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We’ve been reporting on for RVers, and this page presents our latest findings. (Hint: the answer is a resounding YES!)
Ten days ago, after a fabulous two weeks in , and a long day of driving, we set up camp, grabbed a beer, and kicked back to enjoy a cold one. But to our dismay, the beer was kinda warm. We ratcheted the up a notch and went about our business. After dinner and a movie in , we decided to have a bowl of ice cream. When Mark lifted the lid on the Haagen Dazs, what he found inside could only be described as cool chocolate soup.
Oh no! Our 8 year old RV refrigerator had died.
As the clock neared midnight, we began a frantic search for RV repair shops in the area. We put together a list of them, went to bed quite distressed, and first thing the next morning we started making phone calls. Mark threw bags of ice in the fridge and freezer and we didn’t dare open either door after that. We lamented sadly that all our frozen meats — all those nice burgers and steaks, and even our bacon, darn it — were quickly defrosting.
After about 15 phone calls, we were still nowhere. Everyone told us it would be a two week wait to get a fridge and that it would probably cost upwards of $1,500. Finally, we called Camping World just south of Indianapolis. They had an identical unit in stock and they could squeeze us in for service the next morning. They told us they always try to make an extra effort for desperate travelers passing through.
Well, we weren’t exactly passing through. We were in Kentucky driving west towards Tennessee, and they were 150 miles to the north in the totally wrong direction. But what can you do? We were absolutely thrilled to find an RV repair facility that had an in stock and could install it quickly, so a 150 mile detour was not a problem!
This would be our second major repair in just over a month. We had just had our . What’s worse, we were actually on our way to an RV repair appointment in Kansas to fix a leak in our fresh water tank. What kind of luck was that?
As it turns out, Lady Luck was following us very closely. Our had covered the bulk of the trailer axle repair, and we were pretty sure it would cover this one too.
Where we stood on our trailer’s at this point was the following:
It looked like this RV warranty repair would not only bring our total reimbursements to the point of covering the original cost of the RV extended warranty but would go well beyond that.
18 hours after we’d discovered our fridge was dead, Camping World service manager Rick Helvey was in our trailer examining its hulking carcass. He told us that propane RV refrigerators typically last only 10 years.
What??!!
It was no surprise to him that our 8 year old unit had kicked the bucket. He opened the fridge vent on the outside of the trailer and showed us the telltale signs of a dying RV refrigerator: greenish or yellowish dust.
The presence of this dust meant the ammonia was leaking out and the cooling unit had given up the ghost. The crazy thing is that the price of a cooling unit is nearly the same as the price of a new — Not Cheap!
He called our warranty provider, Portfolio Protection, to get approval to proceed with the repair the next morning. To his astonishment (and ours), they said they wouldn’t reimburse us for a replacement refrigerator. They would reimburse us only for the replacement of the cooling unit to save themselves a little money. Here’s the breakdown:
DIFFERENCE IN OVERALL COST: $175.56
This was a problem — for us and for Camping World!!
If we got our refrigerator replaced, we would be in and out of Camping World in 3 hours the next morning and they could go back to business as usual with their local customers. If we had to have the cooling unit replaced, we would have to wait a week or two for the part to come in and Camping World would have to reshuffle their appointments the next morning, once again, because our appointment was already on the books. We had all assumed the approval of a replacement refrigerator would be a slam-dunk.
What to do?
Well, here’s one reason we are becoming more and more enamored of our RV extended warranty through . Unlike most warranty brokers who wash their hands of the deal once you’ve purchased the contract and signed on the dotted line, they are willing to go to bat for you if the warranty reimbursement process isn’t going as smoothly as it should.
We called Wholesale Warranties and told them what was going on. The difference in cost between repairing and replacing was not astronomical. Couldn’t the warranty company allow us to go ahead with the refrigerator replacement?
Within an hour they had called our warranty company, Portfolio Protection, explained to them why it made more sense for everyone involved to install the new fridge Camping World had in stock and, magically, our refrigerator replacement had been approved. We were floored that Wholesale Warranties would do this and that they could be such effective facilitators. Yet it turns out that making these calls is business-as-usual and is routine customer support for them.
Early the next morning we parked the fifth wheel in front of Camping World, and service technician Raymond and his assistant José got started on it right away. Unfortunately, our old refrigerator was 1/4″ too wide and could not fit through our front door. are installed at the factory before the doors and windows are in place!
So, the dining room window had to come out!
A forklift was used to remove the old fridge and hoist up the new one. It was at this point that I realized just what a challenging DIY project this would have been for Mark!
Then the new RV refrigerator was put in place.
The pretty oak panels from our old refrigerator were slipped into place on the new door.
Then Raymond ran around back to hook everything up in the refrigerator vent.
Meanwhile, his assistant José removed the silicone remnants from the wall around the window opening using a scraper and wiping the wall down with
Raymond lifted the window into place, and he and José screwed it in place.
Then they remounted the window valence and reinstalled the day-night shades.
Raymond gave us instructions not to put a bead of silicone around the window frame for about a week because he had used caulk tape that would ooze a little for the next few days.
We were impressed with how quickly these guys worked and got the job done, and we were really grateful to Rick for making an opening for us. In just 36 hours from the time we had soup for ice cream, we had a brand new up and running. Now we just had to wait for it to cool down (about 9 hours).
In the meantime, our frozen meats had fully defrosted but were still cold. We couldn’t re-freeze any of them when the refrigerator finally cooled down. Arghhh!
As we hitched up the fifth wheel, I noticed Mark had a twinkle in his eye as he drove it around to the back lot. He hopped out and instantly set up the barbecue, right there in the Camping World parking lot. He happily began grilling burgers, hot dogs, steaks, chicken and brats.
“We can’t let all this good meat go to waste!” He said to me as he handed me the bacon and sent me inside to fry it up.
It turned out he’d invited the service guys to come on over to our place for a barbecue lunch, and when the yummy smells from our grill began to waft across the Camping World parking lot, they quickly showed up in a golf cart and began chowing down.
At last it was time to settle up the bill with the service manager, Rick. Our deductible was $100. Indiana charges sales tax on deductibles, so our total out of pocket cost for this phenomenal repair was only $107. Wow!!
Our RV warranty covered $1,654 on this one repair alone — nearly the cost of the entire four year RV extended warranty itself!
Shockingly, this RV refrigerator replacement was just one in a slew of major repairs our trailer needed in a four month period in 2015. Here’s where we stand with our trailer’s RV extended warranty to date
Between this repair and our last one, we have come to the conclusion that anyone with an RV older than four or five years should seriously consider getting an RV extended warranty, especially if they don’t like unexpected financial surprises.
What a shock it was to find out that RV refrigerators are expected to fail by their tenth year of service. All you need is that one repair plus another one or two (air conditioner, water heater, furnace, slide-out mechanism, hydraulic leveling system, etc.) to cover the cost of a four year warranty and even wind up ahead.
If you want to find out what a warranty would cost for your rig, is offering a $50 discount to our readers. Call the Accounts Manager, Kate Ullrich, at (800) 939-2806 and mention our site, “Roads Less Traveled” or email her at kate@wholesalewarranties.com. Or go to this link:
Do I sound enthusiastic and excited? I am!! I was hugely skeptical about RV warranties before our trailer axle and RV refrigerator replacements, and all I can say is that this has been an amazing process!!
To learn how RV warranties work and how they differ from RV insurance, see this article:
Well, our fridge has cooled down now and it is well stocked with cold beer and hard ice cream. Yay! We’re back on the road, supremely happy that such a potentially disrupting system failure ultimately turned out to be a straight forward repair that cost almost nothing out of pocket.
If propane RV refrigerators are so prone to failure, why don’t we have a residential refrigerator? — It takes a huge solar panel array and big (heavy) battery bank to power a residential refrigerator along with everything else in an RV. See the following:
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