[terry and jo]

Well, perhaps I should be relegated to being called a cheerleader because we've had darn few problems with our Mobile Suites. In fact, the biggest problems we've had were actually with certain appliances of the rig. Namely, the GE Advantium was dead when it first arrived and the fridge went out after only about 2 years.

However, please allow me to put a bit of perspective on forums. Forums attract a lot of interest because of two things. One, the chance to research about a product before buying with the help of owners speaking of their coaches; and two, owners are there looking for solutions for some problem that they have encountered. Because of "two," there will be more of an appearance of problems, thus a question as to the brand's quality.

I have noticed that there are likely a LOT more owners of a brand than there are participants on a forum, whether those forum participants are researching or searching for problems. While 5th Wheel Forums may be a bit off because of so many brands on the forums, most owner's forums show a different picture.

For instance, SOITC has a total member list of 1755 registered users. However, with my experience with forums, there are a huge number of folks that register just to ask one or two questions and then they are gone. In light of that, SOITC's information shows that they have 215 "active" members. My question there would be to ask, "what constitutes an active member?" If it is "active on the forum within the last "x" number of months," how accurate can that be if quite a few of those are among the number of low usage?

With those numbers, using SOITC as an example, how do they relate to the number of coaches that DRV has actually built? If DRV has built 6500 coaches, then there must be a lot of folks out there that are not having such serious problems.

Those of you that know me any by the posts on the 5th Wheel Forums and SOITC may know that I'm also a participant (and moderator) over on RV Dreams, which is NOT an owner's forum. It is made up of a lot of folks researching RV'ing and particularly full-time RV'ing. As such, they are looking for recommendations of brands that will stand up to the full-time lifestyle in an RV.

On that forum, I generally suggest that folks register and ask questions of the owners on the forums any questions that they have. I also advise them that the forums will indicate a large number of "negative" comments and questions because of the desire of folks looking for solutions of problems. Then, I tell those readers to ask one other question of the owners when they are on those owner's forums, and that question is:

"If you were to buy another RV, would you buy "X-brand" RV again, and if so, why?"

I asked that question both here and on SOITC back almost over 4 years ago and received a generally positive response from the participants of both forums. That is part of the reason we have a Mobile Suite. Now, while there are a few "really disgruntled" participants on both forums, how many are still really glad to have a DRV?

Terry