Ok, we came to the Southern Tier of New York State to take a look at a new (to us) RV. The 29 footer, although our baby, was getting too crowed to be comfortable. Ellyn had found a 40 foot Dutch Star on the web at Wilkins RV in Bath, NY, so we headed up here after visiting for a couple of days with Ellyn’s cousins in New Jersey.
We got here last Monday and took a look at this 2003 Dutch Star with 3 slides, diesel pusher, lots of storage (we thought. Read on), and a pretty good price. So we started negotiations and trying to get a loan. It took some dickering (Ellyn is good at this. She played dicker in college), but we settled on something we could live with. Meanwhile, we had been parked for a couple of days in front of the dealership. Free water and electric. We also did a bit of site seeing at Watkins Glen and a couple of the Finger Lakes (Keuka and Seneca).
So finally, everything is set, we get the keys to the Dutch Star, turn over the keys to the Bay Star and start moving our stuff. It is unbelievable to us that we were able to carry this much stuff in the 29 foot Bay Star. We have been having a bit of a problem getting everything stored, but we were also rushing against a deadline, because we wanted to leave Bath by Saturday to get to a concert in Boston on Sunday night. We did not get access to the Dutch Star until late on Friday so we were up late working hard. We did not get it all done, but we thought we could get things wrapped up early on Saturday and pull out.
Then the spit hit the pan. During the check out with one of their techs, a cabinet door got crushed by a slide out. One of their techs does wood working and was able to get it all glued and it looks pretty good. Also, there was a little problem with the stabilizing jacks but that got fixed too. But the tech giving us the walkthrough gave me bad info on the operation of the jacks. It was not until I got a look at the operating instructions that I realized how they were really supposed to work.
So all that was not too bad, the really bad thing was, after we got everything moved except the fridge contents, we discovered that the fridge was not getting to operating temperature. We were not going to move our food into a fridge which would not go below the upper 50s. They told us it would take 12-24 hours to get to proper operating temperature, so we were stuck waiting while the fridge was cooling. However, over several hours, the temperature never went down. In fact, it went up some for a while. Each time we talked to the techs, they would indicate that it had to be tested over a long period before they could work on it. Well, we did leave it over night, but the temp was around 60 in the morning. So they tried changing a couple of parts, and then would go back to the long test period. Meanwhile, we want to get out of there so we could get to Boston for a concert of Carol King and James Taylor.
Now we got to Saturday PM and the fridge was still not fixed and the techs had no more tricks, so now it had to wait until Monday AM before they could do anything else. We considered driving in our car to Boston on Sunday, see the concert, stay in a motel, and then drive back on Monday, but we decided the cost of the gas and the motel would be too much. So we ate the tickets and hung out until Monday.
On Monday they replaced the thermistor but it did not have any affect on the refrigerator. Finally they gave up and said if we would locate a dealer for this unit who would replace it, they would handle it under their warranty program (30 days). We later called the manufacturer and found out the cooling unit, although less than 1 year old, was not covered under their warranty because that only covered the original owner. We now have an appointment for July 6th to have a new cooling unit installed. Meanwhile, we are living out of a cooler with ice.
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