My very first RV camping adventure….

[William42483]

Lessons learned. My first RV experience.

It was just 3 years ago that I got my very first RV. It was a 1978 Winnebago 22 foot Class A rig and I felt thrilled to get it for just $4K. I had always wanted an RV and now I had one even if it was an older one. Plus, I didn’t have a set of monthly payments to go with it. I was a newbie in heaven. (I still consider myself a newbie, but I have learned a few things since then.)

I had only been an RV owner for only ten days, but I was anxious to get started. I filled the fresh water tank, loaded up gear and food and proceeded on my merry way, singing as I drove It was going to be a wonderful three day weekend with no thoughts of my workplace or the turkeys that I had to work alongside. Being single, I was going to camp with my two cats at a very lightly used county park about ten miles outside of town.

I arrived and was the only one camping in the whole park. It only had fifteen campsites and half of those were walk in tent camping. All the sites were primitive, so there was no electric to run the A/C It was going to be a warm few days. I began to think that bringing the cats on this trip wasn’t the best idea, but I would have felt guilty leaving them home alone for that long. I had my choice of spots and I proceeded to pick one and got about the business of setting up. Selecting a fairly good looking area on the grass campsite, I got out the leveling blocks and set them in place. Now is when things started to go south on me.

I started the engine so that I could drive up onto the leveling blocks BUT…

Although the engine (a Chevy 454, V8) started fine, the starter would not disengage. It make quite a racket. I turned off the ignition and even removed the key, but still the starter wouldn’t disengage. I turned the ignition back on and off several times without success. Finally, I pulled the key and set the wheel chocks in place before opening up the battery compartment. Disconnecting the starting battery finally killed the starter. I waited a couple of minutes and reconnected the battery. Immediately, the starter motor started spinning again. Well, CRAP! I couldn’t drive ten miles home with the starter running the whole time. I disconnected the battery again.

It was about now that I found I had no cell service in the semi-remote county park. CRAP AGAIN! I couldn’t call for help, but I was glad I had selected the towing/roadside assistance coverage as part of my RV insurance package. Now I just had to figure out a way to use it. One option was to leave the cats in the hot, humid RV while I began walking toward town checking for a cell signal periodically. However, the prospect of hiking ten miles in the heat and humidity when I didn’t have propper hiking gear wasn’t appealing.
As it was a weekday, there wasn’t even anyone fishing at the small lake in order for me to borrow a cell phone. It looked like I was in for a long walk. I was concerned about leaving the cats in the rig while I walked, but there wasn’t much of a choice. I began getting together what gear I had and could make use of for a long hike.

Just as I was finishing my preps for a long walk, the park officer came through the campground. He stopped to introduce himself. He was a very pleasant guy and I told him of my situation. I let him know that it might take me a while to get the rig towed. (I had no experience in that realm, so I didn’t have a clue how long it might take.) The park officer kindly offered me the use of his phone and I called a friend in town to come pick me up.

My friend hauled me back to my house where I got my car and immediately went back for the cats. Once the cats were home safely, I called the roadside assistance number that my insurance company had provided. (I’ll be nice and not specify the name of the company.) I had the binder paperwork but hadn’t recieved the actual policy yet, so I didn’t have a policy number to give them. The national service center informed me that I would have to pay out of pocket and be reimbursed later. How much would that cost, I wondered. The last time I had used a towing service, the bill was about $150 and that was just a car, not a 12,000 pound RV.

I then tried calling my agent for help. Since it was a weekend, my agent’s office was closed and when I called the agent’s “emergency” number, it just connected me to the national service center again. I told the national service center to go ahead and arrange the tow. They said that an agent would call me back in half an hour with the details of the tow.

Four hours later, I again called the national service center. They said that they needed to know the height of the vehicle. I had no clue, so I gave it my best guess. Again they would call me back in thirty minutes. Or so they said… Ninety minutes later, I got the call. The guy said that he was just giving me a courtesy call to let me know that there had been a delay. They were having trouble finding a towing service that could handle a large vehicle. While we were talking, I googled truck towing and gave the guy the info on the closest two companies, including the phone numbers and addresses. Again, he would call me back…

Two hours later, I called to check the status. They were still having trouble finding a tow company. BY now, I was livid. I repeated the info I had given them earlier and offered to call the damned towing company myself. The guy put me on with his supervisor.

As calmly as I could manage at the time, I recapped my entire experience to the supervisor. I wanted to yell and scream, but it wasn’t this lady’s fault that the system wasn’t working. After listening to my story, the supervisor aksed if she could put me on a short hold. She came back on the line and told me that the towing company would arrive to hook up to the rig in forty five minutes. I thanked her, hung up and cussed up a blue streak for the next five minutes.

I got in my car and went to the campground. The towing company arrived earlier that promised and it was the owner himself who hooked up and towed my rig. I was glad to have that part over, but my credit card balance wasn’t too happy about the cost. (I was still under the limit on my card, but towing an RV even a short distance isn’t cheap.)
Monday came and I went to visit my insurance agent. The secretary called someone in the company structure and said that the policy had just been written but hadn’t been mailed out yet. She gave me the policy number. I went to my car and called the national service center to give them the policy number that they had asked for at least three times during each previous call.

They then informed me that the policy number I had been given was six digits too short. It wasn’t a real policy number. Had the secretary just given me a string of random numbers to get me out of her hair?, I wondered. I went home and got online. I found the highest ranking official I could in the company structure and sent a very frank email about my experience and how I found it unacceptable. In the email, I included the excellent experience that I had with the towing company itself. I wanted to show that I could recognize good service as well as bad and to punctuate that it was a matter internal to the insurance company which had created the problem. I threatened to pull not only the RV policy, but my auto and homeowners policies as well. In spite of a long history with the company, I was ready to take my business elsewhere.

In the end, I didn’t have to change insurance companies and they made things right with the policy and the towing bill. I even got personal apology phonecalls from each of the people I had dealt with during the insurance/towing debacle. (By then I had calmed down and I didn’t want apologies. I was just glad that the episode was over, but it was nice to know that I had managed to get someone’s attention.)

Then I just had to deal with the RV repairs.

Days later, the RV was ready at the shop. Because it had been an engine problem, the local guys could work on it in the shop they use to repair commercial trucks. The nearest RV repair shop would have been an additional forty miles of towing.
The guy at the shop told me that they found the bolts holding the starter in place were only finger tight. They went through all their process of checking things and thought they had it fixed. Then, as they were backing the rig out of the shop, it started doing the same thing again! Oops, I guess they weren’t quite done. They ended up calling in their electrical consultant. He identified that the neutral safety switch was out of position. They repositioned the switch and Viola! Problem gone.

As I got the rig out of winter storage this spring, I noticed that the starter won’t engage with the gear shift in park but things work fine starting the rig in neutral. I guess that switch is starting to slip again. Now that I know what to look for, it should be easy enough for me to reposition the switch.

I’ve learned much since that trip and still have much more to learn, but I haven’t needed another tow. (Crossing my fingers–LOL)

Lessons learned:
1. Avoid dealing with insurance companies whenever possible, but buy good coverage. The one time you need it, all those premiums you paid will have been money well spent.
2. Always have a backup or contingency plan thought out in advance. Be prepared to put it into action at any time.
3. Always make sure that someone knows where you plan to go and when you plan to be back. If you don’t show up, they can start looking for you.
4. Learn as much as you can and try to avoid newbie mistakes–LOL

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