Camping World Marcus Lemonis Liars and Theives Council Bluffs Iowa

Fasten your seatbelts for the lesson in how not to provide service.  See how many ways a company can mess up service, lie to a consumer, and steal from them, and still think they are right.  It started June 2013, my husband and I decided we would look at upgrading from a pull trailer to a fifth wheel.  We researched online and found a fifth wheel, a Vengeance, online with Camping World of Kansas City.  When we made an online inquiry, they contacted us and told us that the camper was mis-marked online, however, they would honor it if we put money down right then.  So, we did.  We put money down on it to hold it.  We told them at the time that we had a trade in & we would negotiate the 'final numbers' when they saw it. 

The morning of June 8, we were supposed to drive to Kansas City Camping World, the GM called my husband and said that regardless of the condition of our current trailer the 'top dollar' he would give us was $14K. Also, although we scheduled to have a hitch put in a truck, they can't do it, we will need to find someone to do it for us (NOTE:  We are a couple hundred miles away).  Now, this means nothing as a reader of this because you have no idea what we had, condition, etc.  So, to put it in perspective, and to fast forward, we called other Camping Worlds - the one in Council Bluffs, IA (known as the Omaha location) laughed and said that shouldn't happen.  Said the GM there was new to the Camping World family and that he didn't know what he was doing.  Come to their location, they would 'source' a Vengeance for us from another place.  They didn't normally sell them, but they would find it and honor the price.

June 10th, we made an 'official' complaint regarding the KC Store to MarcusVIP-CampingWorldRV e-mail (CEO standard contact) and we get a $10 gift certificate for our troubles and a note saying thank you for making us aware of our experience - you know, the general form letter that basically is the brush off and that they really aren't doing anything about it.

So, we move to working with Thom Hazell from Camping World in Cedar Falls.  He assures us that he will take care of us.  He has shared the circumstance with the GM (doesn't give us a name) of the store and he is supposed to call us within minutes because he (Thom) doesn't want to get between two stores.  We get a call a day later from Alec, who we then assume is the GM, because that is who we were told would call us.  Alec shares that his Dad is 2nd in command from the CEO of the company.   He can make anything happen - he has the authority and the 'ear' of his Dad. 

We felt assured as he promised they would give us $18K, guaranteed, without seeing the camper we have, and will honor the price of the camper that the KC site offered.  He sourced one within days from FL and it was on its way up.  We have check in hand and are ready to go close.  We get to the site pulling our trailer so they can see it (NOTE:  We leave it there since we already detailed it), the new camper has damage (like it has been hit) in two different places on the outside and inside there was a large puddle of water.  Alec is not on site this day and another person, Bill, comes to greet us.  He introduces himself as the GM.  I had to ask, if Camping World typically had two GM's of a store.  Nope!  I've been lied to again!  Alec is a salesperson and not the GM at all.  (His Daddy is the SVP, though.) 

We are told at the walk through that the water  inside was from 'sideways rain' and that when trailers travel from one site to another 'they settle', they would get it fixed and we could close 'next week'.  Two weeks later, and much drama in between, I will spare you, we go back to close.  We are doing our walk around inspection - the areas previously damaged - not fixed, not touched.  Oh, and they hit it again & there is now a chunk missing from the black cap in front.  Big white circle of fiberglass peaking out.  Their suggestion:  Let's just close and we will fix it.  NO!  So, they call Bill out again, he is walking around with us and saying 'how unacceptable it is'.  This is where he notices the duct tape holding together the slideout, where the rain got it.  So, guess that is it.  You don't want it. 

We have a check.  We want a fifth wheel.  What else do you have?  So, they start showing us other campers where they will give us a deal on it, but it won't be as great as the other one because they already 'took a bath' on it.  Can you say 'bait and switch?'  Well, we look.  We are now the weekend prior to July 4th.  They will have to order it.  They order a Fuzion that afternoon from Keystone (Fuzion 342).  They speak with Collin, a Fuzion dealer to see what they already have on order and to 'tag' one for us.  We should have it in a couple of weeks. 

Two weeks goes by and we are not getting calls returned for a closing date, etc.  So, on July 17, I make another complaint to the CEO general mailbox.  The SAME person replies with another $10 gift certificate with the EXACT same verbiage from the prior return e-mail.  Now, I'm just mad. 

To make a super long story short, I e-mailed the RV community in any way that I can - I e-mail Thor, Keystone, Camping World, cc each person I've worked with at Camping World asking what it takes to buy a camper - we have a huge check and can’t seem to spend it!  We got 6 replies from the manufacturer in under a day.  This also generated e-mails from the elusive Marcus Lemonis, the CEO of Camping World.   Remember, we left our camper there, it has been there for weeks, we had given them a down payment.  His suggestion is to return our camper and the money.  If we want to do business, then we have one weekend to do it in, (we are going to be out of town for a family reunion....so he says we can go to the one in Chicago), we can pick from something ON the lot - no ordering anything.  Well, you can imagine that it didn't sit well with me, nor was it feasible.  So, it didn't happen.  So, he then says they will return our camper to us. 

When asking Marcus why I was not able to work outside of these boundaries, his reply in writing was, because I do not trust any of my staff to do the job correctly.  What a sad moment that your own CEO doesn't believe you are capable of doing business.  His e-mails would be all of 2 lines - he put one of his SVP's in touch with me who was the biggest jerk of all of them and downright rude - a bully. 

Ends up they will drive it back.  They will give us our deposit back.  In the meantime, we had worked with the Fuzion production line Vice President who swears he called Bill the GM weeks earlier to confirm that order for us and Bill never confirmed, so our trailer was sold to someone else.  He went to the production floor and 'tagged' one for us in color / options we wanted. 

Can you believe we are not done?  We had them pull the trailer to another dealer in our town.  They stole items from our trailer!  We left a hitch, sway bars, etc. all in the trailer as a part of our trade, which you can imagine, we were 'trading' with the trailer to the new company we were working with!  Nope!  They TOOK it!  Oh, and the cherry on top?  They put a Camping World sticker on our trailer - like they owned it!  Needless to say, this story goes to every campground every weekend.  This weekend, we went to an RV show and we told this story no less than 30 times.  We will not stop - Camping World is a bunch of lying thieves!