lousy service at prevost mira loma

[phorner]

I have only been to the Jacksonville Prevost service center, and it was only once. It was a good experience.

However, I hesitate to pass judgement on anything, good or bad, based on a single experience. I would like to think that my experience was the norm. However there may be others with more experience that feel it's the exception....

[truk4u]

All my experience has been in Nashville and the service has been excellent, but I never left the bus unattended while work was being done and they have no problem with that. Additionally, I inspect everything while the bus is still in the air.

[jello_jeep]

Sheesh Truk, we are talking about service facilities, not comfort stations!

All my experience has been in Nashville and the service has been excellent, but I never left the bus unattended while work was being done and they have no problem with that. Additionally, I inspect everything while the bus is still in the air.

[rahangman]

Being a newbie I haven't had much experience ... with much of anything, yet. But, I did stop into Jacksonville,PSC and yes, very congenial and courteous and they seemed knowledgeable, but, they load tested my 7month old chassis batteries and pronounced them 1 bad, 3 marginal, after putting a quick charge on them to start the bus. I wound up shelling out $640+ for that, also they were unable to fix my "leans" telling me the Prevost level low checked ok, except that I cannot raise the bus. The only way the bus rises is in Drive . The rocker switch for Up/Down allows bus to lower even using the UP button. HUH? They told me that is why the system is called Level Low..... I am currently disputing the charges through higher ups than in Jacksonville. I will be hard pressed to return to them. Maybe Nashville or Dallas.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Hangman.........the art of vacuuming money from one's wallet has been perfected and it takes everyone of us working together to minimize that event. Few here have gotten away unscathed so welcome to the club.

You will need to develop an understanding of your coach, its systems, and either how to do your own work, or who to have do the work. Further, when you engage someone to do the work arm yourself with the knowledge of what is involved.

To address your two specific issues, it is possible to ruin batteries in your coach quickly. For example, if you have a charger running continuously and it is not the kind that has 3 stages or some current sensing capability you can "cook" the batteries. Letting batteries go dead and then recharging them significantly shortens their life. The care and feeding of batteries is important because they are not cheap. But if you want to avoid surprises, learn your charging systems and how to properly charge and maintain your batteries. There have been many discussions on this forum that a search will turn up.

As to the leans and trouble with the leveling system, this tends to be an area in which the less knowledgiable will end up spending thousands (not kidding) if they just turn their coach over to a service facility and tell them to fix it. Our leveling systems vary from year to year and converter to converter, but they all share a basic operating principle that is not that difficult to comprehend. The problem is that if as an owner you do not develop a little understanding you have just opened your wallet and given it the man with the vacuum.

Simply stated your suspension needs to be maintained. If it is not or has not been maintained it needs to be brought up to a good condition or you will be chasing problems forever. Leaks are the primary problem and no amount of soapy water squirted on fittings is going to identify the problems. It is easier and cheaper to isolate the problems and then methodically replace the components in question. You do not have a single suspension system, but three separate systems that share an auxiliary air supply source. You have a front, left rear and right rear system.

As to why it does not respond to commands, that could be as simple as a failed solenoid valve located in the steer compartment, or an incorrect air bag. If nobody has recently replaced the air bags I would start investigating the solenoids. As silly as it sounds you can do almost all the diagnosis, one step at a time with help here to isolate probable causes. If the problems regarding raising the front are what seems like a failed solenoid valve you can fix the problem with the removal of two screws, the replacement of a valve and restoring the two screws.

What you do not want to do is pay for on the job training of a service tech.

[phorner]

All good advice from Jon...... I know from first-hand experience!!

So, how did you make out with the solenoid? Was that ever confirmed as the problem?

[Richard Barnes]

I've been reluctant to speak about Mira Loma because they still have my coach there and I don't want any further problems. But, you all need to be aware of my recent experiences and I hope you will follow what I'll do in the future.

Two weeks ago, I took the coach in to have an electrical problem repaired. (Prevost initally repaired this problem back in February,2008 at a cost of $1800 in labor and $141 in parts.) They repaired it but wanted to charge me for the new parts and labor. I objected and they finally agreed to make the repair at no cost to me. Then, I received a call from them saying that when the mechanic moved my coach into the bay he raised the tag axel and then he could not get the wheels to go back down. The service writer said that both tag axel cylinders were leaking and would have to be replaced at a cost of $346.00 each for the cylinders. This call came at 2:00pm in the afternoon. I immediately drove to the Mira Loma location arriving at 3:00pm and watched the mechanic remove and replace both cylinders. The mechanic's shift ended between 3:30-4:00pm but he stayed until 6:30pm and completed the work on my coach. That is a total of 4.5 hours of labor for this repair but when I got my bill, I was charged 13 hours of labor for this repair. Also, I had other work done on the coach that day and was billed for those labor hours as well. The bottom line, they charged me more labor hours on this particular day than they were open. I'll at least have an interesting argument as I get the issue to upper management.

This follows my last billing issue where I was quoted $4,100.00 for several repairs and service work but when I got the bill it exceeded $6,000.00. My office paid it before they noticed that it was billed in Canadian dollars. Excuse my ignorance, but the work is done in the US, they ask you to remit payment to an address in the US but they bill you in Canadian dollars? How many people have had that happen and not catch the fact that it is CAD? The lovely Mrs. Barnes got that straightened out (we thought) until we noticed that they left the labor rate stated in Canadian dollars at $138.00 per hour. I'm now asking them to correct that mistake and in the future they bill me in US dollars. I won't accept another invoice with CAD on the bottom line.

I like the mechanics and the service writer at Prevost Mira Loma but the management and billing operation are the worst I've ever seen. I can't run my business that way. I won't let them do any more work on my coach without a good faith estimate up front. Ray Davis has just given me the name of a company he uses and I'll take my next service business there.