Worst. Decision. Ever.

Lemon-Aid. If you google “RV lemons” you will come across millions of results — many of them pointing to legal firms that specialize in RV lemon laws. One person that follows this blog made this observation:

I’ve been reading about your coach trials and tribulations.  I am quite shocked at some of the issues you have had, and others with such an expensive vehicle.

These are all of the issues that we have encountered with our coach since we took delivery in June of 2016.

Within the one-year warranty period:

• Kitchen Sink Leak (minor/resolved)
• Loose Fabric Trim (minor/resolved)
• Cracked Floor Tile (minor/cracked floor tile replaced)
• MCD Day/Night Shades fail to operate (minor but this issue took almost three years to resolve — finally resolved by a subsequent recall)
• Winegard Rayzar Digital TV Antenna bad motor (minor/antenna replaced)
• Sofa Bed Latch broken (minor/resolved)
• Passenger Side Basement Door out of alignment: (minor/resolved)
• Front Wheel Vibration at highway speed (minor/unresolved)
• Driver Side Fuel Cover missing clearcoat (minor/resolved)
• Engine fault light triggered by outdated engine firmware (major as it would halt the engine/resolved)
• Driver side tire bulge (major as it was a safety hazard/tire replaced although it took 6 months for Michelin to honour the warranty)

After the one-year warranty period:

• 467 RSB – Recall 16V 826: Power Steering Fluid Leak (major as this was a potential fire hazard/resolved)
• 472 TSB – Slideout Motor Mounting Bolts under-torqued. (major as this could result in significant damage to slideouts/resolved)
• Side radiator lower grill almost disconnected from body of coach (minor/resolved)
• Oasis hot water heater pump failure (annoying as all three of the original pumps failed due to a defective pump design/almost resolved as I need to replace one more pump)
• Full wall slideout uneven — literally rises up a quarter inch or so after slides are deployed (annoying but mostly resolved)
• Levelling jack leaking hydraulic fluid (minor/resolved)
• 483 RSB – Recall 17V 420: Driver Passenger Shade (minor/resolved)
• 486 TSB – MCD Remote Shade Motor Replacement (minor and finally resolved after almost three years of constant reprogramming)
• 488 RSB – Recall 17V 497: Battery Cable May Rub Against Frame (major as it was another potential fire hazard/resolved)
• 493 PIB – Freightliner Lightbar: instrument panel odometer value may reset and not match the engine ECU odometer value (minor as it did not reset/resolved)
• Winegard Satellite Dish motor failure (annoying as it was a lot of work to replace the roof-mounted satellite/resolved)
• Random Deployment of Girard Awnings (major hazard and we were stranded for six weeks to get this one resolved although it took another 8 months before the issue was properly resolved at the factory)
• Various cabinet latches broken (minor/resolved)
• Various cabinet struts broken (minor/resolved)
• Front passenger door out of alignment (annoying/unresolved)
• Magnum Inverter AC Overload failure (minor/resolved)
• Loose body panel screws (yes, the body panels can come loose/resolved)

Believe it or not, we consider ourselves very fortunate. Overall the coach has been fine and the above list of issues is not particularly unusual for a motorcoach.

Florida has a lemon law. Any vehicle, including RVs, that is leased or purchased with nonconformity issues that the dealer or manufacturer has not – after a reasonable number of attempts at repair – been able to fix can be considered a lemon. Nonconformity must be a condition or defect by which the vehicle’s use is substantially impaired. If at least three unsuccessful attempts were made by the manufacturer or authorized service center to fix a warranty covered problem, these are looked upon by Florida law as the above-stated “reasonable number of attempts at repair”. A 60-day out of service for an RV makes it a lemon. The manufacturer will have to either refund the full purchase price or replace your vehicle if it is deemed a lemon.

In Canada we have no lemon laws. So much for consumer protection in our home and native land. Thankfully, we do not have a lemon. We do run into people that simply cannot cope with any issue in their motorcoach. Most often, the issues they describe fall into the minor category. They do not own a lemon.

Not so for this family. They have yet to get their lemon issue resolved. For them, buying a new Class A motorcoach was the worst decision ever. You can skip to about 9:50 into the video to see the process they followed to pick out a coach and then the hammer falls at 11:50 into the video. How could something like this happen? Why didn’t the manufacturer replace the vehicle?