Response from FR Customer Service

Originally posted by podwerkz As we've seen in another post, Forest River will gladly sell an owner a new $1100 fridge...and certainly the removal of the old unit, and installation of the new one will expose the user (and Forest River) to risk. Makes no sense to me at all.

Annoying for sure but not really hard to understand. Follow the money. When FR sells you a fridge they make a profit from doing that, so they have made the business decision that the cost/risk to them from selling that fridge is worth it.

They do not make any money from selling the zamp or go solar or diy solar kit so they don’t have any incentive to help you with that. I’m not saying that’s right from a customer service point of view, just that that is how they think about it. Competition is fierce so they are always looking for places where they can reduce costs, and US based customer service departments with on call knowledgeable technical staff are expensive. We have all I’m sure noticed that most large companies that still do call center customer service do it in India or the Philippines. Low labor cost, good IT infrastructure, and decent English skills. Not too many travel trailers in India though so not a great option for FR. 😜

Originally posted by offgrid Annoying for sure but not really hard to understand. Follow the money. {snip} They do not make any money from selling the zamp or go solar or diy solar kit so they don’t have any incentive to help you with that. I’m not saying that’s right from a customer service point of view, just that that is how they think about it.

The automotive industry is much more mature than the RV industry. The cost of entry to make rvs is minuscule compared to the tooling and engineering for cars and trucks. So there have been lots of smaller players who come and go. But now with FR, Jayco and a few others consolidating the market that is changing. It appears to be headed in the direction that the auto industry has gone. So I agree that we will likely end up with more standardized well documented products, with customer service provided by the dealer network. It might take some litigation to accelerate that. The downside of that of course will be less product variations being offered, and I think we’re seeing some of that too at least in the rpod lineup.

Is it wrong thinking? Sure of course in the long run, but that’s what happens when you let the bean counters make your business decisions (no offense meant to the accounting profession) in an effort to increase quarterly profits. If you don’t like it then you can always buy a low volume high cost RV from a brand more focussed on customer service, like say Nucamp’s Tab.

Re the solar ready issue, You can’t compare it to general customer service problems. It’s a completely different business arrangement for FR. You don’t think FR puts those solar companies’ labels in there for free do you? Most likely they have to direct customer inquiries to those solar companies or dealers. I did exactly that with a couple of home builders selling “solar ready” homes when I was doing biz dev for a solar manufacturer a few years ago.