March 2006 Update: I just received a very nice email from Jason Cohen, a salesman who's been with Lazydays for 8 years.  He tells me that, although some visitors do have problems similar to our described below, that's the exception rather than the rule. They try very hard to make sure that every customer gets a sales person assigned, regardless of what type of RV they're looking for and what their price range. He invited me back to give them another shot and I might well do that in the future. I may even be convinced to delete this page. In the meantime, I'm going to just leave it here -- but, take it for what it is. My rantings upon return from a very dissatisfying visit to their business. If I can figure out something worthwhile to replace this chapter with, I may very well do that soon.

Have you ever heard of the Lazydays RV SuperCenter? If you haven't, you're one of the few. It's the largest RV dealership in the USA, doing $750 million in sales and accounting for 6% of all new R.V.'s sold in the United States in 2003. And why am I writing about them? Well, I was just reading an article written by a New York Times writer, Steve Dougherty, who took a $450,000 American Eagle out for a little trip and told all his readers about the experience. In the article, he writes glowingly about how great the service is at Lazydays and how expertly all of their staff took care of him. Well, Steve, I've got news, if you're not buying a $450,000 RV, the service isn't quite so good.

We've been getting ads and brochures from Lazydays for a long time, but have been trashing them up until July, 2003. At that time, we were looking for a new RV and had received an ad offering $5000 in gas if we bought from Lazydays. Seemed worth a shot, so we drove on over to Tampa to check them out. I had emailed Lazydays in May, asking for information, and had received the letter below from one of the owners, Stan Felts. I thought they sounded like a really friendly and professional place, so worth the trip ... read on.

Our visit was anything but friendly and professional. The email I sent to Stan upon our return tells it all:

Date:Tue, 1 Jul 2003 06:55:09 -0700 (PDT)

From:"Robert Hoffman" <rjhoffman@yahoo.com>

Subject:Re: to Stan Felts

To:"Lazydays Sales Department" <sales@lazydays.com>

Hi Stan,

I really wasn't planning to answer your email, as I figured it was a "form letter" that you send to all who request info. My experience at Lazydays was so disappointing, however, that I decided to respond after all.

My wife and I took a trip over to your lot a couple of weeks ago. I'm definitely going to buy a new RV and am checking various places to try to determine where I might get the best deal. When we came off I-4, we first went to the entrance with guards. They directed us around to the front. We wandered into some kind of office, only to learn that we needed to go around behind some service station to get to the new RVs.

After we finally found the lot, we wandered aimlessly for about 45 minutes looking at whatever we found. I think we actually opened one RV that belonged to someone, since it had belongings on the dash. We eventually found a disk jockey playing music and asked where we might find a salesperson. He pointed us to a lady on a cellphone behind one of the RVs. I stood and waited a few minutes, watching her talk on her phone, then decided to look some more. In about 10 minutes, she found us and told us there was a saleman on the way. When the saleman showed up about 10 minutes later, he was also escorting another couple in his golf cart. We told him we were looking for 30-32' Class A's and he took us where he thought they should be. As it turns out, there were none there, but we looked thru some more RVs while he went off and showed the other couple some fifth wheels.

Bottom line -- he came back after about 15 minutes, showed us about 4 that fit our description, never gave us a card with his name on it (guess he thought we weren't serious), then told us that we couldn't really talk about price until we chose the exact home we wanted. I was trying to find out what sort of mark-down we could expect, but he couldn't tell us and he had to go somewhere else. We left not having any idea of what kind of deal we might be able to get, so have no intention of returning when we decide it's time to buy. I've been to two local dealers in the Melbourne area, both of which were willing to give us estimates of prices and trade-ins that we could expect.

All in all, I think I'd recommend to anyone looking for an RV to stay clear of Lazydays.

Sincerely,

Bob Hoffman

I didn't get an answer to my letter. Either Stan doesn't check his email or he didn't have any answer.

So there it is. It's a pain to find, the service people are too busy, you can't get decent pricing information, and their owners don't care. That's our impression ... just thought it worthwhile to pass along, in case you're planning a long trip to visit Lazydays.

We ultimately went down the road a ways to Al's Motor Home and Trailer Sales in Ft. Pierce, Florida and got a great deal. I recommend them highly if you want a great price and fantastic service ... before, during, and after the deal is made.

56. Another View of Lazydays

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