Wandering Wahls

As I write this from the RV park in Jasper, Alberta, I realize that our trip has been going faster than my blogging — and that’s hard to do in a 41-foot RV towing a Volvo wagon. I’ll have to get used to a ritual of consistent blogging. I guess the inside term is bloviating, but that sounds too much like overeating. Before I get into the trip and its wonders to date, I would like to describe our experiences buying the RV. It was a fascinating process because the various personalities we met and as a peek into our economy.

We did deal with some nice salespeople. There were two who told us upfront they did not have the RV in stock that would fit our needs. They did not try to sell us anything, and, more importantly, they helped us along as we had to deal with the “car salesperson” mentality we met when we found the RV we knew we wanted. You know the type: “how’s the kids” or “that unit will be gone today.”

Because we have three kids and will be on the road for a year, we determined we needed an RV with bunk beds and good storage. This decision narrowed our choices. Among our choices, we decided on a Newmar Allstar 4154 because it also had Captain’s Chairs behind the passenger seat, with a table (good for road schooling), and a U-shaped dinette (good for a family of 5).

We searched for the RV on the Internet and during visits with family. In the end, we found a unit at a dealership in Davis, Calif. After visiting the dealership and going to the dealership’s “biggest sale ever” (aren’t they all?) at the Sacramento Expo Center, we knew this was the model we wanted. Unfortunately, the dealership’s sales manager was trying to push us into a lesser model from a different manufacturer with his standardized salesperson lines, such as “You mean you didn’t come ready to buy?! I guarantee it will sell today.” The unit was still in their lot three weeks later, by the way.

After further salesperson routines (“The owner says don’t call him with any price request; this is the lowest we’ll go!” “My boss’ boss called the owner to get you a deal, and he got chewed out.”), they accepted our offer — lower than the sales price which they wouldn’t go below. Of course we had our RV friend Smitty (at Guaranty RV in Oregon) telling us not to worry — the dealer wasn’t going to let us walk, and we should hold firm. So we didn’t buckle, and we got our deal. We plan to sell the RV when the trip is over, so we’re hoping that we negotiated out a lot of the depreciation and brought ourselves closer to the selling price we’ll get in a year.

The whole process was an eye opener to returning to the states though. We had heard of the economy slow down while being overseas, but here we saw hard evidence — the closed dealerships, the liquidation sales, the 40 percent off MSRP, and the manufacturers going out of business. This represented the fringes of the economy, but it sure seemed like the canary in the mineshaft warning us about the whole economy.

But, to top it off, we had to deal with sales managers who think they are in the economy of a year ago, even though their salespeople are playing computer games, and there are no other customers on their acre lot. But hey, that RV will be sold today if we don’t act. Further, too many don’t seem to realize the power of the Internet to provide consumers with information about what these models are going for at other dealerships. No wonder the dealership we bought from had to close locations.

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