Buying a used RV: A Cautionary Tale
12-28-2015
Author: in RV Tips & Education
By Stephanie A. Mayberry
This is the first installment of my Buying a used RV series. I wanted to share our own story with you to show you what can happen when you buy a used RV without being properly educated or informed. In following installments I will discuss construction, evaluation, and other aspects of the process. Enjoy.
Our first RV was an older Winnebago Class A. It was also very nearly our last after the experience we had. We purchased it used from what appeared to be a “nice” family in Summerville, South Carolina. We went over to their home, talked to the wife, walked around the RV and went inside it. At that point we didn’t know what we didn’t know and that put us in a really bad situation.
I had not spent much time at all in an RV and my husband even less time. We had no clue what we were looking at or what we should be looking for. We just asked questions and dumbly accepted the answers because, well, WE would never scam someone so we never thought it would happen to us.
It did.
We made the purchase.
I looked at that woman, right in her face, and asked, “Does it leak?”
She looked me in the eye, with a funny expression and said, “N-no.”
At this point you should know, I have Asperger’s Syndrome which falls under the autism umbrella. One of the things I struggle with is an inability to read expressions or interpret social cues. I noted the odd expression but I had no idea what it meant – still, somewhere inside me an alarm went off. I didn’t know why, but the situation just didn’t feel right. I wish I had told my husband.
We left with the bucket of bolts, excited because we had been living in our van. This was a step up – or so we thought. The woman’s husband had to come get the rig started when we were ready to bring it home, but we all just thought it was because it had not been started in a long time. That should have been our first clue. We parked it and it never started again.
And then it rained.
The skies seemed to open and the rain poured down. It was around midnight and we were asleep. I have something akin to bionic hearing – I hear everything – and I woke out of a dead sleep hearing rain that didn’t sound right. It was not the hollow staccato sound of the water hitting the fiberglass, it was splashing. I woke my husband, “It’s leaking!” I told him.
“Where?” he asked.
“I have no clue,” I said as we jumped out of bed and began investigating.
We ran out of pots before we got to all the leaks.
Water was coming in at the door like a waterfall. The cabinets in the bedroom were leaking like crazy and all of our clothing was soaked. The front, section, under the dash was soaking wet. The cabinets that ran along the top in the living area were leaking and everything was wet. We did what we could but we did not get much sleep that night.
Then we saw what we should have noticed in the first place.
The next day the rain had cleared and we began assessing the damage. It was then that I saw the bubbling wallpaper under the windows and at the base where the wall met the floor. It was then that I saw the slight warping of the wood in the cabinets and the darker areas on the carpet.
Then the black water tank would not empty.
So here we were with a smelly, waterlogged RV that would not run. We had no money and no idea what we were doing.
My husband fixed the black water tank. I don’t know what he did or how he did it – and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that apparently the couple’s kids had been playing in the RV and there were toys that had been flushed as well as a McDonald’s cup lid that was blocking the outlet. He got it cleared and cleaned out. We thought all was good.
We thought wrong.
The kitchen faucet stopped working. My poor husband tried and tried to fix it but nothing worked. I would have to carry a pan into the bathroom and fill it with water from the shower then use that to wash my dishes. I actually had a dish rack in my shower because once I rinsed them I left them there to dry.
He finally got the kitchen faucet working and all was well. We started to breathe. Then one day I want to flush the toilet, something popped and the water would not turn off. It would close if you took your foot off of the pedal, but the water would continue to run. This meant that we would have to turn the water off outside until we needed it. Then, when we turned it on we would have to put a cinder block on the toilet pedal to keep it open so it would not overflow.
I am not making this up!
Yet there were still even more surprises in store for us with this RV.
Our bedroom waterfall was SO NOT romantic!
The leak in the bedroom worsened with each rain. Eventually, the water poured in from the side seam so when it rained we would have to fold the mattress over, propping it with a broom to keep it out of our bedroom waterfall. One of us would sleep in the bedroom (my husband) and the other would sleep on the fold out sofa in the living area (me).
Then the fold out sofa quit folding out so I just slept on the sofa itself which was like sleeping on monkey bars.
And I am still not finished. See, the problem with water is that it travels, so it may go in at one spot but then run for a while before it stops – and that stopping place is often at the seams or joints. The other problem is that this RV was a wood frame with fiberglass (we made sure our current travel trailer has NO WOOD!).
And what happens to wood when it gets and stays wet?
As the water ran and pooled, it warped the wood, causing it to swell and rot. In those last couple of months the entire back part of the RV began to separate from the front part. You could lie on the bed and see the trees outside through the separation between the back section and the wall. At night you could see stars. The gap was several inches. Oh, and at some point part of the floor started to rot away. It was at the end of the bed, near the back where we never walked (thank goodness!), but we had a lovely view of the grass outside.
If you are really curious about what it looked like, you can read this post with pictures.
We were in this rig for about a year. Yes, we tried to contact the people but they were in the wind. I will say, when it started to go down, it went fast.
When the mold came we had to go.
When the mold set in and we all got really sick (including our little dog) we decided that we would be better off living in the van than living in this pit. OK, I begged my husband to move us back into the van.
We moved back into the van and traveled a bit, slept in some parking lots, living the real nomadic life for a while until we could get our Vantage trailer that we have now.
When we decide to buy our travel trailer, we approached this purchase from a very educated standpoint. Live and learn.
So in this series I will share with you some of what we learned. If there are any areas you are particularly interested in my covering, just drop me a line and I’ll address it. This is serious business, folks. The more knowledge we share with each other the better off we will all be. We have to look out for each other because, as we learned the hard way, there are some unscrupulous slimeballs out there who are just waiting to lie and cheat and scam you out of your hard earned money.
My intention is for this series to help you stay ahead of it.
This is the first installment of my Buying a used RV series. I wanted to share our own story with you to show you what can happen when you buy a used RV without being properly educated or informed. In following installments I will discuss construction, evaluation, and other aspects of the process. Enjoy.
Our first RV was an older Winnebago Class A. It was also very nearly our last after the experience we had. We purchased it used from what appeared to be a “nice” family in Summerville, South Carolina. We went over to their home, talked to the wife, walked around the RV and went inside it. At that point we didn’t know what we didn’t know and that put us in a really bad situation.
I had not spent much time at all in an RV and my husband even less time. We had no clue what we were looking at or what we should be looking for. We just asked questions and dumbly accepted the answers because, well, WE would never scam someone so we never thought it would happen to us.
It did.
We made the purchase.
I looked at that woman, right in her face, and asked, “Does it leak?”
She looked me in the eye, with a funny expression and said, “N-no.”
At this point you should know, I have Asperger’s Syndrome which falls under the autism umbrella. One of the things I struggle with is an inability to read expressions or interpret social cues. I noted the odd expression but I had no idea what it meant – still, somewhere inside me an alarm went off. I didn’t know why, but the situation just didn’t feel right. I wish I had told my husband.
We left with the bucket of bolts, excited because we had been living in our van. This was a step up – or so we thought. The woman’s husband had to come get the rig started when we were ready to bring it home, but we all just thought it was because it had not been started in a long time. That should have been our first clue. We parked it and it never started again.
And then it rained.
The skies seemed to open and the rain poured down. It was around midnight and we were asleep. I have something akin to bionic hearing – I hear everything – and I woke out of a dead sleep hearing rain that didn’t sound right. It was not the hollow staccato sound of the water hitting the fiberglass, it was splashing. I woke my husband, “It’s leaking!” I told him.
“Where?” he asked.
“I have no clue,” I said as we jumped out of bed and began investigating.
We ran out of pots before we got to all the leaks.
Water was coming in at the door like a waterfall. The cabinets in the bedroom were leaking like crazy and all of our clothing was soaked. The front, section, under the dash was soaking wet. The cabinets that ran along the top in the living area were leaking and everything was wet. We did what we could but we did not get much sleep that night.
Then we saw what we should have noticed in the first place.
The next day the rain had cleared and we began assessing the damage. It was then that I saw the bubbling wallpaper under the windows and at the base where the wall met the floor. It was then that I saw the slight warping of the wood in the cabinets and the darker areas on the carpet.
Then the black water tank would not empty.
So here we were with a smelly, waterlogged RV that would not run. We had no money and no idea what we were doing.
My husband fixed the black water tank. I don’t know what he did or how he did it – and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that apparently the couple’s kids had been playing in the RV and there were toys that had been flushed as well as a McDonald’s cup lid that was blocking the outlet. He got it cleared and cleaned out. We thought all was good.
We thought wrong.
The kitchen faucet stopped working. My poor husband tried and tried to fix it but nothing worked. I would have to carry a pan into the bathroom and fill it with water from the shower then use that to wash my dishes. I actually had a dish rack in my shower because once I rinsed them I left them there to dry.
He finally got the kitchen faucet working and all was well. We started to breathe. Then one day I want to flush the toilet, something popped and the water would not turn off. It would close if you took your foot off of the pedal, but the water would continue to run. This meant that we would have to turn the water off outside until we needed it. Then, when we turned it on we would have to put a cinder block on the toilet pedal to keep it open so it would not overflow.
I am not making this up!
Yet there were still even more surprises in store for us with this RV.
Our bedroom waterfall was SO NOT romantic!
The leak in the bedroom worsened with each rain. Eventually, the water poured in from the side seam so when it rained we would have to fold the mattress over, propping it with a broom to keep it out of our bedroom waterfall. One of us would sleep in the bedroom (my husband) and the other would sleep on the fold out sofa in the living area (me).
Then the fold out sofa quit folding out so I just slept on the sofa itself which was like sleeping on monkey bars.
And I am still not finished. See, the problem with water is that it travels, so it may go in at one spot but then run for a while before it stops – and that stopping place is often at the seams or joints. The other problem is that this RV was a wood frame with fiberglass (we made sure our current travel trailer has NO WOOD!).
And what happens to wood when it gets and stays wet?
As the water ran and pooled, it warped the wood, causing it to swell and rot. In those last couple of months the entire back part of the RV began to separate from the front part. You could lie on the bed and see the trees outside through the separation between the back section and the wall. At night you could see stars. The gap was several inches. Oh, and at some point part of the floor started to rot away. It was at the end of the bed, near the back where we never walked (thank goodness!), but we had a lovely view of the grass outside.
If you are really curious about what it looked like, you can read this post with pictures.
We were in this rig for about a year. Yes, we tried to contact the people but they were in the wind. I will say, when it started to go down, it went fast.
When the mold came we had to go.
When the mold set in and we all got really sick (including our little dog) we decided that we would be better off living in the van than living in this pit. OK, I begged my husband to move us back into the van.
We moved back into the van and traveled a bit, slept in some parking lots, living the real nomadic life for a while until we could get our Vantage trailer that we have now.
When we decide to buy our travel trailer, we approached this purchase from a very educated standpoint. Live and learn.
So in this series I will share with you some of what we learned. If there are any areas you are particularly interested in my covering, just drop me a line and I’ll address it. This is serious business, folks. The more knowledge we share with each other the better off we will all be. We have to look out for each other because, as we learned the hard way, there are some unscrupulous slimeballs out there who are just waiting to lie and cheat and scam you out of your hard earned money.
My intention is for this series to help you stay ahead of it.
Comment
JTorsrudNovember 13, 2017 | 06:16 AM
After reading this story, all I can say is How Much did you pay for this thing and why didn't you take it to an RV Dealer and have it inspected before you bought it. If the owners won't let you do that, Walk Away and hang onto your money. The idea that you wouldn't scam someone is admirable. But, the world has changed and the world that you grew up in, is not the same anymore. We basically live in a country full of criminals and RIP OFF artists! There are so few truly honest people in this country anymore, it is truly amazing. A NOTE TO ANYONE BUYING A USED RV: If it is being sold by a private party (and there are many) ask them if you can have it inspected by an RV Dealer. If they say NO, WALK AWAY! In your case RUN!
Author: Stephanie A. Mayberry
