Did the Motor Home Sell? and What do we think about PPL RV Consignment?

 

This is a trip down memory lane, as we repost pictures of our motor home, and a few of the places it has taken us in the last nine years. If you missed an earlier blog, we decided to try to sell our motor home. We delivered it to the PPL consignment company near Oklahoma City at the end of February. We signed a contract that explains that PPL will get ten percent of the selling price of the RV--if it sells. Ouch! We had put it in God's hands. We would be fine if it sold. If it didn't sell we would pick it up after the mandatory 90 days, and continue traveling in it on a part-time basis. Did the motor home sell, and how was our experience with this process?

When you put your RV on the PPL lot, they appraise it. The price of motor homes is down based on a saturated market, and it's hard to get good information on the value of used RVs. They assigned a value that we agreed to, and they put it on their lot. Within a week, it showed up on the RVTrader web site and of course the PPL web site. 

We also had to bring the title, and sign all the papers to transfer it to any new owners. The buyers never have any contact with the sellers. We also had to sign documentation of the lowest price that we would accept. We didn't like that.

Their written instructions said that the motor home was to have a full tank of fuel when it was delivered to the lot. They explained that was to be sure it had enough fuel for test drives. That's a lot of test drives! At the high price of diesel and a 100 gallon tank, that was a big expense. We didn't like that.

They also tried to charge us a cleaning fee, and a fee to clean the motor home each week to keep it in top condition. We had spent a couple days cleaning, so we refused to pay their cleaning fees that were around $500. They didn't much like that.

They told us that they would stand firm on our agreed appraisal price for the first 30 days. We checked on their web site, and were surprised that they started dropping the price after only two weeks. In fact, they lowered the price several times--all without talking to us. They didn't contact us at all to let us know how things were progressing. We didn't like that.

Later, we found out that the motor home sold during the first month. But the buyers couldn't get a loan. PPL has several options for financing, that depend on the qualifications of buyers and the size of the loan, etc. We liked that they could handle that step, but we didn't like that they aren't always successful with financing.

When a motor home sells, the buyer pays for a very detailed inspection. Anything found must be fixed at the expense of the seller. We thought everything was working, but they found two running lights on the outside that were out. Mark could have fixed that for $22 in parts bought on the internet. But they charged labor and a garage fee and $80 in postage and handling that brought the simple fix up to over $250. That was $84 more than the inflated estimate we approved. We certainly never approved $250! We didn't like that.

We were in Oklahoma City, and we stopped in with cleaning supplies to make sure that the motor home was still gleaming. It still looked really good. We walked through several other competing diesel motor homes on the lot, and agreed ours was the best. Of course, we weren't partial. None of the motor homes were plugged in, which is hard on the house batteries when they get drained. We didn't like that.

We planned to spend part of the summer in the cool mountains, and we knew we needed reservations. But would we need a big camp site for our big motor home? Or would we need a smaller spot for a little trailer? What kind of trailer would we buy? Where would we buy it? Or would we not buy it at all because we would still own a motor home? So we couldn't make any plans for the summer. We didn't like that.

After getting no information from PPL for over two months, we started calling them. We often waited for days to get a returned call. We didn't like that.

As we neared the end of the 90 days, we found from one of the phone calls (that we initiated) that they had an offer on the table. We did some jockeying on price, and it looked like it would sell. But there still was the inspection and several more steps. The process took longer than they said it would, but the new owners picked up our motor home shortly before the 90 days was over. Denisa was a little sad, while Mark seemed to be relieved. 

We found that getting our money took several phone calls and more time than usual. The branch office blamed the main office and vice versa, but we waited for close to two weeks for the money to land in our bank account We didn't like that.

This is the first time we haven't owned an RV for the last twenty years, and it seems a little strange. But we love RV travel too much to not buy one soon. We're open to advice as we start doing more research on our next purchase. In the mean time, we hope the new owners of our old motor home enjoy it as much as we did! We would like that!