Dealer specific servicing

[danlehosky]

I have been reading about folks concerned about buying from a dealer close to their home location for service conveinence. In my book this is a non issue. We live in Washington State and bought our 2012 25FB Flying Cloud from a dealer in Michigan. We simply were not happy with the deals and more importantly the selection being offered by our local dealer. In these days of internet and almost limitless information availability it makes no sense to limit yourself to a specific geographical area when buying. Any Airstream dealer should and will service your TT no matter where you bought it. I believe Airstream obligates dealers to perform this service and it just makes good business sense for dealers to do this. Don't let the dealers hold this over your head as a bargaining tool. I think if you showed up at the same time as a customer that bought from them you might have to wait but so what. In this day with all of the resources available to you go for the best deal, with Airstream the service will follow. BTW now that that part of the process is over we are having a blast.
Dan

[hhendrix]

We tried to buy one fron the only Oregon dealer at the time, but he just wouldn't get serious about making a reasonable offer. We finally gave up and bought the identical Flying Cloud 27FB from a dealer in southern CA for $2000 less, including delivery to the OR border. We had it serviced by the new dealer in Portland and warranty issues were full covered.

[Jammer]

I think there is a balance.

I worked with both local and nationwide dealers and ended up with a factory order from my local dealer at a price I found competitive.

My trailer has had a significant number of problems that were covered under warranty requiring multiple trips to the dealer over two years. Some of these have required some hard work on the dealer's part interacting with Jackson Center and Dometic. While my local dealer's service department is not perfect, they have in several cases gone the extra mile in working on difficult problems and accommodating my schedule and situation.

I could easily have ended up making a trip to Jackson Center for one of the repairs if the dealer had been less willing to carry the freight.

By all means consider the nationwide dealers. They do a great job at what they do. The case for working with them is especially strong if you aren't satisfied with your local dealer, or don't have a local dealer, or live close to Jackson Center, or travel extensively so that the idea of a local dealer doesn't really apply.

The experience of Airforums members seems to have been that nearly all Airstream trailers develop problems of some kind that are covered by warranty (either the Airstream warranty or the warranty on individual components), if used and camped in regularly over the first two years.