There’s an old joke that the two happiest days in a - boogerbawb
There’s an old joke that the two happiest days in a sportsman’s life are the day he buys a camper or boat, and the day he sells the SOB. I made the mistake of buying a brand-new Grand Design Transcend One camper-trailer from Bretz RV in Billings, and even the first day sucked.
Before they get your money, everyone in the place flocks around you and offers your refreshments and kisses your butt. But once you sign the paperwork, you suddenly can hardly get the time of day.
Bretz’s “expert staff” hooked up the camper to the pickup for me and I made the mistake of not checking everything they did. Fortunately, I stopped down the highway out of town and did a walk-around inspection. There was no safety pin installed in the coupler latch; there was not even one present. This was a flagrant safety issue to myself, my wife, and everyone else on the road. Nor had the foot on the tongue jack been removed (the one with the big orange safety sticker on it that says to remove it). Worst off all, both of the hinged covers on either end of the sewage hose storage tube had blown off in the wind and the plastic collar that mounted the right end to the frame was cracked clear through and not holding anything. I found an extra safety pin in the truck, removed the jack foot, and zip-tied the storage tube back to the frame securely enough to get home. I had made it clear I wanted the camper to use on Forest Service and BLM roads, but they sold me a xxx that couldn’t even survive 50 miles on Interstate highway.
I phoned and sent pictures to Bretz as soon as I got home, expressing my displeasure. Then the camper sat in the shed for a full month before they could get me in to fix the warranty work on the stinky slinky tube. Although I got calls from Bretz people in Billings, Missoula, and Great Falls, nobody called us that the parts were (finally) in, no one called to schedule the repairs; it took numerous calls from my end to even get an appointment to get the warranty work done.
The day of my repairs another man was standing at the parts counter, very upset that the parts Bretz had supposedly ordered for him, and that he had driven all the way to Billings to pick up, did not exist. We had gotten there at 0900 (after a 3-hour drive) and the service people said they would call us when the camper was fixed. When we hadn’t heard anything by 1300, we went to check. The work had been done for hours but no one had called us. I asked the same counter person I had spoken to hours before about extended trailer mirrors for the umpteenth time once again. What mirrors?
There’s a whole lot of tough xxxx in the paperwork. To buy a camper from Bretz, you have to fill out more paperwork than I did to enlist or buy a house. There’s so much paperwork, in fact, that they apparently can’t afford to even print it all as they also give you more on a thumb drive. The tome they did print out included one 5-page section where you have to initial some 24 separate statements that are all legal escape clauses for Bretz to weasel out on xxxx. Such as: “I understand that no verbal promises can be honored.” A cynical person could read that as, “We outright lie to you.” There’s also stuff like waiving your right to a jury trial for any legal actions and signing away your right to a class action suit or arbitration related to your purchase in any away. I have to ask, if the dealer doesn’t say or do a bunch of shifty, hinky xxxx to the customer on a regular basis, why is any of this even necessary?
There were other problems with the camper, and the solar panel, but dealing with Bretz took so much time, money, travel, logistics, and effort that I eventually gave up on getting any advice, help, or repairs.
Needless to say, the company they do financing through is just about as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, too. Go figure.
Essentially nothing but a den of high-pressure thieves whose only goal is to separate you from your money, and then throw you under the bus.
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