A most unusual experience

This is the tale of buying, then not buying a used Airstream 31 from a dealer in the northeast, the largest Airstream dealer to hear them tell it.

If they had spelled our name correctly on the contract, if they put in writing what they said they would do we would have bought it. But most importantly of all… If the general manager had not lost his temper and demanded we sign a faulty contract we would have bought it.

But we didn’t and we are so glad we didn’t because we ended up with an equal or even better Airstream for many thousands less, 5 digits worth less!

Here’s how it went down. We were in Florida looking for a used Airstream. We saw several in various states and one we almost bought but it needed more work than we were willing to do, so we passed on it. But then we found a Classic 31 on a website of a dealer in the northeast that seemed to fit our needs. We called and talked to the general manager and struck a deal. He required or rather demanded 10% down then and there via our credit card, which we did. He then turned it over to a woman who sent us the contract via email. There were many problems with the contract. First the bottom was cut off, the back was missing, our name was misspelled and 4 of the 8 things verbally promised were not in writing. This latter is important because where the four things were in writing was a place for us to sigh that said we would only get what was IN writing.

We asked for these corrections to be made before we signed it. They refused, we got suspicious. Why not put in writing what they promised to do? Why not correct the spelling on the contract. The more we talked with them and the more we thought about it the more suspicious we got. Time passed. Something was rotten with this deal, perhaps something was wrong with the Airstream that we couldn’t know as we had never seen it.

Airforums inspectors to the rescue. Airforums is a website for Airstream owners to trade information etc. As a feature of the group many seasoned Airstream owners offer their services for free to inspect Airstreams for sale. We looked and found to our surprise a friend we had met in Florida who was back east and could do the inspection for us. We contacted the dealer and they said they would be happy to have the inspection done. So we were encouraged by that and went ahead. The inspector found some things and we put that all together into an email to the GM. 

Then things went downhill fast. At 9:27 AM on the Monday morning after he got our email he called us and boy was he pissed! He made claims that were outrageous. He inferred that we were besmirching his company and on and on. There was no talking to him at all. We both suggested we talk after he calmed down but he kept going on and on. Finally he demanded we agree to and sign the faulty contract or the deal was off and he’d return our deposit that day. We were shocked to say the least. We have both been in business longer than this GM has been alive and neither of us had experienced anything like this. The level of unprofessionalism was staggering. We discussed it and thought that perhaps he had not seen the faulty contract we were sent so we emailed it to him, again explaining our problem with it.

No response from him so at 11:30, 30  minutes before his deadline of noon, we reluctantly emailed that we would take him up on his offer to cancel the deal and return our money by the end of the day. Neither of us were surprised that it took three days and a call to American Express to get our money back.

On reflection we dodged a bullet. There were so many inconsistencies in his claims. For example he said he had 5 people waiting to buy the Classic 31. In fact it remained on their website for months before it was sold. I want to make this clear that this is just one experience we had with this man and in no way should this reflect on the company he works for. I have read on Airforums of many people who had positive dealings with them. As a matter of fact I’ve never read a bad thing said about his company which is kinda odd wouldn’t you say. But then, his company does advertise on there which may have something to do with that. This is what happened to us and what I’ve written here is my opinion only.

Let the buyer beware… 

Notes about buying used from a dealer. Keep in mind that new Airstreams carry a warranty from the factory. Any work on the new ones that a dealer sells is paid for by the company, not the dealer. A used anything, Airstream or anything else is owned by the dealer. Anything that has to be done to make it salable is paid for by the dealer. The more he has to put into it the less profit he makes. No dealer I know of guarantees a used trailer so it really is buyer beware. You are buying it, ‘as is’ so if there is a problem with it you have to get in writing what the dealer will do before the sale. The GM in our case refused to put in writing what he said he would do and demanded that we agree to that, ‘in writing!’ Under no circumstances would we do that. It is better to walk away from a bad deal than be stuck with something like this. There really is no reason to buy used from a dealer. You are buying ‘as is’ with only the word of the dealer that all is well. If something breaks as you drive off the lot the dealer is under no obligation to fix it. 

As I said our patience paid off and we found the perfect AS Classic 30 for far less money that what that dealer wanted. I’ll go into that purchase in another post.