Hey man! I just bought a used travel trailer. I pick it up in a week and a half. We still have to sit down with the sales guy for the final extended warranty pitch. Two questions:
Are the extended warranties offered by the dealership worth it? I would assume anything major that goes wrong will happen on the road and i’ll be stuck getting repairs done in Iowa or some shit.
Do you have any experience with harvest hosts? Is it easy to use and worth the cost? Hows the host availability.
I got a 21ft geo pro. Probably too big for a lot of boondocking, but i still plan to boondock it as much as possible. I dont love the idea of always being at KOAs and such.
Are the extended warranties offered by the dealership worth it?
Not in my opinion but it depends how you’ll be using the trailer. The thing people don’t expect is that warranty work gets last priority. When you bring in the trailer for warranty work, there is no new revenue for the dealership. So the trailer will just sit there on the lot, possibly for months, waiting until the repair guys have literally nothing else to do, before they will actually start work on it.
This is super unprofessional but seems to be the industry norm.
If you’re only going to use the trailer a couple times a year maybe this is fine, but if you use it a lot and you need to be back on the road fast then it makes the warranty basically unusable.
Plus also what you said, unless you bought from a national dealer the warranty will not help you with emergency roadside stuff. But mostly when things break it won’t stop you from towing the trailer — you would just finish your vacation with no refrigerator or whatever which is annoying but not fatal.
I live in mine full-time. When things break that I can’t fix myself my first choice is a mobile tech so I don’t have to get a hotel while they fix it.
Do you have any experience with harvest hosts?
No, I haven’t tried it. Some people seem to like it a lot, other people complain. 🤷
I got a 21ft geo pro. Probably too big for a lot of boondocking, but i still plan to boondock it as much as possible. I dont love the idea of always being at KOAs and such.
21’ is not too big for boondocking. The thing about boondocking is you have to somehow know where to find a good spot. iOverlander website is good for that. Out west, especially in the desert, there are lots of places on public land where there is a usable gravel road with big cleared sites that anyone can get to in any size RV. Other places where it rains more, not so much — tight twisty potholed dirt roads through the forest with little carve-out spots between trees are not good for big setups. Regional parks, state parks, natural forest parks, and national parks are often pretty awesome. There’s also a lot of RV parks out in the middle of nowhere that can be super nice and park-y — shout out to La Conner thousand trails in WA, Pacific City thousand trails in OR, “The Narrows” in Maine — but very hit or miss; some are just a parking lot, too. KOA is convenient and consistent but expensive. We use them when they’re the closest campground to someplace we want to be visiting (just got out of three days at KOA near my sister in law) but yeah if you like boondocking then KOA will not be a fun destination for you.
Good luck, have fun, don’t cheap out on the hose you use for dumping your black tank.
Hey man! I just bought a used travel trailer. I pick it up in a week and a half. We still have to sit down with the sales guy for the final extended warranty pitch. Two questions:
Are the extended warranties offered by the dealership worth it? I would assume anything major that goes wrong will happen on the road and i’ll be stuck getting repairs done in Iowa or some shit.
Do you have any experience with harvest hosts? Is it easy to use and worth the cost? Hows the host availability.
I got a 21ft geo pro. Probably too big for a lot of boondocking, but i still plan to boondock it as much as possible. I dont love the idea of always being at KOAs and such.
Not in my opinion but it depends how you’ll be using the trailer. The thing people don’t expect is that warranty work gets last priority. When you bring in the trailer for warranty work, there is no new revenue for the dealership. So the trailer will just sit there on the lot, possibly for months, waiting until the repair guys have literally nothing else to do, before they will actually start work on it.
This is super unprofessional but seems to be the industry norm.
If you’re only going to use the trailer a couple times a year maybe this is fine, but if you use it a lot and you need to be back on the road fast then it makes the warranty basically unusable.
Plus also what you said, unless you bought from a national dealer the warranty will not help you with emergency roadside stuff. But mostly when things break it won’t stop you from towing the trailer — you would just finish your vacation with no refrigerator or whatever which is annoying but not fatal.
I live in mine full-time. When things break that I can’t fix myself my first choice is a mobile tech so I don’t have to get a hotel while they fix it.
No, I haven’t tried it. Some people seem to like it a lot, other people complain. 🤷
21’ is not too big for boondocking. The thing about boondocking is you have to somehow know where to find a good spot. iOverlander website is good for that. Out west, especially in the desert, there are lots of places on public land where there is a usable gravel road with big cleared sites that anyone can get to in any size RV. Other places where it rains more, not so much — tight twisty potholed dirt roads through the forest with little carve-out spots between trees are not good for big setups. Regional parks, state parks, natural forest parks, and national parks are often pretty awesome. There’s also a lot of RV parks out in the middle of nowhere that can be super nice and park-y — shout out to La Conner thousand trails in WA, Pacific City thousand trails in OR, “The Narrows” in Maine — but very hit or miss; some are just a parking lot, too. KOA is convenient and consistent but expensive. We use them when they’re the closest campground to someplace we want to be visiting (just got out of three days at KOA near my sister in law) but yeah if you like boondocking then KOA will not be a fun destination for you.
Good luck, have fun, don’t cheap out on the hose you use for dumping your black tank.
Thanks a bunch for the words of wisdom.
In terms of not having niche communities on Lemmy, I think it’s the Field of Dreams situation – but im generally too lazy to build it.