Where oh Where Is Our Little Awning Now….

Quick recap….When we bought our Dynamax Isata six weeks ago, it had no awning over the slide-out.  On the PPL website the picture of the slide-out shows a “ripped” awning, but after the picture was taken the owner asked them to take it off since other potential buyers wanted him to fix the awning.  Now this would have been around a $400 fix…after the awning was taken off and the unit did not sell the price dropped two or three times, once by $1,000 just as we were looking at it.  So it was a bad decision of the owner to remove it and not fix it, that is for sure.  For us, it has been a bit of a drama getting one put back on.

So we took possession on the 18th of April, and made arrangements for PPL to put an awning on the 28th if we returned…and since we would be there, we included some other work to be done too.  Well, they assured us they would have the awning, and we agreed to the other work.  Well, the other work got taken care of, but the awning never arrived in time.  So Joy, the service manager, agreed to ship the awning once they got it to my sister’s house in California.  On May 13th, in response to my email, Joy told me that the awning had arrived, “will be sent out today”.  On Friday May 16th I asked for a tracking number, and, well, here is what it said….

So “it will go out today” means, “we will ship it out on Friday when you ask for the tracking number”.  But, it got worse….of course….

As you can see in the upper right corner, it was being sent to Holiday Florida, and not Citrus Heights, California as we had agreed to.

So on to Tampa it went, where the new delivery location request finally stopped it short of being delivered (it was on the truck!).  Thursday it arrived at Orlando….and it stayed there and stayed there and stayed there.  So Tuesday morning I called and had a harsh talk with PPL, who talked with FedEx, and I was promised delivery on Wednesday, May 28th.  I even talked to a representative at FedEx who assured me that it was going to be on a plane Tuesday and would be delivered Wednesday.  And until 11:45 pm Pacific Time Tuesday, nothing had changed on the website, until…..

…just 15 minutes earlier it had arrived at Sacramento.  By 8 am it was on the truck and going out for delivery.  And here it is 6 pm and I am still waiting for it!

I have had some kind words said on the blog about PPL, both times we bought from them.  Frankly, I still think good things about them, but I also feel a bit let down.  We made a special trip to Houston for this awning, and although other work was performed, the awning was the reason we went there.  But when they said they would ship it to California, that made things better.  But it arrived to PPL, could have been there a few days and it took my email to inquire about it before Joy said, “It will go out today.”  Even then, it did not go out for another three days….and then, it was sent to Florida, and I am the one who caught the mistake.  Then, FedEx sat on it in Orlando, due to the holiday I was told, and it will be here today unless the truck breaks down.

UPDATE:

The awning arrived!  Just before we went to dinner, FedEx delivered the awning.  The box was not in the best of shape…the two metal covers were not at either end where they belonged, and the upper end in the picture the box was broken nearly all the way around, but taped up.  As for the awning, I cannot see any apparent damage, but we hope to have it put on next week and the “experts” at the RV repair place we use will determine its condition.  I just hope it is the right size and everything, we went through enough already with this thing.