Dometic warranty service from h*l

[LHaven]

The furnace in our Cougar quit working in January. We used our electric heater for the remainder of the trip and got a mid-March appointment from our dealer. This was the third furnace failure we had since buying, and still within the Dometic 2-year warranty.

The dealer kept the rig two weeks (as long as it was there, I also asked for an annual wheel lube). When I went to pick it up, the service manager said they could find nothing wrong with the furnace; but I was expected to clean it out annually and hadn't, so they did that and charged me. Pickup day was at the height of COVID panic, so I didn't test the repair (it was already too warm for it to run anyway) and just wanted to pick up my rig and go back home to hide.

In early July, we took the grandson out on a four-day "distanced" trip to cooler country. The furnace failed off the bat, precisely the same way. In effect, instead of fixing my furnace free under warranty, the dealer had failed to fix my furnace and charged me for it.

I called my dealer to give them a heapin' helpin'. The (new) service manager protested that they couldn't test furnaces in non-winter months because it was too hot. I asked them why they didn't give the temperature sensor (in a port on the wall all by itself) a shot of freeze spray. They had never heard of freeze spray. I told them what it was and how to use it, and got another appointment (this time, a "same day repair") last week.

On repair day, the SM called us during our errands to tell us they had taken the unit out onto the bench, and it worked; then reinstalled it, and it still worked.

When we arrived for pickup, I asked the SM to walk with me to the rig before I even looked at her paperwork. I set the furnace on, then hit the thermo sensor with a shot of computer duster, can upside-down. In under 10 seconds, the thermostat registered an interior "drop" from 90° to 70°, and the furnace fan cycled on. I told her to listen — no ignition noises. I told her it would shut off in about 20 seconds, which it did. I told her the furnace had been doing exactly this since January, despite being in their shop twice.

She offered to change out the sail switch and the igniter. She said I'd have to leave the rig because they needed to order the parts. (How were they planning to do a same-day repair on my rig if those parts had come up bad?)

24 hours later, she called and said Dometic refuses to "replace non-failed parts under warranty." I told her that unless she came up with some plan to fix my furnace in the next few days under warranty, we were going to have a three-way with Dometic.

I had just about written off my dealer's service department before this all started, until I found out that apparently they are the only source of Dometic warranty work within a reasonable distance. Once the warranty period is over, I'm never darkening their door again.