Help with Vroom Slide Systems contact

Hello Jonathan, I am so happy to hear that all is good with your slide and you got good support from the installation team in CT!! And you have someone reliable to call on for any other issues. Good for you! Hope the retirement is everything expected

We cancelled the Vroom installation. We didn't want to deal with the customer facing contact at the Connecticut repair shop.

My order went in to the CT group early Feb. 2024. I was told that these orders were taking around 4 months (as reported by others here). June came and went. In mid July emailed the woman at CT that I had placed the order with. I did not receive a response for several days. I got nervous, so I also emailed orders@vroom asking if they had any information about my order.

The woman at the CT group then got back to me saying that the parts were 'tentatively' scheduled to be shipped mid August and she would 'contact' me then to schedule the installation. The usual non-committal script.

I then heard back from orders@Vroom and was advised that they had been having some material sourcing delays which affected their manufacturing schedule. They promised me that the shortages were over, the materials were in house and they would build and ship the parts in their August run. The contact at Vroom was helpful and forthcoming about their delay problems. And I completely understood and accepted the information. However, the vagueness and lack of concern on the part of the CT customer contact really turned us off.

I feared that installation would probably take another month or more. I had no faith that we would be treated fairly. So panic set in and we cancelled. AND paid the cancellation fee. Our camper sat in the back yard unusable most of the summer.

In early August we reached out to a local shop, with an excellent reputation, who had done some body work on our old 5th wheel. They had us bring the coach right over and discussed the history of the slide issues. In exactly one week the team at Baileys in Amherst NH ordered a new system from Lippert and installed it. The slide is now working like new.

We are disappointed staying with the more poorly engineered Lippert system installed instead of the Vroom, but very pleased at the installation result. No one is a fan of the Lippert system.

Parts and install cost us just over 1/3 of what we would have paid the company in CT for the Vroom system. The folks at Baileys are professional, straightforward and employ experienced techs who will communicate directly with you, not just through a front end intermediary. And that front end person - she is was dream to work with too. And we had them reseal the roof too. They guaranty their work for 12 months. I think there is a youtube about how a full timer couple worked with Baileys when someone crashed into their 5th wheel on a Massachusetts highway.

So, we will get some use out of it this fall and then will probably sell it (with confidence in the repair!) in the spring. We will take the financial hit but don't want to deal with the slide again. Because it will fail again at some point. Weakest point on the standard system is those crap plastic shoes.

We are sad we didn't get the top quality Vroom slide. We purchased this rig from Campers Inn in Merrimack NH. Like you with Camping World, we went through hell with their service group. Our problems stated after our Mfg. 1 year warranty ran out. But, the parts in our side were defective and covered under the Lippert TSB. CI refused to work with Lippert. I don't want to discuss the horrible time we went through last spring. Incompetence of their techs aside, the lies and slimy attitude of the customer facing service group manager was disgusting. I'm still feeling so burned by the experience so, I just had NO PATIENCE for the crap attitude of that woman in CT.

So, that's my (long) story, maybe I'm oversensitive, but sticking to it!

Best regards, safe travels and happy camping!
Nancy

 

Hi again, Nancy ~ As the camping season here in the northeast comes to close for 2024, I was reviewing our correspondence from the summer. I am sorry to hear you'll be looking to sell your motorhome next Spring. Isn't it a crying shame the RV sales and service businesses are so lacking in simple, basic customer support!! It's horrendous! We did get to do double the number of trips we had during our first year. Thanks in no small part to the new Vroom Slide. We've met some super nice people, too. I always have to ask folks when I meet them what their impression is of Camping World. To date, I have never heard a single complementary word! LOL! I will forever speak unkindly about our experiences involving our area Camping World. I will also never give any compliments to that heartless woman in CT who represents the northeast Vroom Slide System. She needs to retire! What a 'negative' person she is! Seems to me, she singlehandedly soured your RV experience! I can't blame you - for I was on the receiving end of her lies and condescension. In any event, we are enjoying the Vroom slide as it continues to perform flawlessly. We are growing more confident each time we use it. So much so, we are considering advancing our camping adventures beyond our 1 hour drive time limit from home for 2025. Our in-home service tech is coming here in a few weeks to winterize our Quantum. Because it's a motor vehicle, we still take it out for drives during the winter to make sure all the motorized parts are working - as long as the driving conditions permit safe travel. We typically will take it grocery shopping and give our 3 Labradors a nice ride at the same time. They love riding in the motorhome! It's a BIG treat! We've been reviewing the websites of some new campgrounds for the next season. Of course, we are very loyal to Spacious Skies. We joined as members. Our favorite is their Woodland Hills campground. We are very fortunate that we have several campgrounds quite near to us that we have had the great pleasure of visiting. We will be looking forward to visiting our favorites again next year. In conclusion, I hope that maybe you will not allow the intensely incompetent, uncaring people you and I have had the great displeasure of meeting spoil your enthusiasm to carry on with the RV experience. Best of luck. Have a wonderfully happy, safe and healthy winter! Best, Jon

 

I just got a Vroom Slide system installed by Burdick's RV Center in Cicero (Syracuse), NY.
They were great to work with and they were booking installs just a month out. Due to family health issues I had to push back the install date and they were very accommodating. The workmanship looks to be very good and it's amazing to be able to run the slide in and out without having all kinds of weird noises. I also had some other issues taken care of at the same time.
Pat

 

Hi Pat - I concur. The Vroom Slide System was a game changer for us. If we continued with the Lippert, we would have definitely been selling our Quantum - most likely never to return to the RV experience. Unfortunately, the Vroom authorized dealer closest to us had a lady customer service rep whose sole responsibility it was to take customer orders and coordinate the Vroom installations acting as the customer liaison between her company and Vroom HQ in AZ. The optimum word being “acting”. She was categorically abysmal at her job! And, I’m being overly polite. She was most likely the reason our fellow blogger, Nancy, is selling her motorhome. It’s a crying shame that Vroom is totally unaware of the irreparable damage this lady is causing their product line. Like Nancy, I was about to walk away and put our motorhome up for sale were it not for my wife who is a master at dealing with incompetent, nasty people. I wanted nothing more to do with that lady rep. She had lied to me for the last time. Anyway, long story short….we are very happy with the Vroom Slide System. I took note from your text that you had a great experience with Burdick’s RV. You had some extra work done, too. We also had requested extra work to be done with our Vroom Slide installation, but after having such a negative experience with that lady - we cancelled all of the extra work and only had the slide installed. Thankfully, we will NEVER have to deal with that lady again.

 

Jonathan,
I'm in Northern NY so that same dealer would have been my closest. After reading your and Nancy's messages, I knew to stay away from them . I was fully prepared to travel to Tucson for an installation, if necessary. I contacted Vroom and when I received the list of Authorized Installers, I was pleasantly surprised that there was an installer almost in my backyard (3 hr. drive). As RV dealers go, Burdick's is not that large but Burdick is a huge multiple brand multiple location auto dealer in the Syracuse area. Due to personal scheduling issues I dropped the rig off 2 weeks before it was scheduled figuring that would also give them time to work in the extra stuff. They finished everything including the Vroom almost a week before it was scheduled (Oct 9'th). I didn't want to post anything until I had it back but the whole experience was nothing but positive. The service manager (Angelo) handled all of the arrangements and I got the feeling that this is his personal baby. He went to Tucson along with another tech for the training and started doing the Vroom installs in early 2024 and are scheduling 2 per week. As is noted earlier, it was only a month lead time to get in. They are busy but not overwhelmed.
As a side note, my slide needed some beefing up and the Lower Slide Assembly is an angle plate going under the slide and not the flat plate that's in the diagrams. It also needed some of the rollers to be changed out with something that could handle the weight and aluminum roller plates were swapped out for the plastic ones. Once I saw the Vroom system in person, I'm even more impressed with the system.

Pat

 

Hello, Pat ~ That all sounds good with your Vroom experience. We got there, and are happy with the Vroom Slide, but the local person we had to deal with.....well, you know the story! LOL! I was wondering, we have in-laws that live on Otisco Lake. We visited with them a few years back when they had a spacious 2 story cottage and a separate cabin on the lake. Now they have down-graded to a smaller, more easily maintainable home with little to no extra room to spare. I assume you're farther north somewhere around the Jefferson and Lewis county area, so this may be a long shot request to ask. We're in the Hudson Valley area of NYS and western NYS seems like light years away from here! We want to go back to the Finger Lakes region and would like to ask you if there are any RV campgrounds that you can recommend that are very pet friendly and have fishing readily available on site. We travel with our 3 Labradors - all of them very well behaved and quiet.
On another note, we're also in the market for a parcel of land that we can use for recreational purposes. Hunting, fishing, hiking, that sort of thing. No need for any buildings as we could use our motorhome. BUT, we would like some space. We've been looking online at parcels anywhere from 50 acres to 400 acres within a 3 hour drive of our home. A friend of our's recommended we search the Fort Drum area and the Old Forge area. Unfortunately, the listings we see are not to our liking for one reason, or another. Whenever I meet someone from the northern and western part of NY, I always ask this question. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know. Thank you.


Best,

Jon

 

I've been lurking on this thread ever since it started, and i hope you dont mind me asking a couple of questions. you folks never mentioned what happened to the original slide systems on your RVs. was it to total failure? cant get parts? did you look at other systems from lippert and power gear?

just curious.
thanks, chris g.

 

Hello, Chris ~ Thank you for your thoughtful questions. I'll try to answer them from my experiences with the Lippert Slide System. From what I have come to learn, Lippert and Thor go hand-in-hand from a business perspective. That not withstanding, experts in RV's have unilaterally told me the Lippert system is NOT designed to handle slides over, say 4', max. The slide out on our Quantum is roughly 12'. Thor thought they could solve the mechanical issues for larger slides by adding an extra rail to each side giving the slide 3 rails per side, rather than two. This only worsened a bad situation. The slide was continually out of alignment. Plus the quality of the Lippert materials is sub-par. Pressed aluminum and pot metal. Those materials cannot withstand the torque pressures of any large slide. The first slide that broke not only cracked one of the rails, but also ripped the teeth right off several gears. That slide was replaced by Camping World at a $ 500 fee to us for shipping costs because the damage was not our fault and covered under our warranty - we purchased separately. Within a matter of a few months, the new Lippert system was out of alignment once again. By this time, we had ended all business ties with Camping World for their gross incompetence and horrible customer service. We still had our Good Sam protection plan so I called and spoke with a slide expert in the state of Washington. He flatly told me the Lippert system was garbage in my application. He told me to order a Vroom. By the time I was investigating Vroom, one gear had broken in the Lippert slide system. I had our new in-home service tech come in and together he and I dismantled that part of the slide to discover that the geniuses at Camping World had installed the gear upside down!!! That temporary fix cost us $ 350 to resolve! Long story short, I made contact with the Vroom authorized installer closest to our home and ordered a new Vroom Slide System. Since you have already read the previous posts you know how that process evolved. The conclusion is: so far, we are very pleased with the Vroom Slide System. It has been performing as advertised. The old Lippert - which was actually brand new, minus one gear - I donated to our in-home service tech to "pay it forward" to another RV'er in whatever manner our tech decided. No strings. I hope this answered your questions.

Best,

Jon

 

Jon,
We're in Tupper Lake. I don't know if the Adirondacks are out of range for you but the NYS DEC campgrounds do not have a pet limit listed unlike NYS Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation sites that limit you to 2 pets. Our favorite place is not far from us, Fish Creek Ponds. There are over 300 sites on the water with a few more not on the water. The thing with the DEC sites is they have no sewer or electric and a water faucet about every 10 sites or so.
I don't know of anything for sale in our area right now. Be sure to check with the local zoning before you buy though.

Chris -
As Jon said, the Lippert (Schwinteck) is just designed for larger slides. We have a Jayco Redhawk M24B and the slide includes the Master Bed, wardrobe and dinette. We were never stranded but the slide would jump gears, make grinding noises and just made us nervous every time we used it. We replaced most of the system once and the shop said that most of the system had been replaced previously. It was about 1 year old and had 9,000 miles when we bought it. There were stripped gears on it when we installed the Vroom system. I estimated that we got about 40-50 cycles after a repair before we the symptoms returned. We do not tow a vehicle so if it broke we would have been completely stranded.

Pat

 

jon & Pat, thanks for your replies. WOW, i can't believe a manufacturer would install such an incompatible system in your rigs. If these had been cars, instead of RVs, you'd think the NTSB would force then to do a recall. have you seen other owners with similar rigs with the same problems?

I'm sorry you had to go through such headachs to get the systems working, but glad you were able to get it resolved.

regards,
chris g.

 

Hello, Chris ~ Yet again, Pat confirms the testimony I have received from many other RV owners regarding the Lippert Slide System. Believe me, I did extensive research into remedies for our dismal slide situation and at each and every discovery, I was directed to Vroom by folks with far greater experience and knowledge than I had - at the time. I had many discussions with Thor Motor Coach Customer Service and they defended the Lippert system. It wasn't until I learned that Thor essentially owns Lippert that the light bulb went off in my head.

Pat ~
Thanks for the info! My late Aunt Mary Lyle lived on South Little Wolf Road for decades. She and my Uncle Bob loved it! Aunt Mary volunteered at the Visitor Center for years. She always invited me to come up to Tupper Lake to visit, but I never found the time. Before she passed, I told her that one day soon, my wife and I will make the trek to Tupper to visit her area and take stock of all the places she told me about. She did say there were several RV parks in the area. When we bought our RV two years ago, Aunt Mary thought the idea of traveling around in a motor home was grand. She told me that she and my uncle always wanted to do that, but his eye sight failed and, well....you know, she became his caregiver until his passing many years ago. We definitely have Tupper on our NYS travel bucket list. Now that the slide issue has been rectified, that trip may soon become reality. On a separate note, my daughter bought us life time passes to NYS parks. It was very generous, but we travel with our 3 Labs. We have investigated the DEC sites, too. Although boon docking is not a deal breaker, we do prefer our amenities for "glamping" with water, electric and sewer connections. LOL!
We have looked at the Fish Creek Ponds (& Square Pond) web site. Beautiful campgrounds! As for land for sale, you're right about checking in with the local authorities to learn about zoning. I am not at all unfamiliar with certain zoning regulations given what we're looking for in a recreational property. My son lives in PA and is trying to convince us to look at land in PA where regulations are less stringent. Unfortunately, since COVID, the real estate market in PA has been propped up dramatically by wealthy NYC refugees. Our search continues.....LOL!

Thanks for all the great correspondence!

Jon

 

Jon,
Your Aunt Mary also volunteered at the Wild Center. I did their IT work for several years and remember her. This is a small town. Tupper has 2 campgrounds, one is the town operated, Little Wolf Campground and Beach right near where you Aunt Mary lived. The other one is temporary closed. The Blue Jay Campground had been run by a local couple for decades until they passed a couple of years ago. It's on Route 30 towards Long Lake about 3 mile out of town on the lake and has a marina. It has been sold, was completely renovated and is supposed to reopen as a KOA. It was scheduled to open this past season but they are waiting for an electric transformer which have huge backlogs. Our local electric department has to plan on a 1 year delivery. Rollins Pond has more hills than Fish Creek but has no motorized boats. Fish Creek is open for water skiing etc. We started out with a Pop-Up so we don't mind the boon docking. Not having to walk to a bath house at 4AM was a big step up! Unfortunately, our real estate market has done the same thing. One example is a 72 acre wooded lot on the lake with no road access for 995K. There are 2 wooded 5 acre lots just outside of town near the golf course that are showing available in the 60-70K range. A few years ago that would have been considered obscene.

Pat

 

Great to hear from you Jon, and happy you are having success with your Vroom system and are enjoying your rig finally! Baileys did a fantastic job on our slide but it is the Lippert system. Our camper is doing great. No failures anywhere, no leaks or component issues (knock knock).

I've been offline for a week - we were at Dolly Copp Campground this past week, the last of their 2024 season. This venerable WMNF campground got a complete overhaul during the past few years and it is quite a gem. They've installed electricity and water at almost half the sites and a dump station. Only problem, it has no Verizon access so we have only had access when we drove into Gorham. The campground is just up the street from Pinkham Notch and the Mt Washington Auto Road. Lots of hiking from the campground, a lovely but popular spot.

In addition to Dolly Copp we got a week in at a two site location in Belvidere VT and a week at Prouty Beach, Newport VT. Our camper is a GD 22MLE and has plenty of room for Mark and I and our lab sized mix, Lizzy. She had a fantastic time at all the locations we visited, swimming and hiking...
Next is a thorough cleaning, winterization and covering. We'll see what happens in the spring - it was such a relief to have the slide working again. A quick review of the entries below, I see someone was very satisfied with their vroom install done at a location near Syracuse NY.... hmmm!???

Happy off season to you and yours!
Nancy

 

Hi Pat ~ LOL! I had a feeling if I mentioned Aunt Mary by name you would, at the very least, have heard of her by name. I know Tupper is small and Aunt Mary loved the area. She often swam in Little Wolf. She passed away June 17th, 2023 at 99 years old. Just 4 months shy of her 100th birthday! She and I had a wager that when she celebrated her 100th birthday I would drive our motor coach to her assisted living facility, Vernon Green, in Vernon, VT where she and I would share a traditional afternoon martini inside the coach before we had a birthday dinner in her honor. She came close!! She was something, wasn't she??!!! At 95, she canoed - by herself - the CT River with a group of other canoe enthusiasts! She passed peacefully at a nearby VT hospital when she went in for a scheduled heart operation. She and I both knew it wasn't worth the risk and I think she just simply made up her mind it was time to move on rather than suffer through an evasive surgery at 99 years old! We shared one final martini over the phone before she went into the hospital. Her two daughters were there with her. Aunt Mary is back here in my hometown along with my Uncle Bob at St. Joseph's cemetery. If you truly knew Aunt Mary, you know she could be very opinionated and outspoken! In later life, I got along with her very well because I think I understood her better than the rest of our family and friends. She was a character, to say the least!!!

 

Hi Nancy ~ Best of luck with the newly installed Lippert. (Fingers crossed!!)


May I introduce you to our 3 children with fur....from left to right, our newest Sophie ( Irish Red Lab ), our Lizzy (Black English Lab) and her brother Riley (Yellow English Lab). They LOVE camping in the motor coach. In fact, their bed is the folded down Dinette Table. However, on special occasions, they can sleep on the Queen bed. A real special treat is when we rent a golf cart and take them out for a spin around the campgrounds and a stop to get some ice cream. They're overly friendly and love to meet people. I joke around and tell folks they are my version of the woke culture....."Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" - based on their colors. I have been doing some late season cleaning inside our coach and as soon as the door opens, the three of them are straight in and on "their bed" ready to go!!

So, you and Pat have given us some new campgrounds to take a look at for next season. We were just speaking about that this afternoon as we were repairing a small water leak in our home kitchen. (A refrigerator ice making water line was leaking) We need to sit down and take a look at, not only the places you and Pat have mentioned, but some others. We use rvparky.com as well as the Good Sam website. We prefer to be "away" from the crowds and sites that resemble parking lots. We especially like the sites nearest to water where we can fish and watch for wildlife without being right "on top" of our nearest neighbors. The dogs love to sniff around in a wildness setting which is what they are used to at home.

Our top 3 campgrounds close to home are: Spacious Skies Woodland Hills; Rip VanWinkle Campgrounds; and Cozy Hills in Bantam, CT. The only other campground we've been to is Lake George Escape Campground.

We are members of Spacious Skies and have the one and only favorite site at Woodland Hills. When I make a reservation there, Laurie knows we'll be taking Site 14 and only Site 14! LOL!

We really enjoyed Cozy Hills. The only problem is the lake had a catastrophic dam failure and all of the water drained out. However, the food is amazing and the people are extremely friendly - both staff and fellow campers.

Rip is located in a pine forest in the Catskills and just a few miles before the entrance to the camp ground is the greatest family owned smoke house and butcher. We stopped there on our way to the camp site and grabbed a few rib eye steaks and filet mignon for cooking on our grill. That was great! We take only the sites that border the Plattekill Creek.

Escape was fun. The pavilion was a hoot! Unfortunately we were there right after the Schroon River flooded over its banks and water was everywhere. So, too, were the mosquitoes!!! You couldn't sit outside with any less than a dozen Citronella candles, a few cans of Deep Woods Off, mosquito repelling bracelets, a couple Thermacells and I had to light up a cigar hoping the smoke would dissuade the little blood suckers. It was really bad. I cannot begin to express how bad the mosquitoes were!!! LOL!

In conclusion, we would love to hear of any other campgrounds that you all have tried and liked. With a new Vroom Slide installed, we're encouraged and feeling empowered to take some longer trips next season.

Thank you both for our chat time.

Best,

Jon & Cathy