Christina S
1/5
Fellow camper owners.. we’ve had our camper fixed a couple of times already and we initially used Excel Service Center. Never again! Stay far far away from this shop. They “fixed” the camper’s slide and we were able to use the camper TWO TIMES before the slide broke again. I have text messages from Larry stating they will “take care” of us and make sure they get it fixed for us again. They had our camper from August through March/April. The majority of the time it just sat there and we were told numerous times that he (Larry) “forgot” to put us on their repair calendar and that he would get us on the calendar. Towards the end, I started a claim with Lippert for the parts since Larry told me he purchased the parts from Lippert and therefore we wanted to see if Lippert would help with a warranty for their parts. Once this claim was opened and they had questions about the repairs done, Larry’s demeanor completely changed and he told us he was done and to just come get the camper out of his way. He refused to help us at all with the costs since the work they did the first time was clearly not done correctly. I have the initial invoice (which, by the way, we were charged for stuff that we told them not to do to the camper, they charged us extremely high prices after not giving us any idea of cost estimates and charged us for work they told us would not “be very costly” because it won’t take time much time at all and then billed for 5 hours of labor for this one instance). I have a TON of text messages between us and Larry. I am willing to share any and all if anyone wants it or asks. Larry’s stance completely changed and he’s blaming us for everything and not taking ownership for the shotty work his staff did. He did tell me that one of his technicians likes to just add work without getting approvals and it wasn’t the first time this technician had done work they were NOT supposed to do but they charged us anyway for it. I had to negotiate down their labor costs significantly because the invoice was almost 3X what was initially discussed.
Fast forward. Took it to a different repair shop. They ordered the parts that LARRY told me we needed. They replaced the entire slide mechanism and then the slide still wasn’t working. They found that the box that controls the two motors was damaged. They could tell one of the power cords was replaced and said it was pulled way too tight which caused the terminal on the box to bend and the internal connections were not making satisfactory contact with the cord causing the slide to fail. Once they replaced that ($459) box the slide worked perfectly. This technician told me that Excel used mostly their own branded parts and did NOT replace with the correct Lippert parts. There is a chance that the box could’ve been the only thing wrong with the slide but since we took Larry’s word on needing an entire slide mechanism (having our camper for 8 months, we figured he at least knew the issue). That was an issue that was caused by Excel and was not “taken care” of by Excel. We have now paid TWICE for the slide to be repaired and it should’ve only cost us ONCE!
We were lied to, mislead, and severely overcharged by Larry at Excel Service Center and then were treated awfully when we took it back to them for a second repair for the same issue. FIND A DIFFERENT REPAIR COMPANY! STAY AWAY FROM EXCEL (Smith Center, KS). They may have been reputable before when they manufactured their own campers but now their repair service sucks, they’re unprofessional in their communication and lack of quoting. Nobody should be stuck with a bill that has stuff they were told NOT to do or a bill that was never quoted appropriately and ended up THREE times higher than the original amount we spoke about without any notice! What a rip off!! A horrible experience!
