Stay away from RV City in Benton AR

[east lake hunter]

Due to a serious lack of customer service, this is one dealership to avoid. I purchased my new pup from them in August of 07 and since then it has spent almost four months back at their shop for repairs and warranty work and it looks like they may have it for another month. They don't care and neither does Flagstaff / Forest River.


"Don't let friends buy a Flagstaff and Don't let them buy from RV City in Benton, AR"

[ScouterMom]

that sucks!

I'd be awfully frustrated, too - esp as being south, you could be out enjoying your camper -  last fall or this spring at least.

One thing about buying OLD campers - all the bugs are worked out of them, there's no warranty left anyway, so when you buy something with a problem, you figure from the start you're either going to live with it as is, or fix it yourself.

Those new campers at the RV  shows look (and smell! ) awfully nice - but the price tags and warranty issues make me glad I bought used.

laura

[east lake hunter]

I bought new thinking it would be nice to have the warranty, and warranty service sucks.

I guess if I had bought a $100k + land yacht, they would jumping through their butts to fix my problems.    However, I bought the lil' ole pup, so I don't rank real high on thier priority list.

Well, we'll see.   I will get the service that everyone should expect or I will tell anyone that will listen not to buy from them.

I previously had a problem with a local car dealer that never got resolved to my satisfaction.   To date, I have cost them at least 5 new car sales, and I may have cost them more I just don't know for sure.   It would have been cheaper on them to make me happy.

I find it amusing that when you call RV City and they put you on hold the recording that you listen to talks about their great service.  Well that's just BS.

[Mike Up]

Due to a serious lack of customer service, this is one dealership to avoid. I purchased my new pup from them in August of 07 and since then it has spent almost four months back at their shop for repairs and warranty work and it looks like they may have it for another month. They don't care and neither does Flagstaff / Forest River.
 
 
"Don't let friends buy a Flagstaff and Don't let them buy from RV City in Benton, AR"

That's why I recommend to stay away from Forest River. These campers have problems as my last did. The way Forest River does the warranty is that the dealer must keep the unit until all warranty work is done. This resulted in them having my Rockwood PUP over 4 months in the first and only year I owned it. Most warranty parts take forever for FR to send them to the dealer so the dealer then has to hold your unit hostage until it's completely done.
 
I've had my Rockwood repaired at 2 different dealerships and this is what happened at both. With the Starcraft, I could use my camper until the warranty part came in, not so with the Rockwood. I was told they had to keep it until it was done with Forest River.
 
After the first and only year of not be able to use my camper (while still making payments!) while the dealers waited for parts due to defective build quality and inferior parts, I finally traded up to a Starcraft. Am really satisfied as I've never had to go through the same insanity as I did with the Forest River.
 
Good luck, I'm hoping the best for you.
 
Have a good one.

[sacrawf]

I've had my Rockwood repaired at 2 different dealerships and this is what happened at both. With the Starcraft, I could use my camper until the warranty part came in, not so with the Rockwood. I was told they had to keep it until it was done with Forest River.

I'm sorry you had this experience.  I have been very pleased with Rockwood/Forest River and my dealer, Tom Raper RV.  I haven't had many warranty issues, but when I did, I was just able to email the dealer a photo of the problem, and they sent me the necessary parts by UPS to make the repair.  Great service!

[AzRon]

Have you contacted the Service manager or General manager/Owner?
I'm not saying that it will help, but it might make the right person aware and could change things.

I'm new to pups but have found out that RV dealers cater to the larger RVs when looking for parts, i know you can find things online, but i am old fashioned as i like to hold/feel/measure(eyeball) things *sigh*

You might want to call/write Forest River owner/president and let them know about your problem/s    AzRon

[campdaddy]

I'm sorry you had this experience.  I have been very pleased with Rockwood/Forest River and my dealer, Tom Raper RV.  I haven't had many warranty issues, but when I did, I was just able to email the dealer a photo of the problem, and they sent me the necessary parts by UPS to make the repair.  Great service!

We too, bought our Rookwood from Tom Raper and we did have some negative experiences with warranty service at first. But in all fairness, that was a few years ago, and they were going through service manager changes at the time. They did finally make good on it, however. Overall, I'm happy with the camper and still mixed on Tom Raper's service.

[Used 2B PopUPTimes]

Contact Forest River's customer Service - 574-642-2611
They've been responsive to other dealer / maintenance issues.

[jeezy]

Don't get me started on Tom Raper.  And don't ever get started with Tom Raper.  

Maybe if we had bought an imperial cruiser they would have paid more attention to our issues.  It was like we get getting handed off further and further down the ladder until we finally reached the guy lowly enough to deal with our little pop-up problem.

[campdaddy]

Contact Forest River's customer Service - 574-642-2611
They've been responsive to other dealer / maintenance issues.

Thanks for the phone number. I'll write it down and keep it for future use. It could be handy.

jeezy......not to get you started or anything but I'm curious, was your experience with TR recent or not? The reason I ask is that when I had all my trouble with them , it was I'm thinking like 3 years ago, they frustrated the heck out of me for months. But then they got a new service manager and he did go out of his way to make it right; but maybe that was because I threatened to plaster Tom Rapers name all over the Internet if they didn't.

[jeezy]

Yes.  It was this past fall.  And the service manager was one of the guys who kept trying to pass off my calls.

['tiredTeacher]

Those new campers at the RV  shows look (and smell! ) awfully nice
laura

Yes, it's too bad that nice smell is loaded with toxic chemicals (e.g. formaldehyde). My wife came down with a severe headache after 2 hours of RV viewing at the last show.
Another reason to consider when buying used.

[cyclone]

My experience with Flagstaff has been good - we bought it used but it was only a year old.  Maybe the "bugs" had already been worked out, but we have had almost no problems with it.  The hinge of the storage trunk lid broke, so we did have to replace the whole lid, but any other issues have been a result of user error (aka sput).  

And, the dealer only had the camper for about 10 days to make that repair, install a Carefree awning, and replace the stabilizer (the sput).  And, this wasn't the dealer that originally sold the pup to it's first owner or the one we bought it from.  I would definitely return to Family Campers in Lebanon, TN again.