 If you just bought a new RV or you're thinking about doing it, today's interview is one that you have to watch. I've got Steve Lado from Lado's Law and he's going to talk to us about RV Lemon Laws. Hi, Steve. Thank you for joining me. Hey, how's it going? It's good to be here. Good. Some of the people in my audience might have seen some of your prior videos about RV Lemon Laws. But if they haven't, tell us a little bit about your background and why this has been a topic that you like to touch on. I'm an attorney in the state of Michigan. I've been practicing law for 29 years. I've been doing podcasts and YouTube for about five or six years now. And the specialty of my practice is I specialize in Lemon Law, which is defective cars. And one of the most interesting things I discovered years ago, people would call my office and they'd say, hey, Steve, I bought a quarter of a million dollar RV, brand new with all kinds of warranties. The thing fell apart. I took it to the dealership. They couldn't fix it. It wound up being in the shop for 10 months the first year I owned it. And they say, I want to sue under the Lemon Law. And I go, well, Michigan doesn't have one. Most states don't. And they're like, what? And so people are shocked to discover that if you buy a $30,000 Econobox car in Michigan, it's covered by a Lemon Law, you drop 10 times that on a big, beautiful pusher RV, whatever it is. It's not covered by the Lemon Law. Now there are laws that cover you, but because of the difference in the laws, people's expectations are often not met when they buy a brand new RV. Okay. So when you buy an RV, they send you home with that big folder full of warranties. What does that mean to them? Well, here's the thing. Number one, you're being facetious when you see a folder of warranties. It's quite often a banker's box filled with pamphlets, documents, notebooks. I've actually seen somebody get two banker's boxes because the microwave has got its own warranty. The couches have a warranty. The heaters got a warranty. The engine has its own warranty. The chassis has its own warranty. And it's very, very different than if you bought a car, because a General Motors product, you take it to GM dealership, and they cover everything from bumper to bumper, right? But the RVs aren't like that. And by the way, this applies to whether it's a self-propelled RV or something you pull behind. Those are all in my mind lumped together because they're not cars. So it's not uncommon that a dealership, even the biggest dealerships in Michigan that I deal with, they have really, really big sales departments. They've got fairly small service departments. And what often happens is if you bring something back and it's got a problem they can fix in-house, they'll fix it and give it back to you. But it's quite often the case, they'll say, you know what, we can't fix it. We have to send it back to factory. You have to take your vehicle down to Indiana or wherever it was built and have them work on it. And I know people who've actually bought an RV, picked them a mortal day weekend, brought it back in June, and didn't see it till September. And it's like, why'd you buy the RV at the beginning of the summer if you can't use it for the summer? So the warranty work on RVs in particular is much, much more complicated and convoluted than it is with cars. You have to get in your mind that buying an RV is not the same as simply buying a bigger, more expensive car. Right. So let's say you get your dream RV and the steering wheels start shaking and you notice one of the walls is loose and the microwave won't turn on. Yeah. From a warranty perspective or a service perspective, what have you seen happen in a case like that? I see people bring their RVs back to dealership and they almost universally tell me, they say, Steve, when I was buying the RV, they're my best friend. When I returned it for service, they were acting like I was inconveniencing them. And I've actually had somebody who picked up an RV and on the drive home, it developed a problem, turned around, brought it back, and they said it was going to take a month or two to look at it. We couldn't even look at it. So the experience that you get in an RV dealership is often much different. And in defense of the RV industry, I'll tell you, it kind of makes sense. Because if you go to a GM dealer and they carry Chevrolet and Buick or whatever, they're all similar. But if you look at most RV dealers, they carry all these different brands and all the different brands use different components, they can't stand top of all that stuff. It's actually inherent in the business that they can't do all that in-house. Right. So let's say your RV is on a sprinter chassis. Mercedes, for example, might handle the warranty on the chassis. Yep. The manufacturer of the walls of your rig, like my walls that were falling apart, would be handled by the manufacturer of the RV. But let's say the microwave would be under the warranty for the person that made the microwave. So you're then you're not dealing with one manufacturer, let's say Winnebago. Winnebago's not going to fix all that stuff because it's under different warranties, is that right? Yes. And that's one of the things that many people, when they see the banker's box, as we mentioned earlier, filled with warranties, they're kind of like, wait, I have how many warranties? Why do I have all these warranties? And it's not uncommon that the chassis is built by one company, like there's Spartan chassis in Michigan. It's a big chassis builder. They build chassis. And then the drivetrain, it'll be built by somebody else like NavStar. And so you've got the NavStar drivetrain pushing a Spartan chassis. And then the house unit is put on by somebody else. And then all the components are other people. And so one of the things that they often use to defend these RV claims is they'll say, well, you brought it in 17 times for service, but three times for the chassis, three times for the drivetrain, four times for the electronics. And those are all different things. When to a consumer, does it really matter whether you're pointing your finger this way or this way when you have to keep bringing it back in for service? Right. So I'm sure a lot of people have reached out to you that have had these horror story experiences with their brand new RV. Have you seen anyone have success getting, let's say, their money back or payment for loss of use or a new rig? Do they ever get a new rig in exchange for their problems? Occasionally, but it's a very, very difficult fight. And I can tell you right now that someone calls my office to Steve, I've got a six-month-old car. It's been in the shop four times for the transmission. I can get that thing bought back like that. Not even filing a lawsuit, just making a phone call. Somebody who has the exact same experience with a quarter of a million dollar RV, I say, you know something? We're going to file a lawsuit. It's going to be dragged to the courts. It might take you two years. And they go, what? And that's just the way it is. Well, I'd appreciate it. Yet my advice to people, it's funny, because I'm an attorney, you think, Steve must love going to court. I don't. I'd rather settle cases. The best thing I can tell you is you want to avoid those situations in the first place. It's kind of like if I was a surgeon in the emergency room, I can sew you up if you get shot. My advice to you, don't get shot. So there's things that you can do to try to avoid these problems beforehand. Like what? Well, for one thing, I know people who buy brand new RVs without test driving them, without inspecting them. And they say, why would a test driver inspect a brand new unit? Well, because some of them are built poorly. Some of them get transported from a factory up to the RV center by being driven. And sometimes they're driven up there by people who don't care that much about them. And I've seen brand new units. They've got problems. It's like, wow, how'd this get out of the factory? I've spoken to somebody who bought a brand new RV, turned on the faucet, heard water hitting the floor, and they opened up the sink, the doors underneath the sink, and the plumbing wasn't hooked up. Somebody threw a bag of stuff in there and meant to hook it up, but they didn't hook it up. And so you've got to inspect the vehicle. And I would actually suggest you hire someone to inspect it for you. Some dealerships will actually tell you, oh, we inspected it for you. Well, they're selling you the vehicle. Of course they're going to say that. You can't hold them to that. You can hire a third-party inspector to come into the dealership to look at it. And then how do people find one of those inspectors that's reputable then? Just Google search. Yeah, if you poke around the internet, there's internet chat groups and places. You can find these people. They're not that hard to find. But the other thing I was going to recommend, and the RV industry hates me saying this, but I'm not trying to make friends in that industry, is that for every person who buys a brand new RV and loves it, there are a couple of people who buy a brand new RV and don't really care for it. It turns out it's just not their thing. I'm not into this moving around or whatever. It depends. So I tell people, if you're thinking about doing this, one thing you might want to do is consider buying an RV from that other person who got sick of it. Because a one-year-old RV, hopefully, they've got the bugs worked out of it, but it's going to have a huge drop in price. And you're going to be able to save a ton of money and probably a ton of headache by getting someone else to sell you their lightly used RV. Great. Okay, so if you want to buy it new, get an inspection because you've got leverage then because the deal's not done, right? But you recommend buying used where somebody else has worked out the kinks, but then there's no warranties. Well, there may or may not be some of the warranties. It depends on how long the warranties are. But the other thing I would recommend is that you might want to consider renting an RV at least once. I know people who actually went out and dropped as much as they'd spent in a house on an RV had never gone RVing before. They said, well, it looks like a great idea. I watched these things on YouTube. I see these great videos. I can go be in the mountains one week and be at the beach another week. Yeah, you can, but there is a lifestyle to it and it's not for everybody. So there are places that will rent you an RV, rent one for a couple of weeks, and see if you really enjoy it. If you really enjoy it, great. If you don't, you can turn the thing back in and walk away from it. But one thing I can tell you, and I'm sure you'll agree with me on this, if you go to a campground, any campground in America, and walk around up and down the rows of campers, you can say hello to people and ask them questions. They will chew your ear off. If you say, can you please tell me about this camper? Do you like it? What don't you like about it? How many campers have you had? And you'll find people all over the spectrum who will give you ideas about, oh, maybe I should look at one of these or maybe I should avoid one of those. Okay. So if they can rent it, they can have it inspected beforehand. But let's say somebody buys one new. Right. They're having these problems and they can't get it seen. Do you have any advice for how they can handle their situation to be more effective with the dealership or the manufacturer? Document everything, which means that if you have problems with the RV and something breaks, I'd photograph it. You got a cell phone, photograph it. The next thing you got to do is I would make, I'd get a calendar or start running down dates and times, saying this thing broke on this particular day. As soon as you can call the dealer and say, hey, look, I got this thing that broke on my RV. When can I bring it in? Sometimes I'll tell you can't bring it in right away. But you can document that you called them and tried to get it in there. Keep in mind that the selling dealer is always going to treat you a little better than the non-selling dealer. I've had people who are traveling around the country and they were told, hey, anytime you've got problems with your XYZ RV, you can bring it to any of our dealers. And they bring it to a dealer in another state who goes, you know something, we're busy. We can't help you. Go bring it back to selling dealer. So remember, you might encounter that also, but I would document it very, very well. And then when you do bring it in, keep in mind the guys, the dealership didn't build it. They're going to hopefully try to fix it for you. Be kind to them, but make sure they write it up and get a repair order because that'll document your case for you. Right. I know that at some of your videos, you said you can buy your own flatbed truck and build something out. Is that right? Well, I've known people who've done that. And, you know, there's an interesting spectrum of people who do RVing. There are people out there who want to buy an RV as a turnkey operation. Just get it, drive. And there are other people who are handy, who like working and tinkering with things, right? And those are the people who want to do better buying a used one, for instance. But I've heard of people who built their own RVs and have no one to blame but themselves. So they don't get so upset if something breaks, right? And so I've heard of people who've done that. You know, you can, you know, partridge family it. You know, get a bus and turn it into an RV. You can do that. People who are out there, the coolest stuff that people build out. Oh, I know, I know. Let's say you buy a new truck to put your RV on and you build the RV on it. Does it void the warranty on the truck? It depends. You have to be very careful about the truck you buy and what kind of warranty it comes with and pay attention to it. So for instance, you know, most trucks are rated as to what they can tow or how much capacity they can carry. And be very, very careful about that. Make sure that you stay within those guidelines. And if you do, you should be okay. But I can tell you that I've had clients before who've bought trucks specifically to tow something. And even though what they were towing was rated for the truck, the manufacturer comes back and goes, you know something, we're going to fight you on this because we think the guy's not telling us the truth about how heavy that is or something. It'll raise a red flag immediately for them. Okay. I have one last question, Steve. Yeah. When are you going to come out on the road with me and go camping so that I can finish you? How great this is. And then the next thing we know, you'll do a video saying, I changed my mind. I'm going to buy an RV. Well, you know, the second most popular video on my channel is called Don't Buy an RV. And I get a lot of criticism for that. But I always tell people the correct, it should have been, don't buy an RV unless you know what you're getting into. And my whole thing is learn as much as you can before you do anything. But if you park your RV someplace close to a nice road where I can get my viper near it, we can talk. I just picked up a viper. So did you? Yeah, that's not going to get on most of the roads I go down. I'll tell you that. I know. I suspect that. Everybody, I'm going to put Steve Lado's link for his YouTube channel down below and also a link for his website. Tell us about your website really quick. Well, you can find me on YouTube at just Steve Lado, S-T-E-V-E-L-E-H-T-O. And I've got a website called LatoesLaw.com, L-H-T-O-S-L-A-W.com. But if you Google me on the internet, Steve Lato, you'll get sick of me real fast. All right, great. Hey, Steve. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I'm sure it's going to be really helpful for my people. Everybody, I hope you're all doing well up there and doing something that you love, or I see you on the road soon. Until then, have happy travels and be free.