Service Departments

[travelingjw]

X2 on Murff's comments. The service department at our dealer has always been excellent. When Jayco rejected a warranty claim, the Manager of the service department contacted Jayco and fought for us. In addition, every repair made under warranty was made on time. We have had the same experience for non-warranty repairs. This dealer assigns a Service Writer to each customer; ours has been awesome. There are some good departments!

[OnTheGo]

Originally Posted by Murff

This thread has a lot of reason to dislike dealer service departments, sadly.

In the 7 years we gave owned our White Hawk, the service department has done an incredible job of doing excellent work.


My point, there are good quality service departments out there that will take care of customers.

Murff

That's also well said, Murff,

There are good dealerships out there.

The dealer we had in Cincinnati before retiring to Florida was great - but they were family owned at the time. Now, they are part of a chain. It makes a difference. The family cared, the chain doesn't.

It comes down to this thread being about the numbers of good and bad dealerships. I think the trend is away from good service.

We have seen it across the board, not just in the RV indistry. Many companies gets so big they lose focus on the customer and after that it's all glowing language and no real support.

[Onyrlef]

Originally Posted by Murff

This thread has a lot of reason to dislike dealer service departments, sadly.



My point, there are good quality service departments out there that will take care of customers.

Murff

The diificult thing for most however is sorting out which are good and which are bad. Online reviews are largely unreliable. The best avenue is word of mouth, as in, I'm confident now that were I living in Wash. State I'd definitely take my business to the place Murff described. I'd, matter of fact, go hundreds of miles out of my way to buy from a dealer I can trust. Unfortunately most prospective buyers come to the forums after, not before.

[nfisherman]

I traveled a very long way to buy my new Jayco. I had nothing against the local dealers. They just didn’t have the trailer I wanted. I had a small warranty issue and returning to the selling dealer wasn’t an option because of distance. None of the local dealers would help because I didn’t buy from them. I’m surprised Jayco let’s their dealers get away with that but that’s life. Later, I got an email from a local Jayco dealer. He got a lead from Jayco because I downloaded a manual from Jayco. He wanted to sell me accessories and supplies. Fat chance! If he won’t help with warranty service, he gets no business from me.

[Suprnova74]

Originally Posted by nfisherman

I had a small warranty issue and returning to the selling dealer wasn’t an option because of distance. None of the local dealers would help because I didn’t buy from them. I’m surprised Jayco let’s their dealers get away with that but that’s life.

Interesting, I have as yet to look into other dealerships. I assumed (and you know what they say when you assume) that any dealer of a specific brand would take warranty calls. I wonder if that's something Jayco would "reprimand" if there is such a thing. It definitely hurts the Jayco brand in my opinion if dealers of that brand won't service it. What if I'm traveling and need service? "Sorry, you need to take it to where you bought it"

[nfisherman]

It’s apparently common practice with other companies besides Jayco to only get warranty service from the selling dealers. My selling dealer told me that I could get warranty service from any Jayco dealer which is flatly untrue. I understand the dealer’s perspective. He doesn’t make much on warranty work so he will focus on the campers he sells. Fair enough. From my perspective, he won’t support my warranty so I’m free to order my accessories from Amazon.

[Onyrlef]

Originally Posted by Suprnova74

Interesting, I have as yet to look into other dealerships. I assumed (and you know what they say when you assume) that any dealer of a specific brand would take warranty calls. I wonder if that's something Jayco would "reprimand" if there is such a thing. It definitely hurts the Jayco brand in my opinion if dealers of that brand won't service it. What if I'm traveling and need service? "Sorry, you need to take it to where you bought it"

Their predictament is largely a lack of qualified technicians. Put yourself in their place, if you can only service x number of RV's and you're straining to service those who bought at your dealership are you going to tell your customer they'll have to wait while you take care of a problem which is really the respondibility of the dealership which sold that unit? There's money in service, no dealer is going to turn down the oppurtunity to make money unless they haven't a choice.

[robkelly]

Originally Posted by Suprnova74

Interesting, I have as yet to look into other dealerships. I assumed (and you know what they say when you assume) that any dealer of a specific brand would take warranty calls. I wonder if that's something Jayco would "reprimand" if there is such a thing. It definitely hurts the Jayco brand in my opinion if dealers of that brand won't service it. What if I'm traveling and need service? "Sorry, you need to take it to where you bought it"

I think it depends on the dealer. The dealer we bought our units from had gone out of business by the time we needed the propane regulator replaced. We called the next closest dealer and their service department was more than accommodating, not only for the warranty repair but also for some other work that we wanted to have done.

We are comfortable with this dealership and are working with them to potentially trade our Pinnacle for something smaller. We LOVE the Pinnacle but our lifestyle is changing and we're finding that it's just too big.

[nfisherman]

It does vary by dealer but it must be a pretty common issue. There are three Jayco dealers listed on the Jayco web site for the St. Louis area. I called all of them plus two more about 100 miles away. None of them would do warranty work if they didn’t sell the camper.

I honestly do understand. They don’t owe me anything but it’s a two way street. I’ll do what I can to avoid doing business with them for non warranty work.