Monday, August 5, 2013

2013-08-05, Monday

As I wrote previously, we lost shore power electricity at the beginning of last month, but we still had a good couple of weeks parked in my sister’s driveway. Our 12 volt electric still worked, and we borrowed a 10 amp battery charger from my brother-in-law to keep the batteries up.  We also ran 75 feet of extension cord in a window so we could make coffee and toast in the morning, charge our phones and computers, and run my CPAP at night.  I was able to do some genealogy work, scanning pictures, getting pictures at local cemeteries, etc.

There were only two locations on Tiffin Motorhomes Inc.’s website to get repairs for our Phaeton in New York State.  One was in North Tonawanda a few miles from our friends, Larry & Carolyn Jarvis; and the other was near Albany, NY.  We chose the one in North Tonawanda since we could stay in Larry & Carolyn’s side yard, and were able to obtain an appointment for the 17th of July to determine what was wrong with our electricity.  Colton RV determined that there was a short that could be fixed with a new inverter.  After calling daily and being told that the inverter was not in, I stopped over on Wednesday the 24th.  Sean said that he would check with the parts department.  I overheard one service writher say that David, who I had dealt with, was no longer with the company.  After a while, Sean said that an inverter was being shipped from Red Bay, AL that afternoon.

On Monday, the 29th, I went back to Colton RV’s after lunch, and was told that the inverter had been received, and that they would put it in the next day (Tuesday) if I could bring over the motorhome at 8am.  After waiting all day on Tuesday, the technician said there was a short that he could fix by running a new wire to the GFI plug from the inverter, so we slept in a Jarvis spare room.  He did that on Wednesday, and we now had electricity on the passenger side  receptacles, but he said there was still a short, so on Thursday, he ran another wire from the inverter to the refrigerator.  This provided electricity to the receptacles on the driver’s side slide.  So we took the RV back Thursday night, after spending Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Colton’s waiting room.  (Total cost $200 deductible plus an additional $567).  We thought it could have been worse since their hourly rate was $125.

After dinner we found that the receptacle in the bedroom that I plug my CPAP into did not work.  Friday morning we found that the electric hot water did not work, the receptacle for heating the engine oil did not work, and one of the circuit breakers did not work (it still has a short somewhere).  Went back to Colton’s, and about 3pm we were told that the tech still had not found the short, which was probably the cause of the problem in the first place.. 

Marilyn suggested that we pack up and go to the manufacturer in Red Bay, AL.  The service writer thought that might be a good idea.  We had originally come here because our extended warranty would run out at 70,000 miles and we now have 69,700, so the inverter would not have been covered by the time we reached Alabama.

So, day after tomorrow, we will start our drive south.

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