Our First Trip in our one week old Sportsmobile!
We have the dream rig and we have 3 days! The plan was to take it easy and break in the van, put in a lot of miles, and see some beautiful Eastern Sierra fall scenery. We would learn how everything works before we take off in about a month for 2 weeks exploring the Southwest. We had several possible “dispersed” camping sites picked out, some established remote sites on well graded roads (so they say…). Sites from Mono Lake to just north of Mammoth Lakes to our favored sites near Bishop in Buttermilk Country and the last day at the Alabama Hills. The “Frugal Shunpiker” guides even provided GPS coordinates. We would make the usual stops at Whoa Nelly Deli in Lee Vining, Schat’s Bakery in Bishop, and burgers, pie and milkshakes at the Mt. Whitney Café in Lone Pine. We were set and very excited.
We had three days to luxuriate in the Sportsmobile splendor.
Well, not really.
As I posted earlier from the beautiful new rest stop at Glacier Meadows on Hwy 80 just before Truckee (okay, closer to Donner) we had a problem. We were probably at 5,000 feet and my wife noticed that either the dogs just peed in our new motorhome or something was wrong. I would pee in the thing before the dogs so I knew we might have a problem. Water had started to soak through the carpet and drip out of the heater onto the vent below. I couldn’t believe that water was coming out of the heater. I pulled out the drawer above but there was a panel closing off the heater area. I tried to remove the face panel at the heater but someone had glued those plastic screw covers into the screws. I only had basic tools so there was no way I was going to be able to remove them. So I removed the grill on the heater and there was water running out of it! How could that be? The heater is next to the shower and shares the cabinet space with the shower plumbing but it appeared that the heater should be above anything that might leak. What was going on? The air intake grill below was pretty much completely blocked by the heater pedestal so I couldn’t see a thing, just water dripping out. I went to the shower and drained the line to the shower wand and checked the faucets but they were closed and since I never turned on the pump there was no water pressure. So I buttoned everything back up. All in all about an hour wasted since I also had to remove the drawers and clean up. We put a dry towel in there and hoped that this was just an issue with altitude and it was over for now. We go about another 50 miles and the towel is soaked again. This time so much water had come out that it floated out the sawdust from under the shower too. Thank God it didn’t go into the ottoman well next to the shower since that is where all of the electrical stuff is mounted (inverter, etc…).
You can see that the towel has a line and that is the sawdust that floated out from under the cabinet/shower stall.
So there is water soaking into the plywood and under the shower stall and cabinet and they are not where there is good air circulation (none actually) and there is rain forecast for next week in the SF Bay area so I don’t think anything is going to be drying out soon. Will the plywood soak up the water and swell or will mold develop? What is going on?
What do you do when you get a bunch of water coming out of your heater and the pump isn’t even on? Turn on the pump and hope that it holds and doesn’t flood the electrics? Can’t take a shower, can’t cook and clean up, can’t… anything. So you don’t rely on the rig anymore.
So here we are in our +$100,000 Sportsmobile on our first trip and this is a picture of us enjoying it.
It’s really kind of tough to find rooms in the “fall color” time of year in the Eastern Sierras. Add in that Bishop is having a car show and there are no rooms from Bishop to Mammoth Lakes, especially if you call at 3:00 and you have 2 dogs. So we stop in Minden, NV, and stay at a Quality Inn since they have rooms and will take dogs. It’s right across the street from the Minden/Gardnerville waste treatment plant, right out our window as a matter of fact. If you know what a cattle stockyard smells like then this is close. This is what I did on the first trip in my new $100,000 dripping limousine. There are no chairs under the awning, no sky full of stars, or the bottle of wine with left over pizza. I looked at and smelled a sewage treatment plant, or?
I thought that yesterday I would have found the last issue when I discovered the patched holes in the dash and the black paint flaking off in sheets. How am I supposed to feel as a customer? My wife now says she just hates this thing. It represents so much that could have been a dream fulfilled and it has gone about 180 degrees from expectation. Now this is a lady who is a senior vice president at a bank that is the darling of Wall Street and is a regular speaker at financial institution conferences on sales and customer service. Her evaluation of this situation is not very positive. I am chair of a couple of board of director’s for non-profit organizations promoting wine tourism and a linear park through our downtown and a sitting City planning commissioner. Why do I tell you all this? Because we thought we had seen everything and understood why things happen and know how we might be able to avoid a situation like this. I probably come across rather bombastic and a know it all but this is what I know. Ask me about electrical calcs and I’m lost. We are so far from understanding how SMB could treat a person like we have been that we are lost. I am literally dumbfounded and wonder if we can recover from all of these mistakes.
I live 2 ½ hours from SMB. It costs me about $70 in fuel each visit and it writes off an entire day. I went to SMB regularly and still had the struggles that I wrote about. But I am not giving up! They owe me all of the fixes and they have to be done right! They are supposed to fix everything that they knew about last week in one day, the 11th of October. They have to get it all done because I cannot get back there before my vacation and now there is this leak. I want to be there when they open her up and check the plumbing. I want to know what it is that went wrong for myself because the trust is taking a serious hit. I had asked for an extended warranty when they did the rebuild because things just don’t seem to go back together as well the 2nd time in my experience. They denied it and I don’t know why, it wouldn’t cost them a thing if it was not used. Easy customer satisfaction with no costs involved, I just don’t get it. I hope this leak isn’t the result of a reused line that split or was crushed – after I was told that everything would be new.
This business is very personal to the Felds. It is more than a business, it is their life. I am not trying to tear down their house, just the opposite. This is why I did not post for about 2 weeks, so I could justify in my own mind that I could skip the events that happened. I just can’t hold back all of the stuff that happened anymore because it just isn’t right to do so. I know that they were getting upset but no one could tell me why, they just didn’t like that I was “not happy”. I am not sure how that works, I have a list of goofs a mile long and they tell me that I am lucky because Jonathan pushed so hard to get the repairs done so completely. I don’t know where I went wrong in all of this. I can’t take all responsibility even if I tried. I don’t run their shop. I tried to help but maybe I was just too overbearing. I don’t know. Can you feel the frustration?
For those of you who are or are about to PM me please just post your messages here. At this point SMB cannot deny that this thread has legs. You all are reading this thread and it is in their best interest to have it end and end well but I can’t seem to get comfortable, there is just always something else. Where will it end?
I feel so bad because my wife is so disappointed, I am too, but I believe we can get this fixed, she’s not so sure.
This is supposed to be fun right? When does the fun part start?
My God, how did we come to this?
Thanks.
Chumley
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