Hello again my fellow past, current and future RV hobbyist. Yet another installment from an average consumer, just like YOU, that simply wants to spend the rest of their life in an RV. This article is how to BUY an RV in today’s crazy marketplace. To be clear, this is NOT an instructional guide to teach anyone how to make sure the dealer makes NO profit. Profit is what makes the world go around and everyone deserves it, IF they provide a certain fair level of VALUE to their clients. The less value provided, the less profit we should have to pay. So that leads us to assume, the more value we receive, the more profit we should pay. Seems fair, right?
Before I begin, I want to get on my world famous long winded “soap box” for a minute. The most important decisions you can make are brand, model and options. Once those core decisions have been confirmed, look at the dealerships “after-the-sale” experience; their reputation for providing a positive “ownership experience”; the “initial sales experience”; brand (Tiffin/Entegra) reputation and finally price. Let’s not debate order except notice PRICE is last for a very specific reason. Price is relative to the value we all receive in a specific price point (another words, I would get more value from a Provost, however I can’t afford that price point). Everyone has a different value requirement, so know what value is to YOU specifically. A formula on value was given to me decades ago. It is called the Price Value Formula. It goes like this, “When the value of a product exceeds the price by one cent, I will buy.”
Please don’t get caught up in SIZZLE items offered by those huge dealer groups. You know who they are. Things like free membership in an “Executive/Platinum Type RV Club”, “Warranty for Life”, “Tires for Life”, “Free Trips if you buy NOW!”, and the lists of sizzles go on. All that stuff, represents only sizzle NOT steak. It is meant to hide something or divert your attention from important items like a bad reputation, awful service departments, organizations that are totally disorganized, terrible communication, and a general lack of respect once a HUGE check for the purchase is provided and cashed. If the average RV dealer provided what we, the consumers really wanted, no sizzle items would be necessary or needed. I will trade honest, professional communication, timeliness and fixing my coach correctly the first time for sizzle any day of the year.
The truth is, you don’t need an RV dealership that has 275 Golf Carts, the size of a small city, more on the ground inventory, then the factory, eight receptionists, café’s, bars, an accessory store as big as Macy’s. You need a dealership that will provide you with your coach, teach you how to use it in a non-rushed environment, prepare it properly for delivery (PDI without charging your), service it in a timely manner after the sale and fix it right the first time. As far as I am concerned, their office can be in a “termite invested mobile home” and the entire dealership can be on gravel lot with a fence, if they give me the above listed common-sense items. Enough soap box and onto the categories I spoke of earlier.
Let me break down the types of purchases into some interesting categories.
- Buy or order your coach ONLY—Lowest profit paid to the dealer.
- Buy or order your coach LOCALLY with the intent of using the local dealers service department—Most profit paid.
- Buy or order your coach OUTSIDE a 3-hour distance from your home base, with the intent to use dealers service department—Middle profit paid due to inconvenience of travel.
- Buy or order your coach with the intent to use only the FACTORY for ALL service/maintenance (example, Tiffin)—Not lowest profit paid but pretty darn close.
Category #1: Buy or order coach ONLY!
This is where you will get your best dollar value or percentage off MSRP from the dealer. Especially if you are purchasing a new, last year’s model or my favorite choice, ordering your coach. The dealer wants the old inventory off his floor plan interest expense (dealers don’t own their inventory, they finance it at a lending institution. The cost is called Floor Plan Interest) therefore, they will sell last year’s model often at below cost. The Manufactures often provide the dealer with factory to dealer incentives to get the last years models out of inventory, so the new year’s models can flow in. Make sure you know if the dealer charges a PDI fee like Dixie RV Superstores does. I find this charge to be insulting, but can live with it if the price of the unit is lowered to take this charge out of the equation. Also, look at the dealer’s documentation fee. If unacceptable, handle it up front, so you won’t get surprises when your coach finally gets delivered.
Category #2: Buy or order your coach LOCALLY with the intent to use your local dealers service department
This would always be my choice, unless you have bad dealers in your area, like I do. I will give an honorable mention to RV Connection in Panama City, FL. with a great general manager by the name of CO. I would pay a local dealer who can service my rig, more than any other situation, with pleasure. I will rate their “ownership experience” on what their past and current clients say in social media, blogs, and the too numerous to mention, boards. I need to make my decision based on verifiable facts, not promises from the dealer team members. Anyone can make a promise, however when I have a vacation planned in two-days, I have been planning it for four months and my coach needs a safety or comfort issue handled (like my A/C goes out on a four-month old RV); “have you Mr. Dealer, exceeded your client’s expectations here in the past?” Right now, the only dealership that I have found that has this sort of positive reputation is National Indoor RV Centers. Lucking for me, their newest facility is in Atlanta, they are thinking about putting their next facility in Florida, where I currently live. Watch out Lazy Days Super Store and Dixie RV, your so-called lock on the market is about to go away.
Category #3: Buy or order your coach OUTSIDE of a 3-hour distance from your home base with the intent to use dealers service department
So, sometimes you have to expand your dealership search outward, to find a dealer with a better reputation or your brand. The “Initial Sales Experience” and the “Long-Term Ownership Experience” is critical for a couple of hundred-thousand-dollar house on wheels. This means, I am willing to drive sometimes, hours away, to get to my dealer for service. This is NOT a perfect scenario and an inconvenience to me and my entire family. I will give this dealer more profit then ordering the coach from just anyone, however not as much as I would give a local dealer with a good overall reputation. A consideration is if the factory is the same or less distance from my home base. My example is Tiffin home base is in Red Bay, Alabama and the best service facility in the country for Entegra is in Atlanta, Ga both 5 hours from me. It that event, I have the choice for servicing at my dealer or the factory. This warrants a premium to the dealer. A lot has been said about the Tiffin Motor Coach Brand and the use of their “State-of-the-Art” factory in Red Bay, AL. Also, the availability of Bob Tiffin the owner on the phone or face-to-face. I say BRAVO to Mr. Bob Tiffin and his entire team, GREAT job. Now please clean up your dealer network so the folks outside of the Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and other outlying states don’t have to see you so often. Maybe consider Factory Stores like Tesla if you can’t find a decent dealer or dealer group. It is just a thought and I mean absolutely no disrespect to your past great work.
Category #4: Buy or order coach with the intent to using ONLY the Factory for all service/maintenance
Now you clearly see the flaw in my writing style, redundancy so sorry. I am thinking about buying a condo in Red Bay, Alabama or Elkhart, Indiana. The issue is I live in Miramar Beach, Florida. If you are fortunate enough to be close to the factory that produced your coach, you got a literal gift from the RV gods. If you are not close, sorry you need to go back to the closest dealer with a decent reputation. I will pay my selling dealer very little profit if that is the case. Unless they do a spectacular job of education at time of sale and after the sales on my coach. If you are a Winnebago kind of person, the best dealer in the country is Lichtsinn RV located in Forest City, Iowa. By the way, they are a short one mile away from the Winnebago plant (Seems the coach division is soon moving to a new State-of-the-Art site). They also have one of the best sales consultants in the country regardless of brands, Mr. Reed Burkholder. I am not into Winnebago or I would have already purchased my coach from the Lichtsinn RV organizations. Do yourself a favor and watch any of their YouTube video’s, they are the BOMB! Also know they send you a video on your coach’s walk through, prior to you picking up the coach. This place is the real deal customer service we all want and need however, again I live in Miramar Beach, FL and I am sorry to say my local Winnebago dealer thinks they are used car salesmen in the 1950’s.
And That’s the Bottom Line Cause Stone Cold Said So!!!
Anyone whom has ever taken a negotiation class knows the biggest rule of a successful transaction. “Be prepared to walk away from the deal and mean it.” If the selling organization sees you are emotionally connect to the coach, they will hold their price high and not provide you the after-sales experience you deserve. That is why you are always best off ordering the coach. The deep emotional connection is far less for an impulse purchase. If you offer a dealer a sincere hard number, be prepared to agree and pay for your new coach when it is excepted. Don’t start “back peddling” due to waking up from some drug induced emotional fog. Therefore, make sure your price or discount to the dealer (not offer, that indication they have an option) is fair to all parties and not a guess. Dealers may not play fair with us sometimes but we should always mean what we say and say what we mean.
The natural question is, “Gary, what percentage discount can I expect to get from a dealer?” I am not going to answer that question. You are going to ask your friends whom bought a coach like yours what they paid. You are going to make a judgement call based on the average discount received. Your money, your decision. Your friends on the boards will help you if you are sincerely ready to buy a coach and not wasting their time.
My personal situation is the following. I found a local dealer that has a good reputation for one of the brands I am looking at which is Tiffin. I also have dealer that will order me the same coach at an excellent discount but is 6 hours and two states away. My deal with my local dealer, when I am ready to pull the trigger, he gets first right of refusal. The numbers I am going to give him will be higher then the dealer three states away as this blog indicates. If my local dealer says NO or tries to negotiate with me, the discussion is over. On the other brand which is Entegra, I am going to buy it from a major dealer in Atlanta 5 hours away. No dealer near me for this brand of coach. I know a client that received a certain discount on his coach from this dealer and I will simply require that same percentage of discount. Should be a no brainer for all involved. My entire time negotiating for houses, cars and RV’s is 20 minutes or less. I hate stress and I control my check book, don’t I? I also have taught thousands of sales consultants all over the world that if you provide true value, you will always get a fair commission.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Happy RVing and I hope to see each of you soon if my wife will let me.