|
Post by callingmountains on Jun 26, 2021 8:36:26 GMT -5
Hey all!
We ordered our KZ in April and are patiently waiting. Dealer is completely unsure of delivery month and the unknown is a bit frustrating. Here is Colorado you have to book sites several months in advanced so I have had to cancel a couple reservations.
It sounds like our dealer receives an order sheet every month from KZ that tells them quantities shipping every month. Is this common? Any other insights that might be helpful?
Patrick
|
|
|
Post by chulavista on Jun 26, 2021 11:56:09 GMT -5
Hi Patrick!! Welcome to the forum!
All we can say is pack a whole lot of patience. First, KZ is a small factory, so production doesn't happen as fast as the bigger guys. They also say they have had trouble in the COVID world getting critical components to finish their builds. This is a problem across the board, no matter whether you're waiting on an RV, a vehicle, a house...you get the idea. Your issue is exactly why husband and I purchased a used trailer. We just got lucky and found the exact model we wanted, two years old. I really don't know how the order process works with KZ, I just know we weren't prepared to wait the 6 months or longer it was predicted it would take to build it. If you aren't into this order for too much money, did you consider trying to find one used? Or, on a lot somewhere, even if it meant a road trip? At any rate, Good luck! I hope it works out for you!
|
|
|
Post by jfspry58 on Jun 27, 2021 23:20:38 GMT -5
Hi Patrick, welcome to the group! As Kathy said above, wait times are pretty ridiculous right now. By being willing to go on a road trip we were able to find the exact model we wanted at a very good price, but the key was being willing to travel. It was 600 miles one way but the dealer worked with us and we were able to do everything online and over the phone except the actual pdi and delivery. They would have had it delivered but we wanted to see it in person before signing the contract. I guess I’m old school! Anyway, best of luck!
Jay
|
|
|
Post by laknox on Jul 1, 2021 9:38:50 GMT -5
Hi Patrick, welcome to the group! As Kathy said above, wait times are pretty ridiculous right now. By being willing to go on a road trip we were able to find the exact model we wanted at a very good price, but the key was being willing to travel. It was 600 miles one way but the dealer worked with us and we were able to do everything online and over the phone except the actual pdi and delivery. They would have had it delivered but we wanted to see it in person before signing the contract. I guess I’m old school! Anyway, best of luck! Jay Back when we were shopping ('15-'17 time frame), I told my wife that I was willing to travel cross-country, if the price was right and a local dealer wouldn't match prices, or close enough to make the trip unnecessary. Sad thing is, ALL RV mfrs have this "buy local" b.s. mindset, yet are unwilling to create a true dealer network as the car industry has/does. You'd think that two dealers would like to =both= make some money on a deal with a "scratch mine / scratch yours" mindset. I was honest with every dealer I talked to and told them they'd have to sharpen their pencil as I =was= willing to travel a long way for a deal. You don't see it quite as much, but that was in the day when one dealer in a state would have a rig with an $xx,xxx "MSRP" and another dealer 100 miles away would have a $yy,yyy "MSRP", with the difference being "shipping costs". Really?! It costs $3,000 =more= to ship 100 miles? Then they'd be hard-ass about prices. So, you call some dealer 1,000 miles away and another 1,000 miles =further= from the factory, and they'll blow both the "local" dealers out of the water with their price. Then, you get a follow-up call from one of the "local" salescritters wondering when you're going to make a deposit on the rig you were looking for and you tell them that their unwillingness to haggle means they get =nothing= because you're going 5 states away to save $3-4,000. Proof of this mess is the fact that literally every single mfr web site you look at will only give you dealers within about 150 miles, based on zip codes, even if there's one that's 160 miles away. At one point in time, I seriously thought about going through KZ's dealer finder and locating every single dealer listed and posting the list, just to vent my frustration. Even when I was having talks with the SW Sales Rep from KZ about finding a specific model, I couldn't get a national dealer list from him. He =did= keep me posted on a few of that model that were heading to the West, but was never able to get one closer to me than Folsom RV. Lyle
|
|
|
Post by jfspry58 on Jul 2, 2021 11:15:18 GMT -5
Back when we were shopping ('15-'17 time frame), I told my wife that I was willing to travel cross-country, if the price was right and a local dealer wouldn't match prices, or close enough to make the trip unnecessary. Sad thing is, ALL RV mfrs have this "buy local" b.s. mindset, yet are unwilling to create a true dealer network as the car industry has/does. You'd think that two dealers would like to =both= make some money on a deal with a "scratch mine / scratch yours" mindset. I was honest with every dealer I talked to and told them they'd have to sharpen their pencil as I =was= willing to travel a long way for a deal. You don't see it quite as much, but that was in the day when one dealer in a state would have a rig with an $xx,xxx "MSRP" and another dealer 100 miles away would have a $yy,yyy "MSRP", with the difference being "shipping costs". Really?! It costs $3,000 =more= to ship 100 miles? Then they'd be hard-ass about prices. So, you call some dealer 1,000 miles away and another 1,000 miles =further= from the factory, and they'll blow both the "local" dealers out of the water with their price. Then, you get a follow-up call from one of the "local" salescritters wondering when you're going to make a deposit on the rig you were looking for and you tell them that their unwillingness to haggle means they get =nothing= because you're going 5 states away to save $3-4,000. Proof of this mess is the fact that literally every single mfr web site you look at will only give you dealers within about 150 miles, based on zip codes, even if there's one that's 160 miles away. At one point in time, I seriously thought about going through KZ's dealer finder and locating every single dealer listed and posting the list, just to vent my frustration. Even when I was having talks with the SW Sales Rep from KZ about finding a specific model, I couldn't get a national dealer list from him. He =did= keep me posted on a few of that model that were heading to the West, but was never able to get one closer to me than Folsom RV. Lyle All very true Lyle! When we were shopping I looked for dealers on the KZ website. It showed none even though there’s one in OKC, 175 miles away, one in Amarillo Texas, 180 miles away, and one in Wichita Kansas, 190 miles away. 3 dealers within a 200 mile radius but due to the 150 mile parameter it showed none. We found this to be true on almost all brands too, not just KZ. None of the “local dealers” had what we wanted and they weren’t willing to deal much on an order. I found a few on RV Trader, all new, with the best prices being in PA, Virginia, and Nacogdoches Texas (several thousand dollars difference, seriously). Almost made a deal on the one in PA before finding and settling on the one in Nacogdoches. Since then, a friend of mine also went to Nacogdoches and bought a new Durango Gold. That’s 2 sales a local dealer missed due to their lack of willingness to deal. And the dealer we bought from is a smaller dealer in a smaller town so it’s not volume pricing either. They’re simply not trying to become independently wealthy from each customer, AND they work with their customers not against them. I have a hard time believing they couldn’t all benefit from a little cooperation. Jay
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2021 15:14:18 GMT -5
Actually, the KZ dealer locator doesn't have a limit to the number of miles the dealership is located. It asks you to select the family of products you're interested in, your zip code, and then it displays the closest KZ dealership that's registered to carry that specific family of products, like Connect, for example. Doesn't matter what the distance is. Please private message your zip code and the family of products you were researching, and we'll check it from this end. Thanks for the head's up!
|
|
|
Post by chulavista on Jul 2, 2021 15:40:45 GMT -5
Actually, the KZ dealer locator doesn't have a limit to the number of miles the dealership is located. It asks you to select the family of products you're interested in, your zip code, and then it displays the closest KZ dealership that's registered to carry that specific family of products, like Connect, for example. Doesn't matter what the distance is. Please private message your zip code and the family of products you were researching, and we'll check it from this end. Thanks for the head's up! Hey, The biggest complaint most of us have, is this gives us ONLY the one closest to us. We would like an option to choose the amount of miles from the zip we key in. As a perfect example, I DO NOT WANT TO USE the closest dealer to me. They lost the right to my business. The only option we have is to key in a zip in another state, for example, and see if we can get a hit.
|
|
|
Post by laknox on Jul 5, 2021 16:07:18 GMT -5
Actually, the KZ dealer locator doesn't have a limit to the number of miles the dealership is located. It asks you to select the family of products you're interested in, your zip code, and then it displays the closest KZ dealership that's registered to carry that specific family of products, like Connect, for example. Doesn't matter what the distance is. Please private message your zip code and the family of products you were researching, and we'll check it from this end. Thanks for the head's up! I've posted numerous times in the past few years that I'd been looking for a D1500 D284RLT. The closest ones I ever found were at Folsom RV, 680 miles away, and a dealer I can't remember in, IIRC, ABQ. I worked with the SW sales guy (Charles Wade?) and he alerted me a couple times when one was available, but none were closer that Folsom. I =only= ever looked for D1500 models. At that time, there was =one= KZ dealer for =any= FWs in the state, in the old CW location in Mesa, across from the La Mesa RV store. For me to find any other D1500 dealers, I'd have to start putting in zip codes for other metro areas. Remember, this was in the '14-15 time frame, so the dealer locator may have been different. After that one dealer closed, it did not show =any= D1500 dealers in AZ for months. It has =never= showed me anything outside AZ. For argument's sake, I just checked the KZ locator and only AlwaysRV pops up for Half-Tons. I then searched RVT and RVTrader for "Durango Half-Ton", dealers only. AlwaysRV in Mesa pops up with the next closest dealer being in Paso Robles, 527 miles away. Customers have no way of knowing if there's another dealer in-between. As was said earlier, KZ is far from alone in this; =every= mfr seems to do this, and it's just dumb. What better way to drive people away from a brand if they can't even find it? People =are= lazy and if searches are too time-consuming, they'll just start looking to other brands. Hell, I'd =still= like to see that D284RLT that was my #1 choice in the '15-17 time frame. Lyle
|
|
|
Post by laknox on Jul 5, 2021 16:08:01 GMT -5
Actually, the KZ dealer locator doesn't have a limit to the number of miles the dealership is located. It asks you to select the family of products you're interested in, your zip code, and then it displays the closest KZ dealership that's registered to carry that specific family of products, like Connect, for example. Doesn't matter what the distance is. Please private message your zip code and the family of products you were researching, and we'll check it from this end. Thanks for the head's up! Hey, The biggest complaint most of us have, is this gives us ONLY the one closest to us. We would like an option to choose the amount of miles from the zip we key in. As a perfect example, I DO NOT WANT TO USE the closest dealer to me. They lost the right to my business. The only option we have is to key in a zip in another state, for example, and see if we can get a hit. Exactly! Lyle
|
|