Cardinal RV Club

In another thread, I asked if anyone had purchased from RV Direct. Awfahey stated that he had with no problems. Thanks, Al. Not wanting to highjack that thread, I decided to start another.
I am planning to purchase my first 5th wheel next year and want to do it right the 1st time. I will be retiring in 1 1/2 yrs. We will not be full timers, but do intend to use it quite a bit. I like the Cardinal and except for tires it seems everyone is pleased with their purchases. I am leaning toward the 30TS. Want lots of interior room, but don't really want to tow anything longer/heavier than the 30TS.
Now.
1. Who else has purchased from RV Direct or similar RV reseller?
2. Did everything go well? Any regrets?
3. Does your local dealer balk at service work since you did not buy from him?
4. RV Direct has a bidding process to arrive at a sales price. They state you can expect 20%-40% off MSRP (which they show). There is a lot difference between 20% and 40% on a $40K+ purchase. Naturally you would first offer a bid at 40% off MSRP and work your way up. But what can you really expect them to accept?
Thanks to all for any insight you can give me.
Bill

Dont know if this helps, but herre goes...
We purchased from Banning RV, in Banning, CA... over the internet. They beat out all other "wholesalers" on the net. When we went to get it, we were carrying the purchase check. The entire experience was scary, but went smooth as silk. This particular dealer was VERY concerned we would leave happy. The 28RL was as advertised and "finished off", ready to go when we arrived. We FAX'd ahead OUR checklist and they agreed to going thru ours. They never grumbled over the 5 hours spent. A couple of minor items were fixed on-the-spot and the rig has performed flawless for us. The factory confirmed that if warrenty work should be required, they would arrange the work with " A " dealer... and would consider a non-dealer if required. We are welcome back to Banning RV for what ever warrenty work may be required, but so far there is none.
Yes.... there have been a few "minor" problems, but I take care of the little stuff and save the major work for the pros. So far there is none.
Would we purchase over the Internet again?
Yep.
Hope this helps.

We purchased our 29RKLE from RV Direct. We ordered April 21, 2005 and it was "ready" September 12, 2005. The PDI people in Indiana were very nice and helpful but we did find some issues when we got back home. We DID have problems with the dealer who fixed the warranty problems...........took three months and he wanted to charge us for a lot of stuff....NOT!!! I think 5 months is a bit long for a build but I understand there have been some changes made on how RVD is doing things. The price was excellent............$11,000 below asking price around here.

We ordered a 36-2BH LE from RVDirect the beginning of June. They accepted our first bid which was about 34% off MSRP. Perhaps we should have started at 40% off We did have it quite loaded with options, including generator and washer and dryer -- don't know if that gives them more "wiggle" room...

So far RVDirect has been great to work with. Being new to RVs I would have preferred a local dealer (and was willing to pay a little more for their service), but the only Cardinal dealer within 3 hours was quite disappointing. They wanted to play a long, stressful pricing game, and their bottom line was still more than $11,00 over RVDirect.

We expect delivery in about a week and I will post an update to let you know how things go.

Get your best price from RV Direct and give Rich a call at Adventure RV. He will take care of you and beat RV Direct prices, did my whole deal over the phone and had my new Cardinal with every option you can get and delivered in my driveway without one problem.

Both use a Base Price mark-up and then charge for options at there factory cost, this keeps it simple.

George:

RVDirect has changed their pricing recently. They no longer just post their low price, a buyer has to make a bid for the unit and then if they accept the bid, it is a sale (sort of like Priceline). Each bid has to be acccompanied by a deposit.

RVDirect claims that this change was due to complaints from other dealers about their low prices. The cynic in me thinks it is to prevent people from taking their low price and getting a local dealer to match it. In any case the days of logging onto RVDirect to get a bargaining price are over.

Our overall experiance with RVD was really good other than forgetting to put our slide out awnings on-which we arranged to have done here in UT before leaving IN. We did have to fix our lines for the water heater which had been hooked up wrong preventing us from getting hot water. If you are purchasing from RVD make sure you check EVERYTHING before leaving. The first time we used our furnace it set off the smoke detector. For some reason there was an excess of something on the burner to cause smoke. Boy being woke up at midnight from that on my first night was pretty scarry!!! But no problems since. As for the new ent. system they are putting in the units are not as nice as the ones from the previous year. Mine is a 2007 35TBH and my sis is a 2006 and her system has a much better quality about it, and yes we ran into problems with the dealer here in UT when we called to ask questions about the hot water not working they asked if we had purchased it form them and we told them no and they told us to take it back to the good ol' boys we had bought it from and have them fix it! (knowing that they are the only auth. dealer in UT.) So our overall experiance was good and we did save about 8,000 with their new bid system we beat the lowest bid by 50.00 so it was not bad at all!!!

dinohope - Would you clarify your last sentence. Was the 8,000 off MSRP? Or off the lowest price you could find elsewhere? What do you mean by you beat the lowest bid by 50.00?

I'm sorry that didn't really make sense. It was 8,000 off of the lowest price the dealer here would give us so not MSRP it was more like 14,500 off of MSRP, and as for the 50.00 over the lowest bid that RVD would take. We bid 27,500 and the lowest bid they would take on our T35TBH was 27,450. Hope that makes more sense for ya!!!

Great. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. The more I read about the very large savings people are able to get over local dealers makes it seem worthwhile to put up with the annoyance of getting minor warranty repairs done. And I have done most of my auto repair, home repair, etc over the years so I could/would probably do most everything myself.
Did RVD tell you after the fact of their lowest bid they would accept?

Yes, the person we were working with on the phone as we put out bid in, said he couldn't belive that we had gotten so close to what they would accept. He told us that after we had suggetsted that we should have gone lower, and even with the expense to travel and go get it we still saved over 7,000 in the end.

Have you tried Adventure RV? They are located in Cheyenne WY. I and three friends have all purchased from them without any problems. Saved a ton of $$$. We even drove back and picked up the 5th wheels for fun. Let me know if you need more info.

dieseldan723 wrote:Have you tried Adventure RV? They are located in Cheyenne WY.

Thanks. I have not heard of them. I will look into them also.
I also found another, buynationalrvdirect.com. That site shows that RV Direct is playing games with their pricing. RV Direct list the MSRP for a 30TS as $48,052. buynationalrvdirect.com list the MSRP for the same unit as $41,452 with a sale price of $33,285. If you can buy from RV Direct for 35% off the MSRP then it would still be a better deal, but you would have to go thru the bidding process to find out.
Also the options prices of RV Direct is 40%-50% higher than buynationalrvdirect.com. Still, the final % off would determine which would be better.
These sites not only provide pricing options to pressure the local dealers, they provide options to put pressure on other internet dealers.

I used RV Direct's price to get a sweet deal from my local dealer. Saved almost 12K