Drink the Kool-Aid, or Else!

[booster]

Hammil's feisty side has been showing more and more lately, and folks are more pushy about getting good information beyond "trust us, we are great".

They are getting into a tough spot. Their pricing has been climbing to crazy levels ($108K for a Chevy 190). The new releases fiasco of late. People having problems and saying so on the Facebook site, and elsewhere, etc. They are also losing market share at an alarming rate and have just lost the first place in sales spot.

You can bet there is pressure from the corporate owners to right the ship, as it is very possible they will be wanting to sell off Roadtrek in the somewhat near future.It is their pattern with other companies they bought. Right now, the way things are going, Roadtrek's market value is likely dropping, not increasing, and that is a big problem, IMO.

[gerrym51]

Originally Posted by wincrasher

LOL. I'd say the resale on Travato is excellent, based on my own experience.

Ron-if you keep on trading in every year to same dealer you'll never have a re-sale issue-lol

[tbirdman]

The bashing doesn't bother me at all. I do enjoy the site as they do have good information although you get tired the posting "I waved at a roadtrek and they didn't wave back" or "I saw a roadtrek and I wonder if it was anybody here"

[wincrasher]

Originally Posted by tbirdman

The bashing doesn't bother me at all. I do enjoy the site as they do have good information although you get tired the posting "I waved at a roadtrek and they didn't wave back" or "I saw a roadtrek and I wonder if it was anybody here"

Don't forget the "should I pick up my dog poop". Always a riveting discussion.

[bobojay]

Originally Posted by tbirdman

The bashing doesn't bother me at all. I do enjoy the site as they do have good information although you get tired the posting "I waved at a roadtrek and they didn't wave back" or "I saw a roadtrek and I wonder if it was anybody here"

I saw one the other day and turned my head. Also I always pick up my dog poop....

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by eric1514

This is one of those very few times I wish I had a Facebook account.

If the group is public I don't think you need a Facebook account. Anyone can read. They just can't post and comment without joining and you need to have a Facebook account to join.

[gerrym51]

Originally Posted by Davydd

If the group is public I don't think you need a Facebook account. Anyone can read. They just can't post and comment without joining and you need to have a Facebook account to join.

Davydd-you are wrong about this-you need a facebook account

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by bobojay

I saw one the other day and turned my head. Also I always pick up my dog poop....

Hey, I have been a dog poop complainer. This week we have been dog sitting our granddog. Guess who went to pick up the poop and couldn't find it in our weedy woods because he was stepping on it?

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by gerrym51

Davydd-you are wrong about this-you need a facebook account

Hmm, It didn't use to be that way but then again I have been on since 2007. I'm pretty much always signed in. OK, I guess I should make a fake account. How about "ARV Campskunk"?

[B Eventually]

Originally Posted by Davydd

Hey, I have been a dog poop complainer. This week we have been dog sitting our granddog. Guess who went to pick up the poop and couldn't find it in our weedy woods because he was stepping on it?

Stepping in it may be preferable to seeing the face that often wakes you up in the morning chowing down on it.

[B Eventually]

Originally Posted by tbirdman

Then he starts bashing people who consider price when they purchase a class B. He's not a good sales guy because he turns me off with his attitude. In sales you never bash the competition like he does, but you show the potential customer why he should consider your product.

He also claims he has the best resales however he had no proof of that when comparing the Travato to the Zion. The Zion will have high resales because you paid more for it. However what will the percentage of residual value be after say 5 or 10 years?

I'm also not convince their quality on the Zion is better than the Travato.

I hope their investment company puts an end to this nonsense soon. Roadtrek’s management and marketers’ unprofessional behavior has further colored my opinion of the Roadtrek brand. The shoddy construction I saw in a couple of their brand new Sprinter models was the first strike.

It also doesn’t help that they’re charging premium prices for essentially mass produced Bs. If we were in the market for a 150k+ motorhome, I’d be far more likely to pay a little more and go the factory direct/custom route to avoid this abuse.

[wincrasher]

I think someone who's saved/earned enough cash to buy a rig like this is pretty savvy. They can read a spec sheet and look at something and tell how well it's put together. I think they are wanting to adopt a more Apple model for pricing - pretend how stuff works is just magical and promote your way into getting premium pricing thru hype.

Most buyers can figure out what you'd pay for an extra alternator kit and an inverter and some heavy gauge copper wiring. It ain't tough to figure out, and pretty hard to get anywhere near $3500. Or $1800 for an autostart gizmo. Paying $1700 extra for what little colored laminate in these things is just ridiculous. $700 for an 22" LED TV?

I've looked at their rigs at RV shows along side of the other makes. Honestly, other than this brand new tech stuff, I don't see alot of difference. I do see that they could use some improvement in their fiberglass work, as alot of it is pretty wavy. Their placement of some items, like their solar controller, is just plain DIY looking.

I just don't see the value proposition. I did give them a second look when they announced this Eco-Trek stuff. I'll be trying to look at it at Hershey next month. But I doubt I could pull the trigger at these kind of prices.

[avanti]

Roadtrek and Airstream are two peas in a pod. They both are charging premium prices and then not delivering. They both offer pretty good designs and quality systems but wrap them with disgraceful build quality. The whole B-van market is in a pretty bad place right now. Winnebago is delivering good value for the money, but are positioned as an economy brand. RT and Airstream are selling junk at ridiculous prices. ARV delivers exceptional quality, but at a price point that few can afford (or find to be cost-effective). The two major providers who balanced quality and price were LTV and Great West. But LTV is apparently uninterested in the B-van market right now, and Great West is in trouble and may not survive. Not a great situation for buyers looking for cost-effective high-quality alternatives.

[wincrasher]

I agree with everything you just said. Most people I know think Winnebago is already pretty expensive for what it is - if they only knew!

Has anyone heard anything new out of GWV?

[Davydd]

Originally Posted by eric1514

This is one of those very few times I wish I had a Facebook account.

I've been thinking about this. Wendland disbanded the forum he had in his Roadtreking.com website. My Sprinter Yahoo newsgroup has died off drastically and the Class B Forum on RV.net is all but dead if not boring. Google+ has pretty much thrown in the towel competing with Facebook.

This Class B Forum is one of the few independent spots that has picked up in messaging this past year. The message interactivity has moved to Facebook. No one can dismiss that Roadtreking:The Group is booming on Facebook There are a lot of splinter Roadtrek groups. Pleasure-way has had a long running successful message group. Wincrasher's newly for Class B Camper Vans Facebook group is busy. I keep busy with the "B"ing in an Advanced RV owners group which is much more active than RV.net now and ARV has so few owners. There are a lot of other groups I look at sporadically and probably a lot I haven't even bothered with. So much so, I like to concentrate solely on Class B. The action is all on Facebook. If you are not checking it out, then you are missing a lot.

I made that 2007 comment earlier. I just realized that is a long time in computer years. Same with Twitter. I'm kind of an early adopter ever since I got online in 1984 with my first home computer, my first web page on the Internet in 1992 through an AOL portal known only to forum leader staff. I was quite the online forum junkie back in the 80s. What I do know is it is ever changing. This kind of forum with message boards has had about a 15 year run. The fast pace rate of "new" stuff has slowed and it has moved off computers to smartphones. I think that is what has made Facebook shine. It is so easy to use that way. Just the idea you can take a photo and post it immediately is a major advantage.

I'm also a photo junkie. I'm just guessing but I imagine I have posted more than 5,000 of my own photos to the Internet. 971 on Twitter. Well over a thousand on Facebook and I have over 3,000 on Photobucket I use to reference images into forums like this. It gets kind of overwhelming and if I had to cutback Facebook is the only viable option especially when traveling on the road in my B.

[bobojay]

You noticed that too about the RV.net B group page. All but dead seems to me. I check it about every 3 days lately and not much changes

[wincrasher]

I've all but given up on rv.net. They want my content, but not let me have any links to my blog pages. You can't just copy and paste it into a posting: all the pics and links have to be rebuilt. That's why I started my blog, so I don't have to reformat and rework everything for every forum.

But I agree with Davydd. All the action right now is on Facebook. The only problem is it's hard to get very deep on a subject. You can search for topics, though, so that's helped things tremendously.

[eric1514]

I'm afraid you're all right, but the whole Facebook phenomenon bugs me on so many levels, that I will not join. This place and blogs like Wincrasher's and FitRV are my Class B fix. RV.net is good for other things besides Class B info.

[markopolo]

I think forums and blogs are 100 times better than Facebook for sharing detailed information. Forums and blogs are categorized, you can place photos or attachments inline in relevant places etc. and they're easy to search through later - even years later.

Posts on Facebook get buried (and lost) too quickly - it's a shame that all that effort is effectively wasted as a resource for information.

[mumkin]

I agree with you marko... I personally find Facebook to be fine for social interaction and advertising, but not much good for developing a history of helpful posts.

eric1514, why not create a name and email for Facebook. Use what you find useful and avoid the irritating lack of privacy.