Would you buy again?

Craigmri

Member
Hey guys, my wife and I are shopping for our first travel trailer. Prior to discovering the Terry Classic we were looking at the Forest River R-Pods but find them to be too cramped. We really like the Terry Classic but after reading the forums I have to admit I am a little more than nervous about making the plunge due to the various problems I have read.

My question would be this......If you were to start all over again knowing what you know now, would you buy a Terry Classic again? Would you select a different dealer again?

What advice can you offer a first time buyer?

Thanks in advance,
Craig
 
Hello Craig,

I would purchase a Terry V21 again, but I would hold the dealer responsible for resolving the common issues before taking delivery. This eliminates most of the disappointments. Common things to look at are the roof material being cut too short, curtain rail and curtains too short (not enough material), verify all lights and audio. Spend as much time as possible with the dealer making them demo everything. This makes it easier to catch and functional and/or cosmetic issues. Again, I would purchase a Terry as the quality issues are industry-wide and not specific to Heartland products.

Some of the issues cannot be addresses before delivery as they might not be producible at that time. This goes for any travel trailer/RV... nothing specific to a Terry or Heartland product. One example if this is my Dometic refer fan. Dometic used a $2 computer case fan instead of a quiet $9 computer case fan. When it is hot outside, the fans kicks in to cool the refer as is extremely noisy. I told my purchasing dealer about the issue when I had the trailer in for other warranty issues and they claimed they were unable to reproduce an abnormal noise level with the fan. Now I have to remove the refer and replace the fan myself.

A small issue I noticed yesterday was the screws used to mount the plastic sliding rails under the bed. The bed has a lift to raise it for reading/watching TV in bed. Since the OSB plywood that the mattress sits on slides on these rails when raising/lowering the bed, the screws that hold down the plastic glides are supposed to have flat heads. Of the eighteen screws, seven has round top screw heads scraping the bottom of the OSB plywood causing premature wear and leaving wood chips/dust in the storage area below the bed. I removed and replaced the seven rogue screws yesterday. Things like this will be hard to identify pre-purchase. Basically the assembler was lazy, did not care, and used any spare screw available from his/her coffee can. It helps being a little handy as one can resolve issues like this for $1 worth of hardware.

--Chris
 
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