This begs the age old question on whether or not saving a little money buying from afar is worth the hassle of not having a local dealer that will look after you after the sale. We bought from a local dealer in Saskatoon here and have been very pleased with the service that we have received. The same issue pops up all the time from farmers (as I am) who find a great deal at an auction sale and save $50G on a large piece of equipment worth $250-300G, but when they have problems the local equipment dealer tells them to take a hike because they are busy servicing their own customers who supported them. So is the money you save always worth it? Everyone has to determine this for themselves. If you have to drive a couple of hours one way to get serviceon your rv, and take a day off of work to do it, how much money are you saving?
But I did run into this parts issue with Heartland myself when I had a defective rim on my 2010 3300RLB. The aluminum cast rim had a pinhole leak in the rim which caused it to lose 10-20psi pressure everyday. The dealership confirmed the issue, but Heartland would not cover the cost of shipping the rim plus duty and broker. I was supposed to pay $75 to cover this cost and then they would send me a new rim! This is the first time that I had heard of this one from any company whose rv I had purchased. I ended up taking it to someone local who welded aluminum and he put some weld on top of the defective area. Just to let labbysmon know that yours is not an isolated incident.