Complaint Review: Camper Depot

In keeping with the aim of this website our purpose is to inform the public of our experience with Camper Depot of Punta Gorda, Florida.

Rather than go into chapter and verse and risk boring you with the details, we will take a page out of good old “Joe Friday's” book and just give you “the facts, just the facts”.

That means, we will only highlight those points that we have documentary evidence supporting them. For the most part this will be comprised of the original contract, NADA pricing, information from the state of Florida investigators into the matter, their response to those agencies and a few emails.

Unfortunately since these folks appear to prefer using the phone for their correspondence and ask you to email them with information they want a record of the email trail is rather short, but none the less interesting..

The following then are bullet points of our consignment transaction with Camper Depot:

• First off it's important to know that Camper Depot advertises that they are “One of the most trusted RV dealers in Florida” and that they have been in business for over 40 years. See their website at camperdepot.com.

•  They told me that NADA lists the value of our RV at $10,300. which they confirmed in their response to Florida investigators writing them “We appraised the unit before it was picked up based on the NADA price of a reported “good to excellent “ condition cost of $10,300.”.

• The current price listed on the NADA website for our RV without taking into consideration about 2 to $3,000. of added accessories and improvements as of March of this year, a year after the fact is a suggested retail of $29,282., a low retail of $17,075 and average retail of $20,565. So their claim that NADA value was $10,300. is a bit of an understatement.

• A search of the web now will bring up a number of comparable RV's being advertised by dealers and private owners for sale in the high teens or low 20 thousands.

• A week or so after they obtained procession of the RV they called an said the RV must have been in an accident because of extensive damages and while I knew that was a gross distortion just as their evaluation was, I was already a thousand miles away and in no position to came back and get the RV so I went along with their reducing the price to $6,300. figuring that it would hurry the sale and I could go on to other things.(This is confirmed by their written response to Florida investigators.)

• On April 4^th I called them and got a follow up email saying they will adjust the reserve (amount paid ot me) from $10,300 to $6,000. and I should send the title to them to facilitate a sale. I immediately sent them an email reply saying that they gave me a price of $6,000 not $6,300. to which I got a reply “$6,300 is good---we will work hard to get it sold. (copies of all these emails are available).

• Almost 4 months later at the end of July I got a phone call telling me that they were working a deal and it would take another $1,000. to do the deal. I told them OK I'd split it with them and per their request I sent an email (have copy) saying “To confirm our conversation of today I agreed to reduce the amount of the proceeds of the sale of the VR-1 by $500. inorder to complete the sale you mentioned. Our last correspondence shows we agreed that we would receive $6,300. Upon the sale, which if my math is correct means you will forward to us $5,800. Upon completion of the transaction. Please let me know when you expect the closing of this transaction”.

• I believed that all of these reductions were to be used to pay for the repairs or to reduce the price and of course speed the sale. Few repairs were done according to their own response to Florida investigators.(most likely because they were not needed). And apparently no price reduction was made below the original contracted price.

• I did not receive a reply to this either by phone or by email and infact did not hear a thing further from them for over 7 months when I sent an email on March 3, 2015 asking ”Whats happening with the sale of our VR-1 RV? It will be a year tomorrow and I haven't heard from you since last summer.” To which they replied “We will call you soon, we are working on a deal on it now.”(have copies of emails)

• On March 14^th of this year they called and told my wife they sold the RV and would be sending a check for $4,859.00 deducting cost of some minor not explained repairs and the cost of towing the 10-13 miles to their yard a year before. At no time did we ever hear of any repairs or a towing charge before and did not get any written explanation of the additional charges just a dubious phone call and the check. (copy available).

• On May 16^th in their statement to Florida authorities they provided work orders for repairs and towing charges totaling under $1,000 which may or may not have been done up after the fact. What is really interesting given the fact that they state that the RV was a real wreck. Anybody that knows RV's knows that a thousand dollars which also includes their so called “towing charge” wouldn't buy much repair.

• They also stated to investigators that they were lucky enough to find a buyer for this wreck and it's against company policy to divulge what the selling price was (wonder why?). Investigators have found out it was over $10,000. and possibly more.

• Over the past year that they have had our RV, I kept a fairly close eye on their advertising on the web which was about three pages with at least 28 different pictures and pretty detailed description of the RV (I have screen shots of this). Nowhere does it make reference to any repairs that would be needed or the sorry shape that they told me as well as Florida investigators was in and detailed in their response to their inquiries. I saw it advertised above $14,000 and at no time less than $10,000. which makes sense, since they would have to be really, really lucky to sell it for above that amount if they were advertising it for less.

Given the above, just the facts no verbal BS included, Camper Depot claimed that the value of my RV was less than half of what they were being sold at and the NADA said it was, They deducted charges I was totally unaware of and did not authorize They claimed the RV must have been involved in an accident but somehow managed to “get real lucky” and get a buyer to give them $4,000 more than they said it was worth and then offered no accounting for anything. And then to beat all, they sent me a check for $1,500. less than they previously agreed to.

So to sum it up, it took a year to get less than $5,000. for something that was probably worth at least three times that much. And then they sold it for almost twice as much as they told me it was worth.. It's like a real estate broker selling your house for less than half of the market value and then charging you a 60% commission to do so.

One last thing concerning my final correspondence with them to date, where I detailed in an email that I would be filing complaints against them. Their reply, “suggest you consult a lawyer, as you may need one”.

Not a comment you would expect to get from “One of the most trusted RV dealers in Florida” who claim they've been doing this for over 40 years but then again their actions regarding this whole deal was not what I was led to expect.