A Grand Day

6:30am found us pulling into the service center to drop off our home. After talking with Tim Reaves the head of the service department about our three issues: our water leak that we had a pretty good idea of where the problem was; our bedroom slide not coming in completely; the crack in the gel coat we had made the first time hitching up.

We had a tour of the facilities scheduled for 2pm so had some time to while away. A great breakfast at Gramma's House of Pancakes where we took our time and Dave regaled her with stories of our adventures.

About 9:30 we received a call from Tim: our leak issue had been diagnosed; the slide was being taken out...seems there had been a leak and the floor needed to be replaced; they were starting to repair the cracked gelcoat. We are two months out of warranty but do have an extended warranty, Dave asked Tim what the cost was going to be. Tim's reply was "Spending a few days in Elkart" after repeating it a a second time Dave realized they were going to take care of everything with no cost to us. We just had to find a place to stay for a few days. No problem we can do that, but first we headed to the service center to get some clothes and essentials for a few days. Let me tell you it's very disconcerting to see your slide out of your bedroom..wish I had taken a picture.

While visiting the service center we got to meet JD from customer service. JD has been our go to guy when we have any questions or issues, according to Facebook he's also a lot of other folks go to guy.

 Before too long it was time for our tour, Tyler met us and we chatted for a bit. He said if one of the owners of Grand Design is on site during the tours they try and meet the folks taking the tour. Don Clark came down, met us and then asked if we would come up to his office for a chat.

We were also joined by Bill Clark the new Director of Marketing. Seems when Dave set up the tour he mentioned I was the admin on the Grand Design Owners Facebook page. We spent an hour talking: of our reason to by a Grand Design; our happiness in our home; the Grand Design Owners Facebook page. A great conversation, some pictures then Don gave Dave and I a few gifts. Bill Clark has since become a voice for Grand Design on our Facebook page.

Eventually we headed out for our tour, what a great tour guide Tyler was. From chassis to finished roof and everything in between. Dave now has a better understanding of what\where things are and where they are run. Meanwhile Tyler is making notes of things we comment on and asking us questions as well. After a 2 hour in depth tour we called it a day...and oh what a grand day it had been.




This was Dave's Facebook post that evening.

"Today was the most amazing day Faye and I have had in a long time. We are in Bristol Indiana to get some work done on our RV and to tour the Grand Design factory. This morning we dropped off the RV at the repair center at 6:30am and was met by the service manager Tim, super nice guy. I explained what was wrong and went to breakfast with my queen. At 9:30am the service manager called me back and asked if we can leave the rig with them until Friday. He said they found the leak in the gray tank output, fixed it and were putting new insulation and bottom cover on, they also found a leak in the bedroom slide that warped the floor causing the slide not to go in all the way and were replacing the floor and seal. They said they were also going to fix the cracked gel coat on the front nose of the RV, that's why they needed to keep it to Friday. I asked what it was going to cost me and he said nothing, that's right people nothing. We went back to get some clothes out of the rig to find several guys working on it. The slide was out of the rig, a guy was working on the leaky pipe to the tank and had already started working on the cracked gel coat. Then they really started to overwhelm us on the tour. We met the CEO of the company, sat down in his office with his marketing director and a couple of other I think important people, talked about the company and gave us company jackets and hats. They took pictures of us with the CEO and us with him in his office. Then our private tour started which was amazing, now I know the ins and outs of my whole rig. Along the way Faye saw some upgrades to the 2015 rig in the same floor plan she liked and our tour guide took notes and I think he's going to get them added to the RV while it's being repaired, talk about customer service." 

Until next time...