Voted most helpful review
Josephine Foley
Massachusetts
Reviewed on August 2, 2020
Sorry this is long. We bought this brand new in 2016. The dealer said it was luxury and great craftsmanship. It appeared that way during the walk through. We are seasoned campers and this is not our first travel trailer but we were looking for a large trailer to basically live in for the summer. It sits on a ...
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Sorry this is long. We bought this brand new in 2016. The dealer said it was luxury and great craftsmanship. It appeared that way during the walk through. We are seasoned campers and this is not our first travel trailer but we were looking for a large trailer to basically live in for the summer. It sits on a seasonal site and was towed there by someone the dealer hired. It has never moved. Within the first two weeks we noticed the quality was not great. The shower leaked from day one. We had to have someone come out to look at it and he just added caulking. Didn’t help. You have to have someone stand in the shower and then caulk it and it still leaks not matter how level you are. Then the toilet seat broke. We’ve had it fixed and it broke again. Then many small things like trim, doors uneven, fridge not working correctly, but even so we loved the layout and dealt with the small things. the main thing was after our third summer. We closed it for the winter. Closed the slides and winterized it. Again, we are seasoned campers. We made sure the seals were tight and cleaned the slides and roof, and we left it for the winter. We didn’t cover it because why should we? It’s supposedly an all season camper. We came back after the winter to open it and found water damage and mold. There was still water under the slides when we opened them. Floor was warped. There was no obvious point of entry but the moulding was all warped and you could see water lines so we knew water had sat in the trailer. We were devastated. We contacted the dealer and they said why didn’t you cover it? You should call your insurance. We contacted Grand Design via email about the warranty to which they said it’s not under warranty anymore. I then emailed a higher up that I found on the internet and in that email I made it clear their quality and promises were untrue. They sent their lawyer after me who said it was our negligence. He was not nice and said contact your insurance. I knew insurance would deny it because there was no obvious point of entry for the water and they denied it. A tree didn’t break the roof so they aren’t going to cover it. It sits on a seasonal site year round so it has to be mobile home insurance. They told us to go to the company for defective workmanship. I went back to the company and heard from a customer service manager who was very nice. She heard me out, was empathetic and offered to pay for parts. Not labor. I thought that would be great except what about all the mold? And the parts had to be mailed to a company or dealer. The dealer didn’t care they left us high and dry. Never returned any other messages or emails I left for them and we had no way of getting the camper anywhere because we have nothing to tow it. We would have to pay $400 to hire someone to take it out and we lost months of our seasonal payment because of it as well. So, now we have a camper that is not worth what we owe. We paid for luxury and quality - $40k - thinking we would have it for years to come, and now we can’t even trade it in without losing our shirt. So no, I would not recommend. The warranty doesn’t help. By the way, we made it somewhat livable and now we are having problems with the radio, we did find an indent in the roof, the awnings have issues, they don’t stay down for rain to roll off, the oven doesn’t work and there is a myriad of other small issues. We definitely got a lemon but unfortunately we don’t have the money to just get rid of it. So we bought something we wanted to love, thought we were buying a great quality product and it didn’t turn out that way. In this instance the consumer lost. I was naive and thought the company would back their product but unfortunately they didn’t. I’m happy other people had good experiences with their Grand Design brand and truly wish we could say the same. Stay safe everyone.
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