not unreasonable for a business to decide one customer represents a better use of their time than another.

[twogypsies]

Many of those RV places place ads for 'leaders' to draw you in. This is false advertising if they don't have the product. I, also, would stay clear of General RV, Huntley, IL.

Sorry you had this experience.

[Sparky19053]

Boy do we know this story. There is a RV dealer in Souderton PA that we visited. They were too busy to be bothered with us. We purchased the following weekend elsewhere.

[Cumminsfan]

I've had just the opposite in my dealings here in the PNW.
Most dealers the units are unlocked so most sales people after a 30 min intro walk around in a few units usually just say have a look around and I'll check back with you in a few. Many times we do see the sales person for 10-30 mins.
We went to Funtime RV a couple years ago and after checking out a couple 5ers we wanted to browse a bit so since most the RV's on that lot were locked the sales guy gave us his master key and said to come see him when we were done. Guessing they were locked because it was march and the weather was nasty and foot traffic was probably real light.
Being in our early 60's and I suppose seemingly trusting types probably made that happen. If we were in our 20's then it may have been a different story.
Almost every dealer I've been too in the last 12 years has walked with us for a short bit then turned us loose only to check back later.
YMMV

[Dutch Star Don]

It's sad how quickly some of these dealers forget about the bad times when they were all whining.

In 2005 we were looking to buy a new DP. We wanted to look at a Winnebago Horizon. It had the features we wanted. We drove down to Mike Thompson RV as they had one in stock. The salesman asked if we were buying that day. I told him we hadn't even seen the coach in person yet. He told us it wasn't available at the time. I'll never forget the jerks name....it was Chance.

We bought a new Monaco Diplomat instead. For the next 5 years, old Chance was working the Pomona RV Show. I made a point to go by, tell him he was a jerk and show him pictures of our new Diplomat.

[RajTaj]

Had a similar experience @ Mike Thompson's in Fountain Valley, and an even far worse experience @ La Mesa RV in San Diego. Both are dealerships that we wouldn't recommend to our worst enemies.

We have since ordered a new unit from NIRVC in Las Vegas and will be driving over twice the distance each way to deal with a class organization, and we're happy to be doing so.

A quality dealership that respects you as a consumer is simply priceless.

[IndyJim]

Originally Posted by isp4265

My wife and I visited General RV (Huntley, IL.) store on 04/16/22. We had also been at the store 2-3 months prior and looked at Tiffin 32SA. Back then, we called ahead and the salesman, David Mann, had stated they had the RV and it would be ready at 1pm to look at. We drove over an hour to look at the unit only to be able to see it closer to 3pm because of dead batteries. Long story short we didn't feel the Tiffin had been well taken care of. Now on 4/16/22, we looked online and it appeared they had a Newmar 3226 on the lot. We drove another 1 hour plus to find out that unit wasn't there. (our bad for not calling ahead, thought we could trust the website). We arrived and were assigned to Darrell. Not sure last name. After Darrel told us the unit wasn't there, we asked to look at other units. Darrell's response was, (after going to talk to Mr. Mann) "are you guys just killing time"? We said no, we just aren't sure what we wanted and wanted to look around. Darrel stated he couldn't help us as he had an appointment at 1pm. (We were there around 12:30-12:45 so why were we assigned to someone that could only help us for 15 minutes??). My guess is if we would had told him we wanted to buy something today, his 1pm appointment would have magically disappeared. He said we could look around without him but all the units were locked up. What kind of business model is this??? My guess is when Darrell went and spoke to David Mann, David told him we were probably not serious buyers which is totally not true. Why would we drive 2-2.5 hours round trip (2 times) if we were not serious.......especially when gas is 4.39 a gallon!!!!! We were shocked by this remark and that he didn't want to help us. I am sure we are not the first patrons to be unsure what they wanted. Again, we were looking at class A's, not a $20,000.00 towable. (not that it should make a difference). If we are going to spend over $100,000.00 we want to do our due diligence so we get what we think will fit us best.
I'm sure General RV can get away with this when the market is so hot, but when things get back to normal, or worse, (and it will) I am not so sure this approach will work for them.
I can tell you because of this encounter we will NOT be back! Shame on General Rv's business model and Darrell for not taking us serious and blowing us off.
We will purchase a newer Class A RV within the next 6 months but it won't be from GENERAL RV that is for sure.

I worked for a guy (decades ago) who made an appointment to test drive a new car (Mercedes or something else expensive). When he arrived at the dealership he was informed that he could 'look at' the car, but could not drive it because it had rained the night before. He went across the street and bought and Acura NSX (this was a $60K+ car back in 1990), then drove back to the first dealer, parked right in front of the door and went in and bought himself a keychain.

You just never know who has money and you don't know who is ready to buy something until you ask.

[JohnBike]

I won’t say who it was, since they have changed owners and cleaned up their act. While rv-shopping in the Seattle-Tacoma area, we spent over 15 minutes in one dealership listening to a young man’s spiel about picking a rig based on what monthly payment we wanted. After repeatedly explaining to him that no one with half a brain buys anything based on that criteria, we walked out.
The receptionist called us a few days later to ask how our visit went and to arrange another visit to make an actual purchase. I asked her how much she was willing to have her day ruined.
All we wanted to do was see what they had in stock first, something most normal shoppers would do.

[dizcom]

We had a great sales experience at General RV and went back only because of that salesman. Then the staff dropped the ball and sold a coach we had placed a deposit on out from under us. A manager at a different store went to bat for us and got us our current rig. We won't go back. Between that foul up and their extraordinarily poor service department, we wouldn't go back to General RV if they were giving them away.
I agree with Dutch Star Don - the dealers seem to forget the tough times and they'll be back. When the market is down I can go anywhere and have three people handing me coffee and two sales managers handing me their cards before I hit the reception desk. I don't decide where to spend my money when everyone needs it, I decide right now when they have more customers than they can handle. Treat us poorly and we will not bother you again.

[Spidergawd]

I'll chime in with our experience, as we purchased our rig new in 2017 from General RV in Huntley.

We decided to get serious about purchasing in January of '17. We originally were looking used to fit our budget. We visited around 8 dealerships with nothing interesting, and then went to General.

Sales rep (he's now in the parts and service department) was pretty great. Even though it was minus eleventeen outside, he was patient and asked plenty of questions to suss out what we were looking for. At the time, used inventory was pretty low, but he stuck with us and showed us several, none of which pushed our buttons.

At some point, he asked if we were open to something new if it wasn't too far off our budget target, and we said what the heck. He led us to the Minnie Winnie we have now, and it simply clicked - we liked it better than any we'd seen so far. And honestly, after getting serious on the pricing discussion, it was only about 10% over what our used rig budget was, so we went ahead.

The closing came, and it was very similar to a car deal, with the "finance guy" pushing lots of extras, but we aren't easily swayed, so no big deal. Took a couple of hours to finalize the deal, as we expected.

PDI went quite well. The tech who gave us the walkthrough was patient and thorough, and I've never thought anything was missed. We felt confident and ready to go. It was actually quite pleasant and exciting.

Following the sale, I had two warranty issues. First one we noticed right after bringing the rig home. A loose piece of paneling on the bedroom wall. They got us in next day, and it was done the following day.

Second warranty issue was about 18 months in when we managed to fry the AC unit with poor campground power. It was covered by Coleman's warranty, and General got us in quickly with the "camping critical" repair program (I wouldn't expect that had we not bought the rig from them.) They had it fixed in around a week at no cost to us.

Rig has been pretty rock solid since then.

Overall we had quite a pleasant experience. All involved were friendly and professional, and they lived up well to their commitments. I would recommend General RV based on our experience, and would consider purchasing from them again.

As usual, YMMV, and keep in mind this was in the dead of winter pre-covid, so I'm sure things could be more challenging these days.

It's easy to see only negative stuff online - I want to bring a positive story to the table, as well.

[EcoRick]

Be glad you didn’t purchase anything from them. I purchased 2 Tiffins in one year (one a custom build) from the same sales rep. They also handled the sales paperwork for a fee on the first one I purchased which I sold direct. It was a nightmare from start to finish. Finance was horrible. To give you an idea of how great they are post sale, a shop that was installing my Blue Ox/AF1 system discovered two crimped air lines within minutes of starting work on my coach. This was one day after I took delivery. I requested a quote for this work from General RV and they stated they only had one knowledgeable tech that could do it and they were double the price. I was concerned if the coach could be driven so I called my sales rep. This was his reply:

I talked to service about this yesterday. I do not know what you should do and I don’t know if it is safe to drive. I am not sure if ——— is certified to work on Tiffin motor homes? When a non certified dealer messes with a coach, being Tiffin or anyone other manufacturer, it usually results in warranty issues. They will have to do their best to work with Tiffin to try and get those lines resolved.


Thank goodness it was a Tiffin and they bent over backwards to resolve the issue. To rub more salt in the wound, I e-mailed him twice more to ask questions that should have been resolved during my PDI. Both times he told me to call Tiffin direct. When I took my coach in for warranty work after 4 months, they punted most of the work to Tiffin and what they said they fixed, they actually made worse. I could go on and on, but my blood pressure increases every time I relive the buying experience.

The one bright spot there was the GM. Whenever I contacted him, he did whatever he could to make things right.