I just thought I would share a bit about my shopping experience for a hard side camping trailer in Boise.
I knew my budget of 10 to 15k.
I knew I wanted 3 separate sleeping areas so the kids did not have to sleep together. We need a bathroom a shower and oven and a refrigerator. In the towing capacity needed to fit our smaller Jeep Grand Cherokee.
We would only get into the top end of our budget if we got a full size refrigerator and Janae really dislikes the type of bathroom here you shower or over the top of the toilet.
We had already been to a couple of dealers and knew the basics of what we want so we thought we'd go out and hit four different dealers and see what we could find. First we stopped buy Leshes RV we talked to Jamie. He was the friendliest and nicest of all sales people we would buy an RV from him he had the right type whatever the had a very small selection that did not meet what we were looking for.
Next we went to Nelson's RV which Janae had already been in to, so she knew the salesman's name that she would talk to however he wasn't there. Perhaps that took a little bit of sales pressure off of us as we went out and looked at our favorite trailer. It was a little bit heavier than would be ideal for our towing capacity. So we would have to be concious about what we loaded it up with. However we could pull it and it had nicest inside feels including a large oven and refrigerator and everything else we needed. One of the things that we paid attention to was our bed for me and Janae. There was one bunk directly over it so another of the three sleeping areas was right where we were slept. It's not like we had much privacy anyway and we wanted to make sure it would work so we lay down on it and found that it was not too coffin like and we could fold the upper bunk up and out of our way in the case someone wasn't sleeping in it.
This was our favorite trailer of all the ones we went to see.
However we continued on and went to Dennis Dillon RV and we quickly realized how nice the lower pressure sales environments the first two places we were. First Dillon sales guy took us through all of the trailers that we already knew we were interested in from a previous visit and when we found out that none of them worked he quickly did the ole switcharoo over to another salesman and said " have a seat we're going to have Dennis come out and speak to you you and he may be able to find you a better floor plan". I wasn't about to take the switch routine so another salesman can pressure us and make it uncomfortable to say no. However Janae realized that she forgot her purse somewhere. So we went out with a new sales guy to find it where she left it in one of the trailers. It turns out that the trailer she left it in was the very last one where, similar to the trailer we found it Nelson's, had a bunk over the sleeping area me and Janae werein. However in this trailer the lower bed was like a coffin and the upper bunk did not fold out of the way if we wanted to. Anyway we found her purse and second salesman attempted to show us some more more trailers that didn't fit and made it rather awkward for us to say no thank you.
Finally we went out to Bishes RV in Nampa. Immediately we could feel a sales nightmare when the lady at the front desk scrambled to find out which sales guy was owed the next client in their sales group. (Instead of helping us get to finding a trailer).
This indicated to me that sales was their top priority, and it probably flavored my whole visit. He sat down with the us asked us a ton of questions including our budget which we told him was 10 to 15 first. At the end of the question and answer. You definitely knew what he was looking for however it felt more like a tactic to get us to invest time with their RV shop instead of actually trying to find out what we were looking for . Since we had already told him that we knew exactly what we were looking for .
As we walked out he said as you can see we do things differently here by getting an understanding of the trailer you are looking for. I don't know how to describe the way he said that however it was very cheesy and in no way helped us see any benefits of doing business with them. We then sat in an old huge used trailer that never would have been able to be pulled behind the Jeep and he knew that because he asked me about that before we went to look. However he spent a bit of time awkwardly again attempting to tell us why it was a good one for us and why there just weren't many options. When we finally convince them that we are not buying that trailer he said let's go take a look at one other one. And we drove all the way across the lot and he said oh wait I forgot to look at this one which was the closest possible match and fit all of our criteria very well. However we ultimately decided we just didn't like the layout. You had to change the main bed into the dinette which was nice because we had a full sized dinette and a full size bed however something about it just wasn't perfect for us, we had to think on it. He again made it difficult as we tried to say no thank you and we went driving around for about 5 minutes looking for that other trailer she was originally thinking of and finally he said that I guess we must have sold it. He came across as a very disingenuous person and so we walked inside and he started giving us a little bit of pressure again about whether the the trailer we like would have worked for us and I said well how much is it says so we can come in under $15,000 limit and I told him for $15,000 limit is our budget but I need to know what the price of the trailer as he was very difficult to get a price from and I said if we can't get a price then I can't decide whether it's the right one for us and yet again he came back with some reason why he doesn't have the price. We were talking with him and slowly making our way to the door which is also close to where his desk is and finally he said come sit down I will talk to my manager about getting us actual price. I considered whether to walk out at that point but just waited around since really we need the price as this was a close second for the trailer we wanted. He went upstairs got a price came back down and told us it was twelve thousand $12,000. Now I really knew he was disingenuous because he was planning on selling us the trailer for 15k We left and decided that we will not be doing business with Bish's RV or Dennis Dillon RV.
Now the last step is for us to go and buy an RV from Nelson's.
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