2018 Senecas

[MrJackSprat]

Prestige online... wonder when Jayco will release 2018 Seneca info

[Mark S]

I just picked my 2018 Seneca TS up last Thursday.

Changes are as follows:

Truman instant hot water replaces troublesome Girard
Garmin GPS infotainment
Solar ready
Slide out side walls no longer have graphics.

I think that covers it.

[Peachlander]

I'm still waiting for my 2016 which I purchased new last summer (July 2016) to be repaired to where I can use it. We documented 79 individual faults on delivery, and when it became unuseable only 11 sleeps later, we returned it to the dealership (August) as we couldn't use it. We didn't see it again (no refund, and in Canada no law to force it) until December of 2016, when the "repairs" were completed. We just picked it up from inside storage in April and the slide is still marking the floor. C'mon!!!!!! Documented 35 more issues that weren't repaired, completed, or repaired correctly last summer and fall. Sure hope the 2018 is better than the 2016's! Thanks Jayco...

[Mark S]

Man that's stinks! What kind of issues are there? What has Jayco said about this?

[Peachlander]

We have brief conversations with Jayco (Joyce Skinner) last summer. Once they offered to repair it in Indiana, if we took it there. We live in Peachland, British Columbia, Canada. Our model is a 2016 Seneca 37TS. It's almost a year now and we put 200 of the 3500 miles that are now on it. The slides (all three of them) were damaging the floor, the entrance door sill wasn't screwed to anything at all (screws pulled straight out with just fingers), batteries didn't charge with the coach or AC power (charged ONLY with the generator), low/dc light on fridge, instant hot-water incompatible with 12 volt water pump, it went on and on. Gladly send you my list of defects apparent on delivery. List of issues by email [/email]mcphail2@telus.net[/email] We offered to accept a different unit, they said "what guarantee would there be that you wouldn't have the same issues", seriously, they actually said that. The wrap under the slides is Darco Wrap, it's just lumber wrap and is easily torn. All three of the slides had faulty and damaged seals which have now been replaced but which are still not repaired to any reasonable standard. Gladly send you the photos taken only last week (May 2017). The unit has been slept in only 11 nights and it's going back to the dealer for more repairs in two weeks. As the main slide is still damaging the floor, even after the repair, we dare not use it still. We have a lawyer now. Really frustrating, I guess we are just test dummies for the manufacturers who are only complaint driven.

[chasfenwick]

Our list wasn't that long (more like 20 squawks) but we scheduled our 2017 Precept into Middlebury and were very pleased with their attitude and their efforts. They haven't fixed every little thing to our full satisfaction but they did accomplish quite a lot over the 3 days they worked on it. If you can get your coach to Middlebury I do think that there's a good chance that your faith in humanity will be restored.

[Dustdevil]

Originally Posted by Peachlander

We have brief conversations with Jayco (Joyce Skinner) last summer. Once they offered to repair it in Indiana, if we took it there. We live in Peachland, British Columbia, Canada. Our model is a 2016 Seneca 37TS. It's almost a year now and we put 200 of the 3500 miles that are now on it. The slides (all three of them) were damaging the floor, the entrance door sill wasn't screwed to anything at all (screws pulled straight out with just fingers), batteries didn't charge with the coach or AC power (charged ONLY with the generator), low/dc light on fridge, instant hot-water incompatible with 12 volt water pump, it went on and on. Gladly send you my list of defects apparent on delivery. List of issues by email [/email]mcphail2@telus.net[/email] We offered to accept a different unit, they said "what guarantee would there be that you wouldn't have the same issues", seriously, they actually said that. The wrap under the slides is Darco Wrap, it's just lumber wrap and is easily torn. All three of the slides had faulty and damaged seals which have now been replaced but which are still not repaired to any reasonable standard. Gladly send you the photos taken only last week (May 2017). The unit has been slept in only 11 nights and it's going back to the dealer for more repairs in two weeks. As the main slide is still damaging the floor, even after the repair, we dare not use it still. We have a lawyer now. Really frustrating, I guess we are just test dummies for the manufacturers who are only complaint driven.

I would have taken it to Jayco 11-1/2 months ago. The payments, non-use, and depreciation are costing you 10X what it would for the trip to Indiana.

[Peachlander]

Well, that's sure an easy suggestion, to type out.

Back to the real world though, where people have jobs, and obligations at home, and a reasonable expectation that a brand new coach would be in good working order.....

Seriously, drive a new coach 5000 miles back to the factory where they made it? On whose dime?

Indiana is all of 2500 miles one way from where we live, which is on the other end of the continent, and north.

It would seem more reasonable that Jayco would have taken some responsibility for the brand new coach they built, and made dam sure that we were immediately back on the road with a completely useable coach.

So if we has chosen to drive 5000 miles,,,, we'd eat in restaurants and showered in gas stations? Would we crawl up on the bed from the bathroom? (No fridge, no slides, batteries not charging)

Anybody else had any dealings with Jayco where the outcome was resolved with something sensible?

[RayPayne]

I would consider shipping it rather than taking it yourself. Like you I wouldn't have the time to do a 5,000 mile trip for service, even if everything was working for the whole round trip. If Don't stop pursuing other action after so much hassle. But at least there is a hope of getting things resolved. It sounds like locally your only satisfaction is going to come via a lawsuit. I realize it's an expense you shouldn't have to pay, but maybe it's worth it to be able to use your RV rather than have nothing but hassle and regret from it.

[chasfenwick]

At best a lawsuit will produce some monetary compensation, and then what do you do?

[Peachlander]

Well, thanks. All good replies, and I appreciate all the comments.

Jayco has never offered to "ship" the coach anywhere, and when we lost hope and returned it, they fell completely silent. The dealer claims that they are communicating with Jayco, but there's no indication that such is the case, or that there's any positive results. Many of the issues stem from a poor PDI by the dealer, so Jayco may not want to jump into the frying pan with them, but things like the failure of the slides and the resulting damage to the floors is something that we'd think Jayco would be keen to deal with as it's a reputation disaster.

When we returned our coach to the local dealer, and demanded and refund, they just sat on it and literally did nothing for quite awhile. We initially asked for a replacement due to the huge number of defects, and we even offered to trade "up" to a different brand at at a higher price too. The dealer wouldn't work with us and when they came up with a price difference, they were punitive.

The latest result, pending, is that the dealer offered to return our trade to us after 10 months on their lot (including the toughest winter on record for many years) give us 4% on our purchase price. The obvious problem is that our trade in became 10 years old this year (death to an RV), the tires are also 10 years old and with any unit that you trade in, you simply don't want to go backwards, that's why we all spend the big bucks for new. Recently our trade was marked on their website as sold and then when we had the lawyer go after them, it was available to us. We smelled a rat and wondered if they discovered a flaw or if something was damaged on their lot or on a test drive. Regardless, the return of our trade is a no go, not a chance of that.

Our lawyer wants either a complete payout or damages for all of the out of pocket interest, insurance, distance on the unit, time and pain in the ass that we've suffered since last July. I'm not going to bash the product here yet, that may yet come. For now I'm looking for the tunnel and hopefully a light in it.

Thanks all you fellow RV folks, you're the best, we all are.

[chasfenwick]

I would question whether your local dealer has the inhouse technical expertise to fix all those things, even with the very best of intentions.

[Peachlander]

The local dealer made MANY promises, before, during, and after the sale, with respect to their abilities to repair "everything and anything" that could possibly be amiss. The promises were made with the comment(s) from our local RV dealership salesman and also by the owner of the dealership personally, that we should "not worry about "anything that you find that is not to your satisfaction", and "we'll make it right, right here at the dealership".

That promise was made to secure the dealerships first big sale at their new branch, in the next province. With those assurances, we drove 700 km (450 miles) to pickup the brand new 2016 Seneca. We can see by the postings on this site that the 2018's are being delivered, while our 2016 sits in a constant state of repair and where it cannot be used by us.

Whether or not the promises made by the dealership were well intentioned, they were anything but true. When we reported problems to our salesman, he wanted to know what Jayco had to say, when we took it to the dealership they put us off, then they did some repairs and then said that the rest of them had to be done at their "other" dealership some 400 km (250 miles) away. The fact is that the repairs that would have made the coach useable to us were done last, late in November.

They've put mileage and wear and tear on the unit, repaired it from August of 2016 till December, and now it has to go back to the "other" dealership AGAIN to continue and repair the repairs that were not done correctly the last time.

It's all very exhausting, frustrating and stressful. You can only imagine the financial impacts, purchase price, insurance last summer, interest, reservations made and cancelled, insurance again last fall, storage over the winter, insurance again this spring, and the time and wear and tear on us over all of this.

There's just no reason that a company can't add some quality control in the manufacturing process.

Because the manufacturer is aware of all warranty claims (they pay to repair them) they can easily incorporate what they learn from the warranty issues into the build process, that is they can if they chose to. When we did talk to Jayco, they gave us "saleman talk" no promises, no compensation, no immediate solutions, no game-plan to get us back into the RV quickly, nothing, nothing.

We can see where the dealership was lacking and we're on their case now, but Jayco started the fire here with poor quality control and much less customer service than the purchaser of their "top of the line" coach would expect and deserve.

Our unit STILL has slide issues, the livingroom slide literally screams (and screeched and grinds) when you open or close the large slide and it's marking the very same flooring that was finally repaired in the fall.

Our unit still has paint issues which were done incorrectly and some of the paint damage was simply painted over. When we first took possession the tires on the passenger side had been painted by the manufacturer. When some of the paint repairs were done by the dealer at that far away "other" dealership, they painted the tires on the opposite side. Thanks.

Note that the brochure for 2016 states that the unit has Alcoe aluminum wheels. The 2015 models (the first Jayco Seneca 37TS we saw) had them, all six of them. The 2016 model comes with only 4 aluminum wheels, the inside rear wheels are steel. (Cheap?)

We have still only been able to use that brand new Seneca 37TS it for 11 nights since we bought it brand new last July. How can we use it when we can see that it's damaging the floors?

Literally every day, my wife and I ask ourselves, at what point are the poor repair(s) or endless warranty conveyor belt going to end?

Who else has gone through this and what did you do about it?

[Dustdevil]

Originally Posted by Peachlander

Well, that's sure an easy suggestion, to type out.

Back to the real world though, where people have jobs, and obligations at home, and a reasonable expectation that a brand new coach would be in good working order.....

Seriously, drive a new coach 5000 miles back to the factory where they made it? On whose dime?

Indiana is all of 2500 miles one way from where we live, which is on the other end of the continent, and north.

It would seem more reasonable that Jayco would have taken some responsibility for the brand new coach they built, and made dam sure that we were immediately back on the road with a completely useable coach.

So if we has chosen to drive 5000 miles,,,, we'd eat in restaurants and showered in gas stations? Would we crawl up on the bed from the bathroom? (No fridge, no slides, batteries not charging)

Anybody else had any dealings with Jayco where the outcome was resolved with something sensible?

Well, OK. Fair enough. But you are really leaving me wondering why you simply returned it to the same dealer who didn't/couldn't fix it in the first place, and two phone calls later with Jayco, just threw up your hands and dropped the whole thing. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Dustdevil]

OK, Sorry. I missed your last post. Sounds like you were a bit more involved than the earlier posts indicated. Also sounds like your dealer did no PDI at all, just unwrapped the thing and handed you the keys. Dealers are responsible for catching issues and fixing them before the unit is sold. Yours seems to have some pretty serious ones, and I think I would have pushed for Jayco to pay for one -way transport of your unit if you couldn't take it yourself. In the meantime, you're out thousands of dollars for a motorhome you don't have the use of...

[Dustdevil]

Once the lawyers are involved, don't expect a single minute of additional work to be done on the unit. Their lawyers won't likely allow anyone to touch it until the case is settled.

[Peachlander]

Originally Posted by Dustdevil

Well, OK. Fair enough. But you are really leaving me wondering why you simply returned it to the same dealer who didn't/couldn't fix it in the first place, and two phone calls later with Jayco, just threw up your hands and dropped the whole thing. Maybe I'm missing something.

Good question, and a fair one.

We returned it to the dealer we bought it from for the obvious reason, who else could we return it too? They started the repairs and then buggered them up, who else is going to make THAT right, not their competition, not a dealer that doesn't even sell Jayco. No one else has any responsibility to us to make anything right.

As for Jayco, they literally promised us nothing. When we asked for a replacement coach, Joyce Skinner said to us that there was no guarantee that a new coach wouldn't have the same issues. Really? Really? What??

So far as we can tell, they didn't support the dealer for the poor PDI, and although under any other circumstances or time delay, some of or many of those PDI issues would be warranty, and not PDI, we have never been contacted by Jayco again.

We threw up our hands and returned the RV when it could not be used as an RV. We really gave up when the dealer told us in writing that our problems could all be repaired in only four days, which turned out to be four + months.

Not sure what you mean about "dropped the whole thing". We tried to return the unit, whether or not the law will permit a recission order (return) in British Columbia, Canada or not will be determined soon. We're not going to take back our now ten year old trade-in though. We traded it in when it was nine years old for the monetary value that it had at the time. Taking the trade-in back now would just compound our injury, and there's no guarantee that some kind of damage hasn't occurred in the 10 months that they had it on the lot. We have done anything BUT dropped the whole thing, we are still looking for resolution, a $250,000.00 (Canadian funds) problem that seems to never end.

We are truly on the warranty conveyor nightmare that we were afraid of and was the reason that we asked for a coach without all the issues.

Did I mention that after we brought the unit back from repairs in late December and stored it indoors, we brought it home in late April. We put out the slides to check it out since we "got it back" literally as the snow flew. We gave it a wash and were mortified to see how poor the paint repairs were, not complete, shoddy, and they painted over existing damage. We were more upset that the large slide sounded like it was self-destructing and grinding, but when we saw marks on the "new" floor that they had just repaired, we just lost it.

You know, it's really sad, the unit is beautiful, but it's poorly built. When we first took it to a KOA in BC the door frame would move nearly 2 inches. The sill on the entrance door wasn't screwed to anything, there were screws, but you could pull them straight out with just your fingers, they didn't catch on anything at all.

Long answer, but then we've had long sleepless nights.......

[Peachlander]

You've got that exactly right. The dealership we bought it from, just washed it, put Diamond Cote over all the existing paint damage and sent us on our way home.

We were 700 km (450 miles) from home and enroute the passenger seat latch let go, it didn't latch at all and slammed when I hit the brakes on a downhill, and scared the hell out of my wife and me too. It got worse when the drivers airseat wouldn't re-inflate when my wife let the air suspension down.

We discovered later that the dinette seat that has seatbelts had only half the screws actually installed, the bulk of them were only finger tight and almost completely unscrewed. Whether that was from the trip from Indiana to Alberta Canada is anyones guess, but you'd think that the dealer would catch stuff like that prior to delivery to the customer. This is after-all the flagship of the Jayco line, right?

[Peachlander]

That may be true, but it's scheduled for more repairs this month. They need to repair the repairs, and with paint issues included, there are another 35 issues yet to be dealt with. They supply there man to drive the unit, but put 700 km (450 miles) EACH time that they take it to their "other" dealership to continue/finish the repair process. Endless warranty nightmare.

[Peachlander]

The fella that we deal with in the service department is a good guy, he's stuck with us, nice to deal with and we're extremely cordial to him too, he's the only one that's moving this forward.

On the other hand, as you point out, we're now looking at what we told the dealer we were afraid of in the first place............ endless repairs, damage done during repairs, repairs on the repairs, time delays, costs, stress, loss of enjoyment of not only the unit, but our lives too.