King's Highway: Picking Up The Bus

Well, things are not progressing as smoothly as we had hoped. We arrived at Sherman on Thursday at about 11:00AM, and the motorhome was parked there ........ all hooked up and looking good. When we had phoned them on Tuesday, they told us that the Diamond Shield was installed poorly, and that they had made arrangements to send it back to the factory for a 1-day turn around. We agreed and postponed leaving Victoria for one day.

When we met with the salesperson and the service manager, they pointed out that the Diamond Shield was still not well installed. I told them that I would not close on the deal until it was right. They made arrangements to have the factory pick it up and do it over. This time, Patsy and I went to Belmont with it. On Thursday night, we met with the Diamond Shield installer, and showed him what was wrong. He worked that night to remove the Diamond Shield, and it also pulled some paint..... which was anticipated. Since we were at the paint shop, we met with the Paint Supervisor, and made sure that the paint would be redone on Friday morning.

Patsy and I drove to nearest town with a decent motel, Russellville, AL, and got a room for the night. We got up early and drove back to Belmont, and checked on the paint. By 8:00AM, they were already working on it. We then tried to find out about a small repair to the tile floor grout that was supposed to be made, and nobody had been told about it. We found the tile foreman, Jose, and talked to him. He had a guy pick up some grout and walk over to the motorhome with us. He fixed it in about 10 minutes. The folks are great to work with....... the communications in the factory are lousy!!!!

We went back in the afternoon, and it was painted. We talked to the painter, and he said the clearcoat need to dry good before the Diamond Shield was applied. It put a note on the windshield that stated not to put the DS on until after 10:00PM. I took no chances, and I called the Diamond Shield supervisor (got his cell number in my directory!), and made sure that he understood that and that he could do it that late. He explained that they work nights, and would be there until about 2:30AM Saturday. No Problem!!!

We also had another problem. This delay meant closing on Saturday, and the dealer would not take a personal check for that amount when the banks are closed. We call our local Wells Fargo bank manager, and she said that maybe we could wire the money to a local bank and have them give us a cashiers check. To make it easy, we went to Bob Tiffin's office and had him phone his bank to be the one on this end! That went fairly smoothly, except that instead of a one hour transfer, it took from 9:30AM until 3:00PM for the local bank to get the wire! The explanation was something about a small bank here, and the feds had to get involved. Anyway, we got the cashiers check.

Next, Patsy and I drove to Tupelo and got a motel room for the night. Since we were nervous about the 'third' Diamond Shield application, we decided to eat early, catch a nap and wake up at 9:30PM to drive to Belmont (50 miles from Tupelo). That's what we did! And, we are happy with the Diamond Shield now! Here's Mike, the DS supervisor, who did the intall himself, looking it over before beginning:

The motorhome is supposed to be delivered back to Sherman today by noon. We expect to close on it, and spend the rest of the weekend in it trying "out all the buttons". Then, when the dealer opens on Monday, we will continue with the PDI and our learning curve. Here are some pictures of the Diamond Shield installation:

Starting to put in in place.....