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HWH Visit

December 15, 2013, 10:05:11 pm

For the year we have owned our coach the slides have never been dependable.  Three trips back to FOT and they kept getting worse. We would get out of the shop and park and they wouldn't work.  They would get them to work and we'd get home and not be able to extend or they would extend and not retract.  Also the leveling system worked sometimes and not other times. 

Finally last week I took it to HWH.  I drove up there with the level light on the dash glowing and at times the chime dinging.  The reset had no effect.  The trip in the zero degree weather was well worth the effort.  They discovered some wiring that had been mixed up at some point in the past that FOT didn't catch.  That kept some solenoids energized all the time which sent wrong signals to the computer.  As soon as they looked at it they said they didn't think the wiring was correct but didn't touch anything until an engineer brought schematics and put his blessings on the changes. 

They replaced the solenoids that had been constantly energized and corrected the wiring.  The slides began working with the exception of the rear slide that would often stop before it was completely in.  They diagnosed a defective hall effect switch that showed the slide closed all the time.  The system senses the closed hall effect switch combined with increased pump pressure to signal the slide is in.  With the defective switch it would stop the slide when  the pump pressure came up a little, sensing that the switch was closed.

They worked on the coach for most of two days, the second day spent on some other things like looking for air leaks that I wanted them to check.

At the end of the first day I told them lets get me outside and hooked up for the night.  They wouldn't hear of it and plugged me up in the warm shop that is part of their manufacturing facility.  After the second shift left it was just me and Maggie the rescue dog in that enormous building all toasty and warm.

When I got ready to leave I told the receptionist she had the wrong bill because they had worked on the coach for most of two days and the bill was only a little over $700.  She explained that the owner doesn't think it fair to charge for diagnostic time and that the bill was correct.  Not only that, they are going to credit back a very expensive part that FOT put on last summer at their direction.  I didn't ask for the credit nor did I expect it.  HWH had no way of knowing the wiring was wrong causing the misdiagnosis but they said it's just the right thing to do.  That credit will more than buy my fuel for the trip to Iowa.

These days we don't expect much in the way of customer service so when a company goes out of their way to take care of me it really makes an impression.

I've been treated very well by MOT, FOT and now HWH.  I'm really excited to have slides and a level system that works.  Still a few air leaks to find but that will be a piece of cake compared to this.

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Re: HWH Visit

Reply #1 – December 15, 2013, 10:26:34 pm

Great to hear!  Joe has been emailing me and calling, guiding me thru my process which seems to have boiled down to a leaking cylinder...probably the lower rear.  In any case, with all of their help, guidance, documentation, they make me feel like I'm not alone in this.  I'm currently waiting for 4 steel caps to get here, as Joe decided I needed them and has mailed them to me rather than telling me to go find them locally.

HWH is da bomb!

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Re: HWH Visit

Reply #2 – December 16, 2013, 06:18:51 am

I have been at HWH in the winter before with this coach when I bought it. I had slide issues too.  Found out someone replaced a brass screw with a stainless one.  They are always very fair on the bill too. 

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Re: HWH Visit

Reply #3 – December 16, 2013, 06:19:49 am

Oh, that engineer gave me his cell number incase that fix was not correct too. We had them stumped for a long time till they noticed it.

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Re: HWH Visit

Reply #4 – December 16, 2013, 10:42:56 am

HWH is a customer oriented company. A few years ago I had a problem with the leveling jacks on our fiver. One of the jacks would not retract and after my failed attempts to get it to retract the coach was sitting at a precarious angle. I called HWH, and they put me through to an engineer just as he was leaving for the day. He not only talked me through the process of manually retracting the stubborn jack but also diagnosed the problem to a bad shuttle valve. Great  customer service. Reading on the Forum of folks who have issues with ten year old installations and the support they get from HWH shows that the customer is important to them.

Roland

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