United RV Center

Those of you that have read our blog or our books know that I am not a great fan of RV dealerships.  I have always said that “it will not be impossible but very difficult to find a good repair facility”.  As a matter of fact in the 35 years that Tammy and I have been buying travel trailers I can only name two dealerships that I thought were worth taking my trailer to for repairs.

Of course we haven’t visited every dealership in the country; but in the 30 plus years of RVing, we have had experience with many across the country. Outside of the two dealerships we could recommend the balance of dealerships fell into the bucket that were:

1:  Great in sales 

2:  Horrible in service.

The sad truth is that the dealership we bought our current travel trailer from in 2017 was no different.  Their service department could not fix the simplest of problems that we had under warranty.  They actually told us the items on our list couldn’t be repaired.  As a result, we ended up driving to Goshen Indiana (at the end of our yearly Texas to Wisconsin trip) to an independent repair facility, 1st Choice RV, that did amazing work, and fixed everything.  Sadly, they closed a few years ago.  So Tammy and I were left wondering if we would ever find a competent repair facility again.

This is where our journey begins with United RV Center in Haltom City just outside of Fort Worth Texas.  I stumbled on to Jim Vititow’s Facebook page (North Texas Campers and RVers) just after it was created in 2017.  

Jim is the Director of Operations/Service Manager for United RV Center.  I immediately liked the straight forward and balanced advice he gave and also the kind of reviews the service work at United RV received from its customers.  Let’s face it, Facebook ordinarily brings out the worst in reviews; but it was different with United RV.  You would need to look pretty hard to find a complaint.

Most of you who follow us understand that I have had an issue with the roof on my Imagine Travel Trailer since it was purchased.  In fact I was going to walk away from purchasing this trailer but Grand Design said they’d stand behind it, and true to their word they have stood behind it; even after their repair facility made some pretty major mistakes on it in 2020.  As I have always said, Grand Design has the best Customer Service in the industry right now; based on my experience, and the opinions of many other Grand Design owners.

So after I started having some real concerns about my roof I contacted Jim Vititow.  Jim told me to just roll in to United RV and they’d jump up on the roof and take care of it.  Quite frankly I’ve never had a dealership say “just roll in and we’ll take care of it”.  Ordinarily you might hear “drop it off and we will call you after we look at it”; which might take weeks or even longer.

After a few minutes of Jim and one of his technicians inspecting the roof, it was apparent that it wasn’t going to be an easy fix.  Since we were on our way to a campground they made sure we were water tight for the trip.  After the trip we would drop it off again so repairs could start.

Charles Lansdon (my Service Advisor) and Kimberly Lynn in warranty repairs worked with Grand Design to get things moving in the right direction.  They always kept me up to date on the progress they were making and let me know if they had any issues that I needed to be involved in from a warranty perspective.

Charles and Jim sent me pictures during the process and answered any questions I had.  Charles kept me totally in the loop as things progressed.  You couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with.  Charles and Jim would probably tell you I can be a pain to deal with, because I’m a little OCD about my stuff; but they always made me feel comfortable with what was happening to my unit.

They actually got our travel trailer back to us earlier than the promised date.  When has that ever happened at a dealership?  In our experience never!  Not only was it returned early but it was repaired perfectly and Charles walked us through the whole trailer and spent at least an hour talking with us about the repairs, and everything that they did to it.

I was once told by a repair facility that they would “return our trailer back to us in better shape than when we dropped it off”, nothing could have been further from the truth.  However that was the case with United RV Center.  They treated my RV as if it were their own.  I’ll never go anywhere else now.

Folks, this IS NOT your typical big box dealership.  This is a three generation family owned business  that has been around for over 40 years.  It’s service area has 20 bays and is manned by RVIA service technicians.  There mission statement is straight forward  “We want to become your full-service RV dealer. With this goal in mind, we offer our customers one-stop shopping”.   Jim states that their belief is that “the family that plays together stays together”.  

But above and beyond this, they care about the RV community.  This is what sets them apart from everyone else. Jim offers free classes at their shop on roof maintenance as well as other topics.  I have seen Jim reach out to see what kind of interest folks would have in a class on backing up an RV.  In addition they organize camping rally’s where the North Texas Campers and RVers can get together and have a great time camping.  You are not going to see this kind of community involvement anywhere else.  This along with their work is why they are so successful.  

So while I have not been a great fan of RV Dealerships, I am a huge fan of United RV Center, and the quality of their work..  As I’ve said many times, it is difficult to find a good dealership to do your work, not impossible, but difficult.  Our life just got easier because of United RV Center. Now I have no reason to travel to Indiana for repair work!

So if your searching for a great place to get any of your RV work done please consider United RV, you’ll be glad you did.

Now here is a photo of the finished product: