I would expect everything to be perfect. I can't imagine how they can build a camper on a unpainted frame. They get the frame from lippert and the first thing they do is mount the tanks and axle. How can you miss it not being painted??
I have not done business with my dealer before but I have positive feelings about them. They are in a community of about 1000. I live in a town of 50000 10 miles south. If they would be not treating people well they would be out of business. Every year they sponsor a Campfest which they invite all there customers. I can't imagine them not working with their customers.
In fairness, the frame wasn't totally unpainted. They missed the axles and some of the center. Rust formed. It surprised our dealer too. I think that the inspection process in the plant needs some serious work. Our issues weren't subtle at all. The pantry/laundry door wouldn't latch, neither would the bedroom door. How in the world would an inspector miss that? The black tank valve was visibly off. Some of the stuff we found was clearly caused by vibration in transit (Don't start me on how engineering didn't consider avoiding things like that). In a very imperfect industry, our Bighorn still stands out as better than most. Of course, you could ask how my unit could have been in the Seattle RV show with the Western Regional Sales Manager of Landmark stationed in the coach without discovering doors wouldn't close? My wife found the pantry door issue at the show. The shower door handle was on the floor in the bathroom at the show as well. To their credit, the dealer's walk through person found a lot of this before we even got to our walk through. He wondered how his team could miss such obvious issues. He was especially surprised that the unpainted axles and part of the frame was missed by Heartland and his own team. I know why. They didn't bother to look.
I am a program manager. I know something about quality and how to get it. I also know how difficult it is to find people who have the mind set to do the kind of exhaustive inspections needed to avoid problems like mine. My previous employer figured out how to do it. They are the world's largest software company. We consistently delivered excellent code. It cost money to do this. It took a lot of management attention to get to this point. It's painfully obvious to me that the RV industry has no serious incentive to deliver with quality. If 100% of coaches require dealer work to make them deliverable to a customer, there is a serious problem. Now that isn't to say that cars and trucks are delivered completely defect free. The vast majority (over 90%) of Fords and Toyotas do reach the dealer with no remediation required. The ones that do need some work are fixed in the pre-delivery process. The customers never have to make a warranty claim. I read on the RV forums a continuous litany of "There are always a few things that you have to expect to get fixed on a new coach." Why? I hate to break it to the people who say that, but a trailer is a lot less complex to build than the TV that is pulling it. Yet, every vehicle we have purchased required absolutely no warranty work.
If anyone from Heartland (other than the obvious PR people) are reading this, you should seriously consider instituting root-cause analysis on your defects. If you do that, you can make small changes in the production line that will slash the number of warranty claims. You should also consider Lean manufacturing techniques. I saw first hand how they not only improve quality but cut costs. Warranty work is expensive. It not only costs you money, but it also erodes customer confidence in your product. While Heartland has amazingly responsive customer relations, it still has the industry quality issues. Please, no one respond with "Heartland isn't as bad as the others." Wow, what a left-handed compliment that is.
I am a happy customer for a few reasons:
- Heartland always answers my questions and shows a real interest in me as a customer. That is wonderful! This reason alone has earned my loyalty forever.
- The design and material choices for my coach are clearly first rate. The only possible exceptions are the tires (Tow Max) and the locks on the basement and front compartment. I love the quality of the interior and purchased components.
- Customer service appears to be completely on my side.
- My dealer is reliable and has my best interests (not a Heartland reason, but one that makes me very happy).
I'm unhappy that such a well designed product is so poorly assembled. The problem is almost certainly in the way the production is organized. Traditionally, RV companies have function-based workstations where workers perform part of the assembly and then the coach moves to the next station. In most companies, the coach spends a predetermined time at each station (15 minutes at other companies). If, for any reason, the workers are feeling rushed to get the coach out of their area on time, quality will suffer. Failure to get the coach out will slow the entire line. That will certainly get the offending workers some unwanted attention. It's easy to see that in this model good quality is far less likely across all of the assembly stations. I get it. I also know that car companies solved this problem. They, like you, make different models on the same line. However, they have developed techniques to efficiently avoid quality problems. I've worked on some of these issues. I know they can be solved.
Sorry for the rant.
