Fees to be Aware of During RV Shopping

Hi! This is Josh with Mid-America RV and I wanted to talk to you about some of the fees that you typically see when you’re shopping for an RV

Frankly, you don’t even necessarily see these fees when you’re shopping for an RV. It’s when you’re actually making the purchase that sometimes they’re brought about. Now, we have a lot of customers that like doing business here because in the 10 years that I’ve been here we’ve had zero fees. What does that mean? Okay, so you come in. You shop with one of our guys. You pick out what’s the perfect RV for you. We sit down and we go over all the details as far as pricing. Everything that we go over on the pricing is actually included in the price.

Now that sounds weird but what i’m trying to say is we don’t tack something on just because we’re going to prep the trailer. We don’t add something to it because we have to do paperwork. We don’t add something to it for freight charges. We don’t add something to it for things like, well like our Lifetime Warranty coverage. So, whatever price that you agree to purchase, say this trailer here from us, there’s not one penny in additional fees.

Now, what we’re finding is becoming more and more common place is for people to get it priced, negotiated, sometimes in person but a lot of times over the internet, over the phone, things like that, and then when you actually come in to put the pencil to paper and really go through the purchase process itself—that’s when they’re gonna start to disclose these fees. There’s some that are charging $16,000 to prep the trailer. That’s already included with our pricing. So, any of our discounted pricing that you see advertised—that’s all included. We’re doing things like a pre-delivery inspection, where we go through and we test all the systems. You know, we’ll do an LP leak down test and then we’re going to make sure that this stove works. We’re going to run this refrigerator to make sure that it’s holding temp properly. We’re going to pressure test the plumbing to make sure that there’s no leaks that you’re going to discover when you take it out and go camping for the first time. We’re basically going to use the camper as if we’re camping in it with the exception that we don’t use the toilet, we don’t use a shower. We make sure they work and they don’t leak but everything else we’re just testing the systems and kind of run them through their paces.

The reason we do that is to make sure that when you take it out for the first time you have as few issues as possible. It’s never going to be perfect. These things all have a little bit of a shakedown period where you’ve got to kind of take it down the road and work some things loose and we’ll get you right back in for service so that way we can address those items. And a lot of them are going to be little little cosmetic things most of the time but sometimes it’ll be functional things. We want to make sure that we’re taking care of that up front and that we’re not charging you extra money for it. Another thing would be an administrative fee. So a paperwork fee basically to come in and do business with us. Well, the way we look at it is, you can’t purchase a camper from us without us doing the paperwork so why should we be charging you to do something that we can’t do without it anyway? So, those aren’t going to be charged. The freight to get it from Indiana to here is already included in all of our pricing so it’s not something that we’re going to be sitting here trying to lure you in with a lower number and then stacking on fee, after fee, after fee, after fee.

And of course the biggest one is our lifetime warranty coverage. You’re going to get RV Warranty Forever which covers things like suspension components, your plumbing system, air conditioner, kitchen appliances like your refrigerator. Those are covered for the lifetime that you own the trailer. When you buy it from us we don’t charge you for the coverage and we don’t charge you for the annual inspection when you bring it back for the first time. So there’s not only no fees but we’re doing more a year later to help you out and make sure that you have as much money for camping as possible. So, keep in mind, when you’re shopping ask about the fees early. We know that not everybody’s going to buy from us and that’s fine. However, know that when you do buy here, no surprise fees. No nickel and dimes, pennies, anything and definitely not thousands of dollars on top of the price that you’ve already agreed to. So get online, look at our stuff on midamericarv.com, come out here to the store and shop, talk to our guys, but know that whatever price that we give you is the price you’re gonna pay to walk out that day with that trailer.

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