2021 Milestone Wall Cracks

[thewanderingeight]

Looks like we are getting cracks in our walls on our 2021 Milestone 370flmb. It sounds like something is being forced back into place on one of the slides as it goes out, so I am assuming a weld has broken inside the wall. I am disappointed as I thought they had this issue fixed on the newer units.

Not off to a great start trying to use the warranty as I called Heartland and they said the dealership never registered our sale with Heartland, so it still shows as a retail unit. The person I spoke with gave me their email to send them some pictures but said their wasn't anything we could do until the dealership sent in the proper info. Luckily the dealership responded to my email right away and said they would look into it. We are nowhere near the dealership though, so hopefully they take care of it on their end as we have no way to follow up in person.

 

[sengli]

Yikes! In the mean time, on the exterior wall cracks. I would make sure that crack is RTV'd to keep moisture out till they can fix it.

 

[thewanderingeight]

I have put gorilla tape over it for now to keep the moisture out. It keeps the water out but can still be removed easily enough.


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[Dahillbilly]

keep a log of everything in relation to who & when you have contact regarding your issue, whether it's a call, email, letter or text message. Been there & had good luck witjh Heartland warranty issue

 

[thewanderingeight]

keep a log of everything in relation to who & when you have contact regarding your issue, whether it's a call, email, letter or text message. Been there & had good luck witjh Heartland warranty issue

Thanks for the advice! I was hoping they would see the cracks and have us come right to Indiana, but they want us to take it to a service center first to have it inspected, which I get, but I’m worried about burning a bunch of time trying to find a dealership who will look at it and then potentially just having it sit on their lot until they can get to it.


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[david-steph2018]

When we had a side wall crack on our 2018 Road Warrior, Heartland would not take it to the factory. Then sent it to a private repair place in Goshen, Ind... Heartland sent it to Affinity RV Group; the repairs took around a week to get it fixed.

 

[sengli]

Affinity RV repair in Goshen, is where they had us go for warranty repairs too. Those guys are very good! If you do have to take it there, they do it all and well from my experiences.

 

[thewanderingeight]

It seems that RV dealers don't want to look at your RV if you didn't purchase it from them. I found one that said they would look at it, but were 3+ months out. I ended up finding a service location in FL that is just for service, and not part of a dealership. I was able to get an appointment with them in January when we get into FL. I'm hoping they are able to do the repairs there since they do collision repairs. Fingers crossed!

 

[sengli]

Unlike buying a new car, the dealers dont have to honor your warranty, or even look at the unit if they choose not to. We found that out when we bought our Big Horn new, and attempted to contact the local dealer. They didnt mince words, they asked did you buy it here? I said no...he said we dont have enough time to take care of our customers, so we dont have any room in the schedule to help you.

 

[thewanderingeight]

Unlike buying a new car, the dealers dont have to honor your warranty, or even look at the unit if they choose not to. We found that out when we bought our Big Horn new, and attempted to contact the local dealer. They didnt mince words, they asked did you buy it here? I said no...he said we dont have enough time to take care of our customers, so we dont have any room in the schedule to help you.

That's pretty much the exact response I got from most of the ones I spoke to. They were already booked out for months and didn't want to make it worse with units that didn't even come from their location. It's been an interesting experience seeking outside help for repairs as I have been fortunate enough to take care of everything myself up until now.

 

[thewanderingeight]

Just thought I would post an update about our experience with trying to get this fixed.

I'm not sure if we are any closer to a resolution on this. We just seem to be going in circles with Heartland. I had a service center in FL look at the unit back in January where they determined there were cracks in the aluminum sidewall frame welds causing the wall cracks and it would need to go back to Heartland for repairs. Ever since then, the rep we had been working with had been asking for one or two pictures at a time. We would send them the requested pictures, then they would ask for some additional pictures. This went on for a few months until they finally said they had everything they needed, but then said we needed to redo all the pictures and sent me a guide to follow. By this time, we are in a work camping spot which was very hard to get into and has trees around making it pretty difficult to get some of the pictures they want.

Now the original rep I was working with is no longer with Heartland, so a new rep reached out to me to help pick up the case. They let me know I should have had the frame inspected by Lippert as part of this process which the original rep never communicated to us. I contacted Lippert to start that process, but they told me that based on the Upper Deck Flex sheet I completed, the frame is fine and they see no reason to inspect it. I sent that over to Heartland and am waiting to hear back.

Has anyone else run into this much resistance? From the very first phone call to Heartland, the response I got seemed pretty adversarial toward providing a resolution. I’m not sure how we could have caused this issue as we weigh the RV to watch the weight, and have never hit anything with the RV to cause any kind of body damage. We are at a campground just an hour away from Elkhart for the summer, so I was hoping to get this resolved early in the season to get it over with, but at this point, I am afraid our warranty might be over before we ever get traction on a resolution.