Chapter 1 of The Camping World Saga
TLDR; I dropped off my RV in December 2020 for what should have been a straightforward repair. What I got instead was eight months of silence, water damage, broken promises, and the slow psychological unraveling of wondering if I was the problem. I wasn’t. But it took a long time to stop wondering.
It was my four-year nomadiversary.
Four years since I went full-time on the road. Four years of campgrounds, state lines, sunrises through the windshield, and the particular kind of freedom that comes from knowing your home is wherever you park it. It’s a lifestyle I worked hard to build, documented carefully, and loved genuinely.
I celebrated it by tweeting at the CEO of Camping World.
Not because I wanted to make a scene. Because my RV — my home — had been sitting in their parking lot for six months. And in that time, parts had arrived and sat unnoticed in their own parts department for weeks. Nothing had been fixed. No one had called. And I had run out of patient emails that started with “just checking in” and ended with me thanking them for their time.
He replied fourteen months later.
That gap — between the life I was trying to live and the machine that was supposed to support it — is what this series is about.
Let me back up.
December 11, 2020. I’m checking out of a campground in Advance, NC when I notice my main slide won’t retract. If you’ve never had a slide fail while extended, it’s the RV equivalent of your front door refusing to close. You’re not going anywhere. The house isn’t closing.
I’m a technical person. I don’t panic. I call Thor (the manufacturer) and Lippert Systems (who makes the slide components), and between some troubleshooting calls and some manual effort, we get the wall pushed back in at the campground by removing the hardware entirely. Functional. Not fixed.
Thor recommends Tom Johnson Camping Center in Marion, NC. Specifically because their service manager, they tell me, was previously a field rep for these exact models. They reach out for me. Part numbers are shared before I even make the appointment. The service manager calls me directly on December 28th and tells me to bring it in — they already have everything they need.
This is what good looks like. I’m thinking: this is going to be fine.
I drop off the unit first thing in the morning.
The service advisor and I spend real time together. We walk the unit. We talk through what needs to happen. I mention that while they have it, if there are any routine maintenance items that make sense to knock out, I’m happy to get a price and consider it. He writes up an 8-item work order. Some warranty items. Some maintenance I’d pay out of pocket. He measures the slide topper material with me — confirms it’s already in stock, on a roll, in their shop.
I’m living full-time in this unit. It’s not just a vehicle I use on weekends. It’s my house. My office. My everything. I mention this. I also mention that the slide doesn’t fully close, which means the unit isn’t fully sealed, which means weather is a concern.
His response: “We have a very large service area. If I can’t get it inside — which is quite likely — I can wrap it for you. Like they do for new boats.”
I leave feeling genuinely good about this. These people know my model. They were recommended by the manufacturer. They have the parts. They seemed to actually listen.
I drive away.
January 19th. One email from the advisor. Diagnosis is complete. He’s researching prices. Next step is getting things submitted to warranty.
That’s the last proactive communication I receive for the next ten weeks.
I reach out in March. He is out on sick leave. They’re “busier than all get out.” He’ll email me back tomorrow.
He doesn’t.
I follow up again. He finally responds on March 29th — and I find out the warranty claim is being called in that same day. That same day. After sitting for three months. The claim is approved within hours of being submitted.
I want to be clear about what this means: the primary repair could have been moving forward in January. The warranty company needed one phone call. Instead, my unit — with known leaks, sitting outside through winter — waited three months for someone to make that call.
But I don’t know this yet. I’m still giving benefit of the doubt. It’s a busy shop. Everyone’s short-staffed. I get it. I’ve said this in emails. I genuinely meant it.
I need to grab some gear for an event — grills, equipment, things I’d left in the unit. I drive out to Marion.
I find the unit in the far back corner of the lot, under a cluster of trees. Cobwebs thick in the tire wells. The kind of cobwebs that don’t appear in days or weeks. Debris and leaves along the sides. The roof, which I left bright white, has turned a dark gray-black from sitting under tree cover for months.
I start unloading belongings into my car. Eight employees drive past on golf carts or on foot. Not one stops to ask why a customer is standing at a unit unloading things into their personal vehicle in the rain.
Then it starts pouring rain..
And I watch water drip from the front windshield. Across the dashboard. Down from the blinds. Onto the floor.
This is my home. I’d been told it was being taken care of. And I’m standing in it, watching it collect rain, while not a single item on the work order has been touched. It’s outside. It’s not wrapped. It’s literally raining INSIDE my RV. I’m devastated. I feel so betrayed.
I don’t explode. I take video. I load my car. I drive away.
But something changes that day. Not my patience — I still have plenty of that, which in hindsight was part of the problem. What changes is that I stop assuming good intent as the default and start documenting like someone who might need the documentation later.
Six months in. Nothing fixed. Parts — I’ll find out later — have been sitting in their own parts department for weeks, unconnected to any work order because no one thought to cross-reference them.
And it’s July 1st. My four-year nomadiversary.
Four years earlier I’d made a decision that most people said was impractical. Sold the furniture. Committed to the road. Built a life I was proud of. And here’s what that life looks like on the anniversary: I’m sitting somewhere I’m not supposed to be, tweeting at a CEO because nobody answers the phone, because my home has been in a parking lot for half a year and I can’t live in it.
Mind you – this is PRE-COVID – working from home wasn’t exactly super common, and hitting the road, remote – yeah – there was quite a bit of it, but none that I had researched. None that I had openly told anyone about. This was something I was humble and proud of. This is something I worked my ass off to make work.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Camping World. The name is right there. It’s in the name.
The company that’s supposed to enable the camping has become the reason I can’t camp.
Here’s the part I want to be honest about, because I think it happens to a lot of people and nobody talks about it directly.
Somewhere around month three or four, I started wondering if I was the problem.
Not in a dramatic way. Just the quiet creep of: am I being too demanding? Is this just how RV service works? Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I’m difficult to deal with. Maybe this is normal and I just don’t know it.
I kept that to myself mostly. But you can see it in the emails if you read them. The way I kept softening my asks. The way I thanked them for updates that contained no actual information. The way I kept offering to pick up the unit and bring it back, as if I could solve their communication problem by being more accommodating.
Meanwhile, water was dripping through my dashboard.
That disconnect — between what you’re experiencing and the story you’re telling yourself to stay reasonable — is something I’d call out to any RV owner reading this. The shop isn’t going to tell you that you’re being gaslit by their process. The service advisor isn’t going to say “actually you’re right, this is completely unacceptable.” You have to trust your own read of the situation. And the read was: five months, zero work, a roof that’s turned black, and water on the floor of my home.
That’s not me being difficult. That’s a service failure.
This isn’t just a bad experience at one shop. That framing lets everyone off the hook too easily.
This is what happens when a company gets big enough that customers become ticket numbers. When volume replaces accountability. When the pre-delivery inspection for a new sale takes priority over the repair that’s been sitting for five months because the new sale is a commission and the repair is a headache.
I’m not saying every Camping World is this. I’m saying the system that produced this experience is worth understanding — because it’s not random. It has a logic. And in Chapter 2, I’m going to show you exactly what that logic looked like, date by date, email by email.
Because I kept all of it.
And that’s when I realized this wasn’t just a bad repair.
It was a broken system. And I had 700 days of evidence to prove it.
Next: Chapter 2 — How the System Failed (The receipts. The timeline. Every promise, every delay, every pickup.)
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