Poll: Overall Happiness/General Satisfaction with your Heartland Trailer

[Luckyhat12]

I rated it as a 2. I am not completely dissatisfied with the camper. It absolutely has the floor plan that I wanted. I chose it over all other models. There are some neat features that have been incorporated. I completely feel as though I get the run around from the dealer and I don't think there is enough urgency when correcting issues with brand new units both at the dealer level and at the factory level. I will continue to believe this until I am shown otherwise. The most important features that sold me on this model was being able to get around in it with all the slides in, the garage, and the washer and dryer plumbing being installed. If I had to do it all again, I can't say that I would go this route. I would probably be more prone to get somthing else and cut a hole in the wall to route a washer to the outside and be done with it. I hope my mind is changed over time but I have had so many issues come up since I bought it I am afraid to keep it for too long because I don't know what is lying beneath. I am quite mechanically inclined and able to fix most of the issues that come up but I didn't spend this much money on a brand new unit so that I would still have to fix these things. If I wanted to keep working on something I would have bought used and saved a bunch of money.

 

[sealman]

I have more issues with my dealer than I do Heartland...We have a Bighorn 3100RL, purchased around August of '07. We picked it up on a monday and left tuesday for an 5000mi round trip from TX to CA.. NOTE: DW is a goddess for staying up most of the night getting the trailer ready for the trip(I am a lucky man). We had no problems at all except in San Diego the hot water heater would not light. After calling the mfg. I decided to have the hot water heater repaired on my own, now! (As the princess needs hot water, and she is always right.) $119.00 later, and a cleaned out vent tube, we are back in business. We have for the most part had no real issues. Remember we take these units down some of the best and worst roads around. On the other hand, there is not much excuse for poor quality control. Having owned a couple of successful mfg. companies for 20 years I know what it means to check twice and ship once. (Play on words, sorry). As for buying another Heartland....Maybe, as I believe its worth the money: I may want to really step up on the next one....Enough rambling.
John

 

[Chaser1]

mrveatch58

Hello mrveatch58,
I apologize for the problems you have experienced with your coach. I wanted to let you know that I am working with your dealership on getting your list of items repaired on your coach. I have already given them authorization to do the work. Thank you.
Steve Kennel
Heartland Customer Service

 

[caddojay]

Well, there you go! You can't beat having the factory reading the forum posts. Steve has sent e-mails to us personally, and followed up on issues for our 3055 with the dealer. That's one of the little things that makes this a good company.

 

[photomac]

As a shopper slowly looking for a "move up 5th wheel" from our present Sunnybrook 3310 Solanta...I loved what I saw on a number of Heartland's floorplans.

HOWEVER, after reading a few posts on this thread and a few of the other polls; I am a now a little unsure about Heartland. There seems to be a LOT more quality control issues with Heartland than I had with my Sunnybrook.

Sounds like Heartland does indeed have more interest in taking care of their customers AFTER the sale than Sunnybrook has these days, but IMHO...it seems that there are too many problems happening before the trailers leave the Heartland factory.

Yes...a lot of items seem to be standard on Heartland, rather than options like on a Sunnybrook Titan; but what I want (especially for the price) is a company that gets it right the first time.

Thoughts?

 

[jpmorgan37]

photomac;

I certainly understand your apprehension and you have brought up some good points. I would like to ask that you go back and look at the quality issues that you mentioned and look at the date of the post or the age of the RV. I bought my Grand Canyon over two years ago and there were a few quality issues in my coach. Over the past two years, I have seen a tremendous improvement in quality control. Another factor that I feel is in Heartlands favor is the recent addition of a Quality Control Supervisor and a staff of dedicated QC Assistants. Considering the 10,000 plus units that Heartland has produced in the last three years, my opinion is that they are having much fewer quality issues now and you will not find another RV manufacturer that stands behind their product any better than Heartland. Where else will you find, not only the Company owners, but the product managers, engineers and CR staff active on the Owners Forum? I wish you luck in your continued search and maybe we'll meet on the road somewhere.

John

p.s. My bride comes from Haddonfield

 

[photomac]

Will keep your thoughts in mind John as I do my searching. What they indicate is a company willing to listen to it's owners rather than Sunnybrook throwing them overboard after lots of loyal owners help build the company thru referralls.

Thankfully, we are not in a hurry.

One question comes to mind. Did any Heartland owners consider a NuWa product and if so, what swayed you over to Heartland vs. NuWa?

 

[theharveys]

When we were looking at trailers, we looked at and compared NU-WA (we looked at both the Hitchhiker II and the Champagne Edition), Newmar (primarily Torrey Pine), DoubleTree Mobile Suites, and the Carriage (Carri-Lite).
- We really liked the construction of the Mobile Suites and they had the floorplan closest to our liking, but we did not like the poorly designed kitchen in the 38 foot model.
- We did not like the NU-WA products because they seemed like a poor value. High price, but I could not "see" the value...and both DW and I were very disappointed with the Champagne Edition. We could not tell any difference between it and the HitchHiker II, certainly not for the difference in money.
- We liked the Torrey Pine but it is really long and really heavy (Over 18,000 lbs loaded).
- We also liked the Carri-Lite. My DW especially liked the electric stovetop and the dishwasher drawer. We also liked the pop-up television on the back wall.
- We also briefly looked at both the the Escalade and the Cedar Creek Day Dreamer but considered those both waaayyy overpriced for what you actually get.
In the end we ended up going with the Landmark Augusta because it was a good compromise on the floorplan, (we would love a separate living area and enclosed bath) and it has a great kitchen. It has a lot of things as standard that were options on some of the other trailers and the construction cannot be beat by any other manufacturer in it's market niche.
We felt that dollar for dollar, there is not a better made nor more feature rich fifth wheel on the market. All the others we looked at were also at least 10 to $40,000 more money than the Landmark.
Oh, and the factory seems to genuinely care about it's customers...something not all the others can say.

All that said...if money were no object, we would probably have a custom unit built for us by Teton Homes...but I cannot swing the $200,000.00 that would require...nor the $100,000.00 for the truck to tow it.

 

[photomac]

Thanks Jeff...

That's the kind of comparisons I want to look at.

 

[DaleR]

Jeff Harvey sums it up best in his reply.

Would I buy Heartland again? Yes, I think Heartland is just as good or better than any other brand out there for the price.

I would like to see Steve Kennel and Jim Beletti work on a program for us to get parts we need, with out having to go through a dealer repair service. (And I don't have a clue how it would work, or what the cost would be. This just something to kick around.)

Have a great day, packer ( Dale)

 

[ChopperBill]

Will keep your thoughts in mind John as I do my searching. What they indicate is a company willing to listen to it's owners rather than Sunnybrook throwing them overboard after lots of loyal owners help build the company thru referralls.

Thankfully, we are not in a hurry.

One question comes to mind. Did any Heartland owners consider a NuWa product and if so, what swayed you over to Heartland vs. NuWa?

We were this close >< to ordering a NuWa almost 2 years ago when we ordered the Bighorn. We just got back from the Denver RV show and looked at the NuWa again. Renee and us both were just not that excited about the NuWa this time. Just didn't trip our trigger. The only coaches that did were Mobile Suites and Carriage Cameo. Both were super nice. However, they are in a different category and would have cost a bunch more. (will admit that the Mobile Suite was lower priced than I thought they were) We have lots of the features in our Bighorn that the big boys have. Plus we would have had to buy a trailer 4-5 foot longer then we wanted as at times we double tow. The 3055 fits or needs just right with our lifestyle today.

 

[mrcomer]

I have compared the Carriage Cameo to the Landmark and the Landmark has better features when it come to standards. Some of the Landmark standards aren't even option on the Cameo. And from what I encountered, the price of the Cameo looked to be a bit higher.

 

[Sundance_kid]

Have had very good service from our Sundance, nice 5er for the price. Very good backing from our dealer and Heartland as well. Few minor issues, all is great.