Does Camping World Suck? Part 2

Well everyone, it’s February 22, 2022 and we’ve been back in the RV for a couple of months now following its month-long visit to Camping World in Stafford, Missouri. In Part 1 of this blog series I talked a little bit about the Camping World corporation as well as my past experiences with the chain. I also mentioned that I was so tired of reading comments from people bashing the company that I decided to make a fully documented video series which involved a large repair, an extended warranty and insurance company. This would help answer the question once and for all: “Does Camping World suck?”
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These blogs are laid out in a quite different way than our YouTube videos which visually document the experience as well as my opinions. There are also four parts to the video series which include a lot of communication from all parties involved as well as photos of the work, capped off with an overall summary of Camping World and its CEO Marcus Lemonis. I recommend checking those videos out here after reading these blogs!

Initial contact and drop off

My first contact with Camping World involved a stop at the Wichita location (Gander RV) per my insurance company’s request. I have to stop here and mention that the Wichita location could not perform the roof repairs as they had no personnel capable of doing so. Fortunately, I met Kerry Stevens there. Kerry is the Service Manager for the Stafford, Missouri Camping World location and he happened to be in the Wichita store that day. Kerry came right out and looked the RV over and gave me an honest opinion about all the items I needed. When he found out we were full-timers he told me if I wanted to make the 4.5 hours trip to Springfield he would make sure we were taken care of in a timely manner.

As a former Service Manager myself I really appreciated Kerry’s time and attention. I also detected a real sincerity in his willingness to help. He gave me his personal cell phone number and told me to contact him anytime. With that, I decided right there in the parking lot that I would be making that drive to Missouri and allowing Kerry and his team to do the work - not only because I felt good about him, but also because I wanted to put them to the test. After all, this was going to be a rather big job: ten repair items involving the extended warranty company, several diagnosis jobs that I couldn’t seem to figure out on my own, and finally a complete roof replacement due to storm damage.      

Over the next couple weeks I worked to get an estimate from the insurance company and figure out logistics on our end. After all, we were essentially moving out of our home for the duration of this repair. Thankfully we are blessed with amazing friends and family! We first arranged to stay in Dallas with our long-time friend Grant, and after a couple weeks there we came back to Wichita where Tosha’s brother Josh and his wife Dani allowed us to move in with them. While this was very much appreciated, it was still a stressful situation for our family. More on that in a later blog. 

Anyway, as we were working on the above logistics I also contacted Kerry and asked him if we were still good to bring the motorhome to him for this job. By this time we were running out of time. Our plan was to be on the road by Jan.1, 2022 but we were now into December. Knowing that this would be at least one month’s worth of work to be completed, I was hoping for an appointment date that wasn’t too far out. Kerry responded to me immediately with a phone call and asked how soon I could bring the RV. That was on Friday December 3. On the morning of Monday, December 6th we rolled into the lot at Camping World in Stafford. The drop off with Kerry and our Service Advisor, Kami went seamlessly and we were back on the road in no time, headed to Dallas.      

​Given my experience in the repair industry as well as with RV shops, I did not expect to hear from Kami or Kerry for at least a week. To my surprise, just three days later Kerry contacted me with a list of diagnosis and news! This surprisingly prompt and thorough communication continued throughout the duration of the visit. Whereas Kami promised at least one update per week, I was hearing from them almost every other day.

Running into snags

And so, everything was rolling along smoothly at the shop yet there remained some loose ends. First, there was a list of items to diagnose and submit for extended warranty coverage. Second, we had a huge question mark in regards to the roof. Because the damage to our roof was beneath the membrane (a dent), the insurance company originally wanted to pull the membrane up, repair the dent, and stick it back down. I knew that wasn’t going to work (and so did everyone else) but we all agreed we would need to give it a shot first then file a supplement as needed. A supplement occurs when the shop requests more money from the insurance company to perform additional repairs found during the visit. 

Here’s where we ran into some turbulence. Not surprisingly, the roof membrane would not go back into place. The insurance company denied the $5000 supplement, leaving us holding the bag. In the meantime some of the intermittent issues we reported to the extended warranty company were not acting up while the RV was being checked out by their inspector. Two of these issues - the generator stalling and the rear air conditioner freezing up - are a pretty big deal for us since we do so much boondocking in hot areas. Lastly, the side glass which I ordered directly from Lippert broke during shipping. UPS denied the claim due to “insufficient packaging”, which was unbelievable given that Lippert packed the glass so carefully and thoroughly. 

Having heard all of this in a matter of just a couple days, my stress level was increasing rapidly.

Diligence from some saves the day

Thankfully we had some good people on our side. Lippert Industries decided to expedite cutting a new window for us and ship it out to us at no cost. Kerry and Kami at Camping World pressed on with the insurance company and tried their best to get our roof supplement covered. Only the day after we picked the RV up and paid $5200 out of pocket did we find that the supplement would indeed be covered thanks to the insistence of Camping World staff. To say this was a relief would be an incredible understatement. 

I want to take a moment here and say that communication from Kerry throughout this process was absolutely awesome. He and I exchanged dozens and dozens of text messages, several emails and many phone calls during the course of the visit. I should also mention that given my experience as a Service Advisor and Service Manager, I know how frustrating it can be to have a customer bother you for constant updates. As such, I’m a very “quiet” customer. I don’t hound for updates or ask for a whole lot of information. I leave it to the shop personnel to be proactive and do their jobs without me hovering. With this in mind, I hardly ever contacted Kerry or Kami on my own accord. Almost every time we communicated it was Kerry reaching out to me! 

The amount of communication and correspondence from Kerry and Kami truly made me feel like I was their only customer. I honestly wondered to myself at one point whether they were onto me. Did they know I was secretly putting them to the test with the intent of publicly broadcasting my findings? Were we getting preferential treatment? 

I’m quite confident that this was not the case. In fact, it was only after picking up the RV that I spoke to Kerry and asked whether I could interview him for the channel and use our phone conversations in the footage. He was surprised to hear that we had a channel, and just this morning I received a text from Kerry letting me know he saw our first video. I truly do not think Kerry knew (or cared) about our YouTube channel or webpage. Even if they did know about Lackey’s Be Trippin’, at the time of this writing we’re not exactly a household name. I doubt our handful of followers would have persuaded them to roll out the VIP carpet.

This experience vs. thousands of others

My experience at the Stafford location was overwhelmingly positive. I must say after pick up we found two electrical issues on the rig: one was not a surprise, as Kerry did inform us that the thermostat/front AC control board was acting up intermittently while in their possession but they could not reproduce it for the warranty inspector. That component was indeed malfunctioning when we picked the RV up. The second item was a bit of a surprise, as the outlets tied to the inverter were not working. I did manage to get the HVAC to reset via static discharge (pulled the fuse and reset it), but I found that the inverter was left unplugged (likely when the shop replaced the converter in that same area).

The only complaints I have with the roof job are some paint missing where the gutters were pulled off and reattached on the sides of the coach, some slight wrinkles in one section of the roof edge, and a missing gutter spout on the passenger side. Two of these three things are minor and I’ll touch them up myself, but the wrinkles in the edge may require a future visit if they don’t lay out on their own. These nitpicks aside, the overall job looks great and it’s watertight! We’ve seen a LOT of rain (even ice) since picking the Outlaw up and it’s performed just fine.

Everything above being said, I must remind you that we rushed Camping World to complete the job so we could get back on the road. Hold ups from our insurance and extended warranty company hindered the shop’s progress but they still did a lot of work in a short amount of time! Had we allowed them another day or two to shakedown and recheck all their work I’m confident the small issues would have been found and resolved. 

So overall, what is my impression of this individual service center following a BIG $10,000 repair visit? Frankly, I was pleasantly surprised and if I’m honest - impressed! Now the question is, am I an anomaly?

The company (and the guy) people love to hate

Chances are if you’re reading this you’ve already read some negative opinions of Camping World or Gander RV, but if you’re a new RVer Camping World is probably the first name that comes to mind when you think of an RV store! On the surface, it’s pretty crazy to think that veteran RVers have such a different opinion of this company than novice RVers do. But really, it’s a great indicator of how things are going very wrong in the Camping World company as a whole. Let’s dive into that.

Type “Camping World” into the search bar of Facebook and see what page suggestions come up. The top two are likely “Camping World -The Awful Experience”, and “The Camping World Experience”. Each of these pages has 3000-4000 members, most of which are quite vocal about their disdain for the CW/Gander brand. Hop over to YouTube and type “Camping World Experience” in the search bar. You’ll find page after page of videos outlining people’s experiences with CW and - spoiler alert - they’re mostly all bad.

The discussions I’ve had with folks in some of these social media pages is enough to melt your brain, trust me. I won’t be outlining those conversations here but I do touch on them in a couple of our YouTube videos, so check those out if you’re curious! What I will tell you is that the hate, the venom and the vitriol some of these people spit at Camping World (and anyone who shows even a shred of positivity towards CW) is so strong and ugly that it’s what ultimately drove me to make myself a guinea pig with this large repair and all the accompanying video/written documentation. To be completely honest, I started this whole thing hoping that I would have a perfect experience so I could come back and rub it in the haters’ faces: “Look suckers Camping World doesn’t suck so bad after all!” 

With the above in mind, I took the RV in and had a great experience… only to realize maybe Camping World does suck. 

While the RV was in the shop I tossed out a few “bait” posts on the anti-CW Facebook pages which garnered a ton of attention and lots of very interesting discussion. Some of these comments were really geared towards one person in particular: CEO Marcus Lemonis. This got me thinking… Even if my little experiment goes perfectly, would it be enough to argue that Camping World doesn’t suck? At that point I shifted my focus from my specific story to researching all I could about Lemonis and the entire Camping World conglomerate.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve been somewhat familiar with Marcus Lemonis thanks to his CNBC show The Profit, in which Marcus steps in and assesses struggling businesses before offering investment and advice to the business owners. As a viewer of his show, I’ve often struggled to figure this guy out. My initial impressions of this guy during the first few episodes were that this guy has a lot of money so clearly he isn’t stupid, however something was off. I was never able to put my finger on it but I continued to watch. After just about half a season I started to realize that while Marcus Lemonis is NOT stupid, he’s not exactly… brilliant. And he might be a little slimy. That was before I even knew he was the CEO of Camping World.

Once I figured out the guy from The Profit was the CEO of Camping World, I began reading everything I could about him. What I found was pretty eye-opening! Accusations of hostile takeovers, public dressing-downs of his partners, lawsuit dodging… Some people have gone so far as to compare Lemonis’ practices to “mob tactics” by using a “bust out” approach. In a bust out the instigator buries a business in debt with investments, only to take that business from its original owners when they cannot possibly repay the debt. It’s a strong accusation, I gotta say, after reading some articles and recounting some episodes of The Profit… it adds up. 

In between all the reading I went back and watched some past episodes of The Profit. Interestingly (and without intention) I found myself looking at the show from an entirely different perspective. Remember earlier when I said Lemonis isn’t stupid but he might be a little slimy? Boy does that ring true when you know a little more about his backstory! 

One episode in particular saw Lemonis doling out tens of thousands of dollars to a pair of desperate business owners while demanding that they change their business model. This probably wouldn’t be a big deal in-and-of-itself except for the fact that he admitted at the start of the episode that he did not know anything about this particular industry. When the couple rebut Lemonis’ demands he simply reminded them that he was now a primary owner in the company and they were to do as he instructed per the handshake deal they struck prior to the stroking of the first big check. He wrote many checks over the course of that episode and by the end of it I wondered to myself: “When and how are these people possibly going to be able to repay all this money to him?” 

Lemonis is a businessman first and foremost. That’s his MO, and we have to respect that. He’s not here to make friends nor is he handing out checks on a charity basis. That being said, these shady business dealings aren’t limited to the TV screen. The most public and blatant example involves a woman named Gigi Stetler and her company RV Sales of Broward. There are a ton of moving parts to the whole story which started when Stetler politely declined a Camping World offer to purchase her business. From there, Camping World resorted to some brow-raising tactics in an attempt to choke off Gigi’s business and damage her long-established relationships with marketing partners. It’s a big ugly mess and I’ll allow you to explore that in your own time via the Google machine. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t lend much in the way of “positive Camping World vibes”.

While I definitely want you to read up on the Camping World vs. Stetler case, more than anything I would love for you to watch Marcus Lemonis’ deposition on the case on YouTube. It’s a couple hours’ worth of smirks, snarky comments and laughable attempts to deflect, but if you grit your teeth and wade through it you’ll find more than enough material to make a solid judgment on Lemonis’ character. I recommend a strong drink (or two or three) as well as a little background music to make the whole thing more bearable. Wait even better - go to our YouTube page and watch Part 4 of our Camping World series where I highlight many of the most ridiculous moments from the deposition! It will save you the hangover.

Cancel(ling) culture

All this research opened my eyes to what is happening to these stores on the ground level. Keep in mind I worked in the auto industry for 20 years and I’ve found that most of my knowledge translates directly to the RV industry. I also have the unique perspective of visiting not just one or two CW stores local to me, but stores across the country! What I have found is that while the experience naturally varies from location to location, most of the time I get nothing more than a sense of mediocrity following my visit. Staff seems just helpful enough, yet never truly excited about their job. There’s no “soul” to the place - I’m unsure how to describe it other than saying it feels like an “RV WalMart”. I leave the store neither offended nor blown away.

As with anything, there are of course exceptions to this sense of mediocrity. In the case of an overwhelmingly positive experience look no further than my last visit to the Strafford, MO store and the excellent customer service we received! On the negative side I’ve dealt with complacent, untrained sales staff (Oklahoma CIty location) and rude parts counter people (in Wichita). Given my level of experience around dealerships from family-owned to corporate conglomerates, I think I can tell you exactly why CW and Gander RV have garnered such a reputation for mediocrity and outright poor customer service: Marcus.

Let’s first consider the inner workings of a well-run, family-owned RV store: At the top of the business you typically have a mom & pop, or a very small group of owners calling the shots. Managers have typically worked at the store for a considerable amount of time and were likely promoted from within. Employees are familiar with the people who run the store at the highest levels and they understand what is expected of them. Employees are rewarded and recognized by the upper management and ownership for their efforts which increases employee morale and subsequently, retention.

In the case of a big conglomerate like CW, we don’t have much definition at the top levels of management with the exception of Marcus Lemonis - you know, the guy on TV. The one who has his smiling face plastered all over the stores. Management comes and goes in many cases, sometimes being cycled out with people who have no prior RV experience. Employee retention is low due to mediocre pay and praise. And it all flows from the top down. 
To put it frankly, Marcus Lemonis has put himself in a position to be a “CEO with a face”, someone that people will immediately associate with his big chain. Unfortunately, to do that successfully, said CEO must have his or her ducks in a row pretty tightly. For instance, if you’re going to put a sign on the door of all your stores with your face and the statement “If you’re not happy, I’m not happy. Call me and I’ll make it right”, you sure as hell better pick up the phone or respond to an email when I reach out. I can tell you from personal experience, that doesn’t always happen. So it should come as no surprise that when I reach out to the General Manager of a store via both phone and email, he doesn’t get back to me. When I try to get hold of the Service Manager to no avail? I can’t expect a callback. After all, his bosses apparently don’t have much sense of urgency so why should he?

To recap; here we have a massive company with what I can only assume to be an egotistical, money-hungry sleazeball at the helm. To make matters worse, thanks to his ego and the desire to be in front of every single customer, Lemonis proudly stamps his face on all the doors and touts that he’s here for you. When those customers do reach out, the best most of them ever get is an assistant who doesn’t have any more answers than anyone else did in the store. THIS is where people start to get angry. That guy at the top just lied to them. It’s Customer Service 101, and Marcus is failing before he even opens his mouth.

And this is the fundamental issue with most CW locations: The culture of the entire company is broken. It’s a perfect example of the way big bad high volume dealership chains do business compared to mom & pop stores and frankly, it’s laughably short-sighted. It takes a very dedicated and passionate manager (or team) to break that cycle and protect an individual store from an otherwise broken corporate culture, but it is possible. Again, I point to the Service Department at the Strafford location as an example of a good manager stepping in and pushing his store’s customer experience beyond mediocre to great! The greater challenge might be protecting the individual store from the reign of those corporate bean counters over the long term and sustaining a uniquely positive atmosphere. 

Remember when I said Lemonis is a businessman first and foremost? Well, that’s the one element of culture that does ring true in Camping World from the top to the bottom. Ask anyone who’s worked at CW (or a large dealership chain for that matter) and they will tell you it’s long hours, high on pressure and low on praise. Not exactly a breeding ground for the warm-and-fuzzies, it doesn’t take long for this type of atmosphere to deflate even the most customer service motivated employees. When customer service takes a back seat to the numbers, all is lost. 

There’s an old saying in the sales industry: “You can shear a sheep for a lifetime, you can only skin the sheep once”. In Part 1 of this blog series I talked about how CW gets their “new blood” after driving away existing customers. It’s an interesting situation - CW seems to care more about hitting “home run” transactions off of newbie RVers who don’t know any better rather than taking care of them in such a way to retain them as long-term customers. Until they change their ways, Camping World is in the sheep skinning business.

So does Camping World suck?

I wavered a lot on this answer as I produced my content over the past few months. In fact I remained undecided about it right up to the hour in which I shot part 4/4 in our Camping World YouTube series! In the end I sat down, looked through all my notes and realized my overly positive experience was indeed an anomaly. I came to a slow realization: As a whole, the entity of Camping World does suck and it all starts with Marcus Lemonis. 

Full disclosure, I did come into this project expecting to expel the trolls and the haters! I wanted so badly to proclaim once and for all that Camping World had an undeserved bad rap, yet I still couldn’t bring myself to do so. Camping World has indeed made the bed in which they lie. I’m not big on negatively labeling large entities or groups, so it is awfully annoying that I have to eat some crow here and tag Camping World as a bad company. Despite this, it’s important to keep in mind there are still good experiences to be had in CW stores. Outliers like Kerry and the team in Strafford are proof that you can find a diamond in the rough, and when push comes to shove every employee in each of these stores is simply trying to earn a living. 

Will I continue to do business with Camping World? Yes, at least in limited capacity, and maybe you should too. After all there is a CW in almost every big city and I know I can count on them to have the part I need in stock. Should that part fail when I’m halfway across the United States, I know there is another Camping World nearby for me to return the part and remedy my issue. I will return to the Strafford location for service. Purchasing an RV at CW? Nah, I won’t touch that one. 

Hopefully in the near future there is an RV revolution of sorts and Camping World sees the error of their ways and rights the ship. Many people (myself included) feel that the popularity of the RV lifestyle combined with the low quality/poor service found throughout the industry is creating a vacuum which is ripe for disruption. Camping World could actually get ahead of the game and be that disruptor… Unfortunately I’m afraid the guy at the helm of this behemoth won’t be able to see past his own ego and antiquated business sense to realize that’s even an option. It’s probably going to take a new CEO to turn this thing around.