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Albuquerque in our Rear View MirrorApr 29, 2009
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Here we go
Looking down at Albuquerque- Beautiful City
You can see two of the three stations from here
| I am writing this from the truck as I wait for Bill to hitch up the house. We have been waiting since 8:00 this morning at Aloha RV to have some warrantee work taken care of. It is now 3:15 and a couple of things were taken care of. But let’s go back a couple of days.I think I mentioned that the tech for our new washer was coming out yesterday. We didn’t know the time so we just stayed home and waited. He arrived about 1:00 and went right to work. He went through a wash cycle to determine just what was wrong and then pulled the washer and dryer out of the little closet and preceded to take the washer apart. He then called the tech from Majastic and they went over all the diagnostics. They determined that everything was working correctly even though they hadn’t changed a thing… Dale then put everything back and tried it again. It still didn’t work. Well he had done what he was told to do so after three hours of trouble shooting he left. He knew it wasn’t working but he had done what they told him to do so that was it. He said that possibly, parts would have to be sent but by this time we told him we were moving on. Two weeks was long enough especially since we had been working with the company since we left Florida. When he left, we has some big scratches in the molding from putting the washer and dryer back but what the heck, S#%t happens and there is always Old English.Today we were finally to get our appointment for the warrantee work that Keystone authorized at Aloha RV in Albuquerque. We had e-mailed them when we were in Texas that we would be here for the rally and they told us they were not taking any appointments during that time. Seems they wanted to leave that time open for new customers and I guess I can’t fault them for that. Anyway, we had an appointment for 8 this morning and we were there at 7:30 waiting. We checked in when they opened and they had us drop off the Big Sky in front and they would call us when they were done. We went a few miles down the road to one of our favorite chain restaurants called Mimi’s Café. We so loved that place in Florida but somehow it wasn’t the same here. The room they put us in didn’t have that French flair but I must say that the food was still just as good. We had not had the chance to go up the “World’s Longest Tram” yet because it was under repair during the rally and just opened on Friday and we have been too busy. We decided to go see what this was all about. I must say that we were impressed. After having been on some very high trams including ones in Switzerland, we thought this was pretty high. And that is only what we could see with the eye. We soon found out that after the two stations we could get on the camera, there was another longer one that wasn’t even in eye sight. We spent a lot of time taking pictures and watching the trams go up about every 20 minutes but because we didn’t want to be that far away from Aloha when they called, we did not go to the top. Big mistake….. By this time it was 11:30 and we drove by Aloha again only to find our RV still sitting outside. We had run out of propane during the night or so we thought and once we unplugged from electric our refrigerator did not go on so we asked for propane right away and turn the fridge back on. We checked on that and there was still no propane. Bill went inside and asked if we could get one tank right away. A young man came and tried to tell Bill how to read the tanks… Not a good thing. This kid of about 18 was telling full time rv’ers that we didn’t know when we were out of propane. When both tanks read RED they are empty. If they are not empty, something is wrong with the sensors and you still do not get propane. He took both tanks and filled them but sure enough the one Bill thought still had a lot in was 2/3 full. Didn’t make any difference to the sensors and they did not draw from that thnk. Once we got them both filled up, we had green lights and we were able to go in and start the fridge back up. We thought it best to leave after talking to the service manager. While they were very nice to us, we still were sitting in the lot….. Conveniently for us, Lowes was only a couple of blocks away where we killed another 1 ½ hours going up one aisle and down the other. $100.00 lighter in our pockets and a quick stop at Starbucks, we were back at Aloha RV. This time we decided to wait it out. To our surprise, we were in the service area and all slides were out. When we walked through the area which was also the sales area, we were stopped immediately wanting to know what remote turned off the lights inside. They had been looking everywhere. LOL, One of the cool upscale things that they have done on the Big Sky is that when you open the front door, the lights go on. When you close the door they go out. I love it and so did they when we told them…. Everyone was very impressed with the wonderful upgrades Keystone had made to the Big Sky. Ours was the first they had seen….. Seems like Aloha RV bought up a whole bunch of inventory from businesses that didn’t make it and they did not have any room on their lots for new models. Fortunately for them, they had a great display of 2007’s etc at the Rally and sold all of them and that is why they couldn’t fit us in. Our serviced reps were excellent and did the best they could but out of seven small issues, they fixed one under warranty. The water needed a new inlet valve for $14.63The stabilizer jacks did not work and it was determined that it was a dead battery. Replaced circuit breaker for $3.98 and $99.00 labor plus tax since breakers are not covered even during the first month.The rear window screen is missing some clamps leaving lots of room for mosquitoes but since clamps needed to be ordered it’s marked No Order because customer is in transit.Counter top in kitchen has not been buffed properly and has dull swirls. No Order because customer is in transitBack up camera will not display a picture. Needs new transmitter because it got moisture inside (per Keystone). No Order because customer is in transit.Staples have all come out near stove and panel is bowed out. No Order because customer is in transit. (seems they would need new molding to cover the screws).This cost us about 130.00 plus other things we purchased to the tune $90.00…. Gee I hope we don’t have this happen too often. Can't afford this warrantee work. LOLEveryone at Aloha treated us like royalty but that didn’t mean a thing when we went to hook up our truck… Somehow the molding on the front cap was torn away… The young man that brought our propane was the same one that moved our Big Sky to the service bay. He said that he made sure the tech documented that this was there when he brought it in but ….. There is NO WAY we could have done this today without knowing about it. We would have had to turn real sharp on a very downhill slope and that just didn’t happen…. How do we know? Been there done that before and cut our rails down so it wouldn't happen again. There is just no way it was our truck that cid that damage. I'm sure that when this kid hooked us up to bring it in he clipped it on something. He was just too quick with his protest. Bill opted to just leave and fix it himself later.We couldn’t get out of Albuquerque fast enough. We are now in Las Vegas, New Mexico and were very happy to just pull into a pull-thru site with water and electric. We are in a very historic town but will not be able to explore it like we would like to. The road we took to our campground (KOA) was bumpy and not paved but it never will be. It is part of the Historic Pre 1936 Route 66 Highway. Wow, how lucky we have been. We have crossed the old route several times in our travels. The last one I remember was on our way to Oatman, Nevada, I think. That had to be about 2006.Guess we will just crash tonight. TV isn’t good and Bill has a sore throat and sneezes so we will just rest. After all the trauma, he needs a good night sleep.Before I go though, the drive to Las Vegas was just beautiful. I hope the pictures turn out. |
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