Saturday, April 12, 2008

Coach Care - LESS, a.k.a. The Unforgiven

Well, Coach Care-less has really dropped the ball and we are mad. We left our camp in central Indiana a day early (no refund, of course) to make it to Elkhart and Coach Care-less for a Thursday 8 a.m. appointment. We had it there parked in front of their service door on Wednesday night. What a day!

The next day Terry went over at 8 a.m. and made sure they knew what the problem was. They called around 11 a.m. to tell us that the jack in question was shot and would require replacing @ $900+. !!! Now we knew it was expensive, but we have had one replaced before under warranty and knew that their price was a bit more expensive. So Terry called Tiffin and they told him retail was just over $600. ??? AND if it is done at the plant at Red Bay they do it at dealer cost which is $400+. Well, obviously, we don't want to make a run to Red Bay just now. Terry decided to ask Coach Care-less to verify the price when they called to tell us it was done. Hah. They called back at 3:30 p.m. to tell us that they couldn't get a jack! They are built right there in Elkhart, but Atwood is "moving their plant" and wouldn't be able to assemble one until maybe sometime Monday. What? Terry said, "Forget it. I've got to be in Virginia for GRANDSON EXTRAORDINNAIRE'S birthday and I can't wait. So then he asked them what we owed for removing the jack, and the guy said . . . "Oh, nothing. It only took 10 minutes." Grrrrrrr. Terry was smokin'. Yep. If they had done their job after getting our coach in for an 8 a.m. appointment, Tiffin would have overnighted a part to Ekhart and we would have it installed. But they waited until 3:30 p.m. to tell us and by that time Red Bay was shut down for the day.

Since then we have found out a couple things. The warning buzzer on the jacks works really well. If the jack is not working, it sounds and disables ALL the jacks. If you remove the jack, it still works because it thinks it's not doing what it's supposed to and the air dumps and all the jacks rachet because it thinks they need pulled up. Grrrrrr. We got the buzzers off and aired up and went to camp Pull-Tab. Once there, Tab and Terry worked on it. Found out you cannot use ANY jacks if one is malfunctioning. Still nothing concrete, so Terry got on the Tiffin owners' forum and there someone posted a solution. Once they got the jacks disabled, he had to jump the control for the air dump and got the coach aired up. So now we are on our way. We have no levelers, so we have to find a really level site, but we are at least on track now for Ronan's birthday.

Thanks for nothing Coach Care-less.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Till next time. . .

Dale

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

my jack was over $700 and that was not installed.

Richard