Big LAWSUIT WIN for RVer!

the rv show usa is brought to you by flagstaff rockwood building better rvs making smarter rvers i want to say up front what you're about to see is not an attack piece i promise it's not sensationalism it is more of a buyer beware piece and i've looked into this situation and it is true some of you watching are gonna not like what you hear you won't others just bear with me please and you decide for yourself how you feel at the end of the story now also at the end of the video we'd like to know if you want to hear more stories like this one let us know in the comments i love doing these kinds of stories uh it's what i really enjoy sinking my teeth into but we want to know what you think also uh if the manufacturer who is going to be mentioned here would like equal airtime we are totally totally open to it we really are all right i want you to imagine this you work your whole life your whole life you dream of that perfect rv the perfect motorhome a custom motorhome maybe you you and your wife are you and your husband you're going to travel you're going to enjoy your golden years right you do your shopping you want to make sure the motorhome that you buy is built by a company who is solid solid as a rock a company who'll do everything possible to make your retirement dream come true you find what you think is the perfect motorhome and the perfect manufacturer you go the factory you have it custom built takes you six months back and forth and back and forth and finally everything's perfect you go and pick up your rv it is beautiful only problem less than a week after owning you find out that something is terribly wrong terribly wrong that is a scenario you're about to learn about so joining me today from the great state of wisconsin are those dreamers who bought a customized brand new motorhome kent and linda smith thank you thank you both for agreeing to visit with us hi so did i hit the high spots in that little intro or what did i miss no you did uh you want me to talk yeah go it's i think as i said i'm going to tee it up and then you guys hit it and tell us about yourselves and and i know understand you're not new to the rv world right okay this is linda the boss and i'm ken and we've been our being for about 12 years and through a process of uh doing that for 12 years about five years ago uh we learned real fast uh well not real fast but it took quite a long time to understand the weight that you can carry in an rv and looking into that and seeing how dangerous it is every vehicle made cars trucks everything and rvs have a gross vehicle weight sticker it's a federal sticker on there and it says how much you can carry with that that's the maximum you can carry with anything you put in it passengers water groceries anything okay so just keep that in mind and anyway we we know that with our being because about 70 to 78 percent of all accidents on the motorhome and i can't remember the percentage of deaths are caused from overweight uh trailers or motorized rvs but uh when they're when they're overweight like that they can have axle brakes a lot of flat tires uh i'm sure you've seen your uh you've seen yourself going down the interstate highways where you've seen a lot of them over your lifetime rolled over to the side or on fire or anything like that so gross vehicle weight is a really really important number to know that's for sure yes correct and um anyway um with that in mind we looked at major manufacturers like uh uh winnebago and others and they didn't really have anything in our price range that would carry the type of weight we wanted to carry which was approximately or right at 2 000 pounds not approximate but we we wanted at least two thousand pounds uh because you know the first ten years eight years ten years uh we got in the habit of weighing everything you know weighing the tools weighing the pots and pans uh the grills everything you take with you and then you also uh gotta understand you take water with you and that's uh 8.3 pounds a gallon so with that in mind you know we added up stuff and we we figured to be comfortable and our trips went from you know a few days out on the weekend to after we retire we start going uh one week to two months you know you can do that when you're retired therefore you're going to take more clothes with you you're going to take more items with you and if it happens to be around the holiday you might even bring home some presents and you got to have the weight to carry that uh but you wanted a buffer of 2 000 pounds in the motorhome that you were going to buy you decided to get one custom built because you couldn't find the right floor plan or right well we had one custom built at nexus and um indiana uh being a a company that you could buy directly from the factory we we thought we'd give that a try and uh they claimed to build your dream and they had the floor plan we liked you know it had double slide out so made your living room area uh really wide like you're sitting at home uh you invest that kind of money you know you want to get what you pay for yeah but we also had the need to carry the weight so we talked a lot about weight from day one and uh we got into it we did you know some of the design because we picked an existing floor plan but you add different things or custom thing you can customize it and uh from day one we always talked about uh water we know water weighs that much so if you got a big tank on there like this one did 75 gallons it's roughly 650 pounds 630 650 pounds of water and hey hang on kid that 600 plus pounds comes off the 2000 that you were wanting and that gives you some buffer right to carry more weight correct okay got it and if that's what if that's what we uh ended up with uh we would only carry half water which a lot most people do you don't fill up and then drive miles with that kind of weight that 300 pounds if you carried half that water that would account for our weight not telling you how much we weigh [Music] but so anyway we we ordered it and throughout the whole process from the day we ordered it it was always come up about water because most manifest all other manufacturers out there that yellow federal sticker all of them say does not include full water doesn't include water i should say so whatever it says it can carry you have to add water to that right nexus on the other hand said we weigh we weigh all our uh rvs with full water so when it says you can carry 1500 pounds and i know how much water that can hold i can add that to that amount which would have gave us 1500 pounds and 650 pounds would bring us our 2000 plus pounds that we wanted hey hang on ken linda hang on just a second should i bring up the picture if we can i know we've got a picture of the motorhome you guys bought it's a beautiful rig my gosh linda you got a that's a gorgeous motorhome yeah and if you look at that close you can see at the bottom of it all those drawers doors on the bottom and that's the same on both sides with pass through you can carry a lot of stuff on there you have the space to carry a lot of stuff and the other side's identical and inside our massive cabinets that whole front end you could put a your grandkids up there you know i mean it has a lot of room in here to carry stuff so psychologically we're saying this is going to be wonderful plus we were told that we'd be able to carry 2 000 plus pounds and we would it was really a lot of storage back in the bedroom area where you would have a couple wardrobes to hang up clothes you had six drawers that you could put in your your clothes that you wanted to fold you had a nice areas too for your for your dishes and your pots and pans your silverware everything that you need coffee makers so you're gonna cook in these items in these motorhomes and you need to bring those supplies with you so that you can cook and live in them comfortably okay so what went wrong what what happened well what happened is you know as we added things you know like we put a uh recliners in instead of a couch and we would ask how much that weight and uh you know we'd find out what a way and then we you know pass that to the production manager and get his find out from him yes that you know this is how much it weighs and it falls within your tolerance uh so all the way through this process we it was a goal until halfway through about three months into it no well four or five months into it i have a six-month process we read this magazine article on a well-published magazine and it they interviewed this person that bought one almost identical to ours and with full water he he could only carry 720 pounds and we got really worried about that because we hadn't ordered ours yet we're still looking at it we're still deciding exactly what we want in it and so we caught the salesmen and uh our men and and ask them say wait what's wrong with this i said and it uh only can carry 720 pounds he said no that's wrong he said yours will carry uh 1450 pounds 1500 pounds and i said to him that article says it's full water so he you know you're telling me it can carry a fit about 1500 pounds and uh full water and uh he never denied it but uh i said in another email i said if it does do that we will then order it so order it for us and this this was the process okay so they ordered it they had many chances to say you keep saying full water ken and it doesn't have full water but they never say it then they always told me on the phone they just never put it in writing and but every email hang on hang on every email that you wrote back to them as i what you're saying is that yes you indicated to them that this 2000 pounds you needed to carry this much weight that included the water but you made it clear that that was your requirement to buy this dream rv right correct okay so you buy it you get it you do the walk through what happens we did the walk through we didn't see the uh federal sticker on it it's kind of buried on that machine there so we did a walk through and then uh we sat down in front of the finance person uh nexus employee and we asked how much does it weigh that was my final uh protection you know find out how much that thing weighed and they typed it on the screen showed us the screen and in the screen if you if if you subtract what it weighed from uh how much the thing the gross vehicle weight it gave us 15.50 which was a hundred pounds more than we were told we were going to get but it gave us 15.50 we looked at each other and i said to her i said to the finance person does that include full water and she said yes sir includes full water it includes full water full fuel and full propane i said okay where do we sign and we signed it because we're looking at each other and say 15.50 plus over 600 pounds in water is way over 2 000 pounds okay that that's what it was there well then we they wanted us to stay there for two three days and just test everything out so they parked it back in our parking spot and we hooked up to everything and in the process of looking at our beautiful new machine uh linda opens the door on her side and kind of hidden down towards the bottom was that yellow federal sticker and that yellow federal sticker says 1550 carrying capability and doesn't include full water in other words you would have to add water so when you add water you're taken away from even that 1550 by the way it came out that that was only eleven hundred and twenty pounds so even that federal sticker saying 15.50 was really only a thousand uh eleven hundred eleven hundred and twenty pounds was that well you know just just looking at your picture and and not not trying to interrupt but to sort of con encapsulate our the story the picture of of the motor is beautiful but gosh it looks low linda can it looks i mean at least to me it looks really low yeah it was that the frame was only the springs and frame were only about two inches apart so that that's hanging really low uh there's a lot of things i could get into you know on under other issues we had major gas leaks and water leaks and and uh the propane lines got caught between the frame and the springs and cut it in five different places oh my god the first time the second time that we had a propane leak and they put all new hoses and they drove a screw through the sidewall that went into a propane uh hose and twice going back to the i i know that there are other issues but the main thing that that you started this saying that weight was your that was your you know deal breaker you had to be able to carry two thousand pounds what did nexus say when you approached him and said hey you know what what's the deal what what'd they tell you when when we seen a sticker that said 1550 and didn't include full water uh you'd go from there yeah i noticed the sticker and it said did not have water and i said hey on i said it doesn't include the water and we were working with one of the technicians at the time he was showing us how the rv operates and he said no it doesn't and i said well it's supposed to so we got a hold of our salesman and he came over and i said this isn't acceptable this is not what we wanted i said you promised us 1550 with full water so he says well just a minute i'll talk to the owner of the company so he came back about an hour later and said no it does not include one but it does include six four people people at 154 pounds that's already included so i asked him well then 300 pounds and added to the 1550 and he said yes so then we kind of just dropped it at that point but during the night we just kind of looked at each other and said something's not right because everything's not adding up they keep changing their story on how we're supposed to get this two thousand pounds so we we took it to the uh cad scale that that next morning uh for people that don't know what that is it's just a truck weighing system right we took it there and got it weighed and uh i went in to pay it and i came out and i was hanging my head down and linda said it's overweight isn't it and i looked at her and i said it's 120 pounds over the girl over the gbwr over the gross weight only with full water and only with linda and i and now you see how big we are only with us in there and our 16 pound dog we were 120 pounds over gross vehicle weight so we go back to we go back to nexus with that and we end up talking to production manager and they wait re-weight it you know we had to empty out all the tanks and they re-weighted the next day and then he said i can't talk to you about it they won't show us how much it weighed on their scales so he said you're going to talk to our owner our ceo so we met with him about three o'clock in the afternoon and told him it was unacceptable those numbers i said you know that we're gonna get pulled over we're gonna be overweight i think there's six states now that are actually giving you big fines for that kind of thing and you know different states do different ways but uh i said that it doesn't it holds about half of what we wanted what we were promised what we signed for what we paid for and he said it's only a number it's only a number on there don't mean anything i said if it don't mean anything go change it it's a federal sticker it don't mean anything he says and this is the owner of the company and so anyway we got in a little bit heated discussion um he said we had buyers remorse because you know they had one there that was fifty thousand dollars more than ours and you know we once we seen that we wanted that not ours that was nothing to do with it was all about the weight issue so we walk out kind of fast i'm i'm we're upset we're hurting we're we don't know what to do we paid all that money you know um and uh on the way out he speeds up and gets right behind me and he and he yells oh i was a little bit in front of linda and he yells out mr smith watch what you say because i have more lawyers than you could ever afford oh and i was quite upset with that and that meeting we had with him he intimidated us and then he says that at the end and i'm thinking where was little wisconsin people uh elderly people i hate to say that also so hang on vietnam veterans and i said you're treating me like that and he says now you're pulling the veteran thing on me i said no i said you're not giving us what we paid for oh my god okay so so so you at some point you knew there was a stalemate here they didn't offer anything to try to to help you to fix the resolve situation what were you asking for did you ask for a resolution yes we did we even offered him while we were sitting there 25 000 more for another rig another rv uh that had a bigger chassis an engine that could handle the weight and they they want to lost money but he refused it the only thing he offered he says well i can try to sell yours on consignment after we just we're two days old we'll sell yours on consignment unbelievable okay so so you decided you that you your only uh recourse is to find a good lawyer right yeah yes that was that was hang on folks this was four and a half years ago this did not happen yesterday you guys have been after this for a long long time you should have been rv for four and a half years yeah we we had it for like three months and and you know won't even bring up the other issues with all the gas leaks and stuff but we went on one short trip to south dakota and uh that was our second gas leak came back and that's when we got a hole i did some research a lot of research and found mr ron burge best lemon law attorney in my opinion in a lot of people's opinion in the united states maybe the world and they came to our rescue we i wrote up a uh about a three-page thing of everything that happened we document the the thing you have to do is document everything you do all your emails uh anytime you talk to somebody date time names what was said you can't legally record somebody so we didn't do that uh but we didn't document everything always saved us because we could we could put this story together and send it to mr mr burge he looked look at it he i think we're getting a little bit of a dropper you guys hear me the only thing we have is retirement money and i i get yeah i can hear you okay i i was gonna ask how important was this documentation to really document your story the entire process when you finally i mean you went to trial it wasn't like you settled out of court or something you went to trial with a jury there in indiana right right yes correct what was it linda what was that like was it scary was it was it i don't know you ever been to court before i just what was that like going into a courtroom with these big powerful uh attorneys from nexus and you're this this little old couple from wisconsin well it was intimidating all right but we kept excellent documentation i had a four inch binder with all the emails the answers the questions their responses our responses back and it just so clearly showed that we wanted to solve this problem we didn't want it to go to court but that's the only option that we had we had tried several different ways to settle this before it even went to court and yeah it was very intimidating with all their lawyers and they're all dressed up in their fancy suits and you got the jurors listening to you and watching every single word that you say so you have to be very careful but we have the truth on our side and all you have to do is remember you don't have to remember lies you just have to state what happened because that was the truth right you did you didn't have to make up stuff you just told the truth you didn't have to remember three four years ago remember folks that we paid a thousand dollars a month and it's 54 months now that's 54 000 plus a thousand every year for four years going on five uh for insurance and license plates and so we had a lot of money we still have a lot of money tied up into it and we won the court case we're gonna we got about two minutes we're gonna try to wrap this thing up but you you won the court case so so there will be some kind of a settlement we don't need to go into that what is the takeaway from this linda and ken what's the takeaway that you would advise other people that are considering doing what you did whether it's a custom you know built motor home or not what's the takeaway the takeaway is you have to be patient you have to let it work its way through court if you can't come up with any kind of agreement ahead of time it takes a long time just to get through court you have to just be patient and you have to just keep in touch with your lawyer our lawyer was excellent in helping us through this process and just document documentation documentation and save everything the other thing is know what you're dealing with with weight know how much you're going to take with you start weighing things that you would take with you so you have some idea when you go buy your rv and folks buy your rv from a reputable rv place like was mentioned on this uh station here yeah um someone that you can trust and when the yellow sticker says it can carry that much weight and if it's enough for you then that's what you buy okay another question did this whole experience make you hate rving or is it still something that you would love to do if the opportunity presented itself no we're still hoping to get through it um go rving in addition to this um obviously with the covet it was kind of hard but um it's nice to get out and just be by yourself we meet we met several people in the years that we've done this and they're some of our best friends and they're from florida they're from alabama just all over the place it's fun meeting them in different campgrounds so no we're gonna we're gonna pick up rving again um we're just glad that it is settled and hopefully soon it will be finalized yeah well one more thing the part of the settlement is we're waiting on an answer from the judge that there's a possibility we might get triple the amount that the jury uh gave us because of the uh the lying to us in a deception and the fact that we're of elderly age and a veteran yeah and that's indiana i i noticed your cap there and and uh thank you for your service ken very much and you know you guys uh you should be living your dream instead of having a nightmare but it sounds like like maybe good times are ahead i certainly hope they are congratulations on your win and thank you for sharing your story i know you were very fortunate to pick a good lawyer that's for sure so i highly recommend him yeah well i don't i don't get anything for recommending him except for my knowing that i've directed people to somebody i think that can be trusted all right well thank you so much and best of luck to you guys all right thank you thank you thank you very much bye now what an ordeal right well i want to close with this this story is folks this story is the exception is the exception is not the rule most rvs are not junk i don't care what anybody tells you they are not lemons they aren't most manufacturers the ones that i know they're actually pretty good people and they will own their mistakes uh very few of these cases actually go to trial this one did thank god for ken and linda smith that that went uh you know their way but the moral of the story is check your weight and make sure you know what you're carrying what you're able to carry safely and legally and uh document your records you know these people had a four inch binder they said of all the records just in case something happens but you know i hope that this will serve as a i don't know a warning to do your homework i don't want to scare you away from rving just this is a warning to document everything do your homework try and always take the high road if there is a problem if you do have to as i say you got to roll around the dirt make sure you got a a bad ass rv lemon lawyer not somebody that just you know does wills or divorces or whatever nothing wrong with that but you got to find somebody that knows how to fight the fight if you are in the right so next time next week we're going to try to have the actual lawyer on that that um was working with ken and linda we're going to get his perspective uh and that is uh our as i say our badass lemon lawyer ron byrd she is a super smart guy by the way we want to know how um i got the nickname the rv wing man you want to know that well it's by doing stories just like this one i love doing these kind of stories but maybe you don't like to hear them if you like hearing stories like this they're not always bad but like hearing stories like this let us know in the comments if you don't like these stories post those comments as well let us know either way if you would

Channel: Wingman Wisdom

Views: 168,387

Keywords: The RV Show USA, RV Show, Alan Warren, RV Wingman, RV Radio Show, RV Podcast, RV Travel, Lemon Law, RV Lemon, RV Horror Story, RV Horror Stories, RV Lawsuit, Lawsuit, Motorhome lawsuit, Nexus Lawsuit, Nexus RV

Id: WupfFbSw5Jo

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021