Don't Buy An RV! - Lehto's Law Ep. 45

hello and welcome once again to Latos law I'm Steve Lee to turn it on state of Michigan or I've been practicing law now for almost 24 years I specialize in consumer protection and lemon law help people with their legal problems involving cars and other big purchases I often write for Jalopnik sub blog car buying and from time to time I write for opposite lock in other places and house read books the most recent books a book called American murder houses and it's exactly what it sounds like one chapter each about various notorious murder houses around the country you can read it and take yourself on a coast-to-coast tour the most notorious houses of homicide or at least that's what the book says today on lady Laura to talk about why you don't want to buy an RV don't buy an RV I'm talking recreational vehicles I understand the people that are going to buy RVs despite what I tell you but the point here is to learn what you can about it before you get involved in transaction buying something that big recreational vehicles are huge purchases often much much more than a car sometimes more than a house I've had clients who spend a quarter of a million dollars on an RV and it's a scary concept you spend that much money on something and people don't know what the law is first thing you need to know is that an RV despite the fact is often got wheels and rolls down the road under its own power is not covered by the lemon law in most states so you buy an RV in Michigan it's defective you bring it to shop four or five six times it spends six months in the shop in the first year you can't force the manufacturer to buy it back as easily as you could as if it was a $20,000 car strangely cost ten times as much but the law is not the same and the manufacturers know that so the law you're going to be talking about the Magnusson Moss Warranty Act Magnusson Moss Warranty Act says that if the vehicle can't be repaired under warranty you can make the manufacturer buy it back after a reasonable number of repair attempts but reasonable is not defined and because of that manufacturers know that they can jerk you around more it's not uncommon the people with RVs will have a vehicle in a shop seven eight nine times six seven eight months in the first year and the manufacturer says hey guess what bring it back in we'll work on it some more it's still not something that we're going to buy back from you because this is reasonable for a recreational vehicle to require this many repair attempts some of the confusion happens with our visas because there are more than one manufacturer involved so you go when you look at an RV and it's you know brand a RVs okay brand a might be who put the Box on the chassis the chassis might be built by somebody else the drivetrain might be built by a third company it's not in common you've got three major companies involved in manufacturing an RV when you buy a recreational vehicle it's not uncommon they walk out with a banker's box filled with notebooks and say here's your warranty what they mean to say is here are your warranties and the warranties come from each different manufacturer so the Box the you know the house unit on the RV comes from one manufacturer the chassis is built manufactured and warranted by somebody else and the drivetrain might be built and manufactured by even a third party it's not in common to the chassis Xand the drive trains needs are built by truck companies or bus companies and so you might have a bluebird chassis or a Spartan chassis underneath an RV built by like say Forest River or Damon so when you buy these things be aware of that okay I know people who bought an RV unaware of the manufacturer of the engine and you know some manufacturers are very good some are not maybe Cummins might be Ford who knows so you got to find this stuff out do the research on the RV before you buy it and understand that the manufacturers of the RV might be different and they might have their own warranties it also means that the RV is very very complicated one of the reasons you get so many different warranty booklet and you buy an RV is because RVs have got more systems in them than automobiles do and RV is going to have plumbing in it it's gonna have electricity in it running to things like heaters and fans and air conditioners and refrigerators and microwaves and satellite dishes and television sets I've had people who come into my office assistive like a defective RV the cabinets are broken the shower leaks and it sounds like you're describing a bad apartment which in many respects is what they are doing so when you buy an RV you got to know that there's so many more things that can go wrong with it that it might just boggle your mind many people buy RVs and the first time they buy an RV they're shocked how difference it is and what they were expecting a lot of people assume that you're gonna spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on something it's gonna be trouble free if you spent two hundred thousand dollars in a car you're going to get a trouble-free carve two brand new car it's worth that kind of money you drop a couple hundred grand in an RV and the shower might not work the toilet might not flush you might say Steve you're crazy that's not going to happen it's happened I've represented dozens and dozens and dozens of people defective RVs I've represented people who owned a quarter of a million two RVs that have the craziest things go wrong with them person buys a brand-new six-figure RV they get in it they're driving it home from the dealership it starts to rain water pours into the windshield somebody buys a brand-new six-figure RV they're driving any time it gets over fifty miles an hour the rear axle catches on fire okay those are not normal things if that happened to an automobile you take it back and they buy it back from you but the manufacturers know that the Magnusson Moss Warranty Act being less well defined in the lemon law gives them a lot of leeway a lot of gray area because of that they take advantage of it another thing to be aware of is when you buy an RV most RV dealers are very very adept at protecting themselves and so are the manufacturers it's not uncommon that manufacturer's warranty booklets are filled with disclaimers that even the car manufacturers don't use I've seen a lot of RV manufacturers in recent years limit the statute of limitations in their warranty booklet and it says if you've got a problem with erv you've got a suus okay so you buy an RV that's got a three year warranty on it and you drive it for a year and the thing blows up you file a lawsuit they will defend it say you brought your lawsuit too late you've got a sua stood this to a judge and said how can my client enforce anything after the first year because they can't file the lawsuit and the judge said well they didn't like that they shouldn't have agreed to it my client says I didn't agree to anything they gave me a box filled with documents at the time of purchase so believe it or not when you're going to buy a 100 thousand dollar RV they bring a box filled with documents out to you and say by the way you're signing a thing that says I acknowledge having read everything in that box you tell them say unfortunately I got to sit down now and read everything in this box they are not gonna be happy and you probably won't do it but that's the kind of stuff that's hidden in there also the purchase agreement at many RV dealers these days many purchase agreements contain language that say specifically things like you agree not to sue us no matter what goes wrong with this RV so you can buy a quarter of a million dollar v4 dealership if you sign that document and you're driving it home and it explodes it bursts into flames and literally you barely get out of it alive and it burns all the way to the ground so when the fire department gets there there's nothing but a smoldering pile of ashes where your RV used to be okay you could go back the dealership say guys there's something wrong with my RV they'd say hey you signed a piece of paper you can't sue us now you can sue the manufacturer for breach of warranty but you can't sue us all we did was sell it to you and that clause in their purchase agreement that says you cannot sue them no matter what will be upheld by most courts and Michigan it gets upheld all the time and a lot of times they'll say you can't sue us unless you go through an arbitration process and the arbitration process is spelled out in the document in the arbitration process is so difficult and time consuming and so slanted against the consumer that it's not even worth doing okay I understand if your RV burned to the ground you'd file an insurance claim my point is simply this no matter what happens you can sometimes never even go back against the seller okay so you buy a defective product in a typical situation I buy something from you it doesn't work I can give it back to you say this thing doesn't work it's go revocation of acceptance you can't revoke your acceptance to some of these RV sellers because they have you sign a document saying you can't okay and you might ask why is this RV dealers have become very very attuned to the fact that a lot of buyers of these $100,000 $200,000 products get really angry when they discover how defective these RVs can be so to protect themselves it got you signing these documents and because there is no lemon law they know that you have to just get entangled with the manufacturer and deal with the manufacturer on this so the sellers are very very sophisticated another problem we have in the RV industry okay is that there's so many manufacturers of our V's out there and they're often change names or getting bought up and so on so now you know you want to go buy a car you go by General Motors product or Chrysler product or heaven forbid a Toyota you go buy some product you've heard of these companies before most of them have been around for a while General Motors General General Motors has been around awhile so long I should be able to pronounce okay General Motors been around so as Chrysler so as Ford okay but you go to an RV deal when you're walking along there's all these different RVs and they all look really nice they look really nice okay and you're looking at these RVs and you're asking around you'll find that many of the RV companies are new they've only been around a while and you don't know the key is to find out the reputation of the companies but don't ask the seller okay RV dealers going to tell you that everything on their lot is great we only deal with manufacturers that are reputable that's not how you do it you're going to want to go to a campground during the season walk around and look for somebody's got an RV from the manufacturer that you're thinking about buying from and talk to that person for some odd reason a lot of people who use our v's are very outgoing or extroverts they love traveling and meeting people okay walk up to somebody's got the RV that you're thinking about buying and say guys can you show me around and cure something about buying one these what do you think tell me about have you had problems with it yet any warranty issues with it it's amazing how many times I've met people who said I bought an RV I had all kinds of problems with it I took it to the campground and the guy who runs the campground told me I can't believe you bought that those things all had problems well do this backwards go to the campground and talk the guy at the front gate say I'm thinking about buying a ABC brand RV what are your thoughts on that can you introduce me to some buddies got one find out that's how you define this stuff up are better brands than other brands and you got to figure this stuff out I've had clients of mine who bought brand new hundred thousand dollar RVs taking them on their first trips and then when they get underneath it to you know level it or whatever they look underneath there and has all kinds of rust on the frame of their brand-new RV they literally got it a week earlier and the underside is covered with rust and again the problem is that people tend to think of this like an automobile purchase I walk around a car a brand-new car on a car lot I'm not actually thinking to myself gee I wonder if I should get on my belly like a reptile and crawl underneath it most people think it's a brand new car I don't need to do that brand new RV you need to do that for several reasons one is there's no lemon wall okay so you get a vehicle's defective you're going to be fighting over it you don't want one it's defective number two a lot of RVs are built in other states and driven to the place where it's being sold well a lot of cars are brought in car haulers and number three a lot of RVs sit on lots for a long period of time so an RV gets built in Indiana gets driven up to Michigan in the wintertime it's parked on a lot for a while sits there for a year year and a half and it gets sold to you as brand new it might be brand new but the underside might be covered with rust believe it or not you're going to buy a brand new RV you should have it inspected by a professional you might think I'm crazy on this one spend a couple bucks get someone who's a professional to come out inspect the RV for you if you're going to spend a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars in an RV in particular why not drop a couple hundred bucks the salesman might think you're insane and might try to discourage you from doing this but why would they want to discourage you from doing that you're just trying to be an educated consumer have somebody come out and spec the RV for you before you buy they'll climb around underneath it they'll check the systems a lot of times people will buy a brand new RV the sales going to walk through and give them the walk through here's how this works you're the boom and then they take it to a campground and they hook it off and they can't get stuff to work they don't know if they're doing it wrong they don't know if it's broken they don't hooked up wrong one of the most common complaints I get is people say I bought an RV I took it to a campground and stuff wouldn't work I couldn't get the guy who runs the campground he couldn't get it to work I couldn't get it to work other people reading the manuals none of us can get it to work we brought it back to the dealership the dealership said oh you were doing it wrong okay we figured it out you're doing it wrong and of course they take it to another dealership or excuse me to take it to another campground and it again doesn't work okay the question of course is does this stuff not work or is it not being demonstrated properly who knows so when you have an expert who gives you an inspection of the vehicle before you buy it that person can also go through and say yes the air conditioning works the hot water heater works the toilet works the shower works and so on you're going to want to have someone do that if you know somebody who knows our visa can bring that person along as well they could do it but but the point is and if you do not know RVs don't buy your first RV and just trust that the dealership is taking care of you because it's a very good chance they don't one of the scariest things about RVs is the difference between how they treat you when you're shopping versus when you come back for repairs I've had people tell me that you know the salesman requirement all over them and treating them like royalty until they sign the documents and when they brought it back in for the first repair attempt the dealership says you know something we're backed up right now we can't get your vehicle for six months or you got to leave it we don't know when we can get to it and people freaked out it's a way I bought this thing in April or May and I can't pick it up till October I don't want it in October I live in Michigan I want it I want this thing in the summertime you can have it in October and they say well that's unfortunately we're backed up a lot of our VD lers have got very small service departments but huge sales departments and that's backwards and you don't want to be in the position when you find that out because they're not in our hurry to fix your RV because there's no lemon law lemon law makes them buy a vehicle back it takes more than 30 days to fix it no such thing with an RV I've had people who bought an RV they've owned it for 12 months spent 11 months in the shop I kid you not they filed a lawsuit and the RV manufacturer says that's typical that's typical they won't tell you it's typical when you go to buy it but they will tell you it's typical when you bring it in for repairs I've actually had a client of mine who bought a $200,000 RV two hundred thousand dollars and he's driving along one day and the accelerator pedal stops working because the connection to the rear engine it's a pusher the connection the throttle cable comes apart and no longer is working okay so he's driving along and suddenly the pedal doesn't work anymore so he manages to stop the vehicle figures us all out he calls the manufacturer they said bring it to us we'll fix it he says how do I do that I can't get the throttle to work they said we you can tow it at your own expense it's going to cost a fortune or you can just figure out how to do it so my client opens up the floorboards reaches into the engine compartment is working the throttle by hand while his wife is upfront steering and yelling out the speed they're going at a don't limp it like that into an RV dealership someplace where it gets reconnect and gets put back together again as one of the many problems my client had with that RV we file a lawsuit against the manufacturer and the manufacturer is defending by saying is nothing wrong with this RV because we fixed it every time he brought it in despite the fact he spent over two hundred thousand dollars on it and had all kinds of crazy crazy problems like this and so during a break my clients couldn't contain himself he turns to the attorney goes I can't believe you treat your customers like this I can't believe your client and you treat customers like this I spent two hundred thousand dollars one of your products and this is how you treat us an attorney actually said to him if all you spent was two hundred thousand dollars in an RV you should have known what you're getting you weren't spending enough money to get a good one honest to god you need to spend more than that if you actually want to get an RV without these kinds of problems and that was the attitude of that RV manufacturer and I've encountered that over and over and over again if you're buying an RV expect to have lots of problems expect to take forever for repairs or learn to live with things not working ok so if this worries you like I said have your brand-new RV inspected and consider renting one before you buy one a lot of RV places will rent you an RV for a week or two go find the RV that you're thinking about buying and see if you can rent one for a couple weeks take it out for a couple weeks and see how it works if it lasts that first couple week trial period there's a chance that maybe you want to buy one of these but you'd be surprised I've had friends of mine rent rvs and all kinds of crazy things go wrong and they go well it was a rental nnessee no no it was an RV ok so that's the reason I tell you don't buy an RV if you're going to buy an RV just keep all of these things in mind and protect yourself because of the fact that RVs it's a feel fraught with peril and if you want to do it and it's the lifestyle you're in to get yourself into it but do it with your eyes open protect yourself and save your money that wraps up this week's Latos law I thank you for watching and listening questions your comments always fire them at me at Latos law comm le h TOS l aw comm i'm on twitter at Steve later at ste vele HT oh and of course you can listen to the show and rate it on iTunes stitcher SoundCloud and YouTube thanks for listening bye bye

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 826,737

Keywords: Recreational Vehicle (Industry), Law (Industry), Michigan (US State), Attorney, Lawyer

Id: IP_u2JR51_Y

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2015