RE: La Mesa RV
Personally I would not blame the economy. The San Bernadino service department was a nightmare. I would never go back, nor have I spoken to or read a thread from a happy customer. Perhaps it finally caught up with them.
Maybe it has to do with who was dealt with. Personally, I had a great experience with them, sales and service, got a good deal, paid cash (my own financing), didn't deal with their financing. I had prices from dealers in NV, AZ, and NM, and La Mesa's was right there. As far a service, their current service manager, Jose Campos, is outstanding and I'm really sorry to see he and his shop go away as generally it is impossible to get good work done in the RV industry. Sorry to everyone else who has had such bad luck with them, but as for me, I will miss them. They reportedly will be opening an Orange County store once the economy turns around, I can only hope Jose and some of his better techs end up there.
RE: Would you consider buying a new Class A today?
Certainly I would, in fact I just did. I'm headed out this morning for the walk through on our new Kountry Star. There are a lot of good deals to be had out there in the new market. As previously posted, it is completely an analysis one needs to make based on their own unique situation, but if one wants one and can afford one, there has never been a better time! There are especially good deals out there in the used market, you can practically steal them thanks to the doom and gloom mass hysteria! Sure there are a couple real problems in the economy, the junk loan dropout and the declining world value of the dollar, but by and large, today's situation is the result of mass psychology. The media drills it into us every night, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!" People start pulling back their pocket books preparing for the sky to fall, and what do you know, the sky falls! What did people think would happen if everyone quit spending?
But back to whether or not to buy and what that has to do with the price of fuel. Seems everyone, at least on this thread is basing their NO WAY decision on the price of fuel. Let's look at that, how much is fuel? Well, it's no more expensive today than it was in 1980. Take a look at thisgraph. We are giving up about the same amount of value per gallon of fuel today as we did in 1980. Then I've heard it compared to wages; that back in the day a grocery bag boy made $2.75/hour and could buy a gallon of gas for $0.25, extrapolating that out the bag boy would have to make around $40/hour if all things were equal. Well, maybe grocery bagging wages haven't kept up with inflation, but let's look at the national average wage. According to the Social Security Administration, the national average yearly salary in 1951 was $2,799.16, based on 2080 hour per year, that's $1.35/hour. In 1951, as best my research yields, the price of gas was somewhere between $0.27 and $0.50 per gallon. So, the average American worker had to work around 12 to 22 minutes to earn each gallon of gas. In 2006, the average yearly wage was $38,651.41, or $18.58/hour. So, even if wages did not increase or inflate from 2006 to present, which we all know they have, the average American worker today, at $3.50 to $4.50 per gallon, works around 11 to 14 minutes to earn each gallon of gas, doesn't sound much different to me, and also keep in mind that wages are in reality higher today in 2008 than they were in 2006 (SSA doesn't have data published for 2007 or 2008 yet).
Now, whether or not the value or real cost of fuel has increased, again, what does that have to do with whether or not to buy a motor home? Is it a legitimate, rational part of that decision process? For some, yes, not matter what I say, it is. But what are the dollars and cents? The average yearly motor home mileage seems to be around 4,000 miles. But let's even consider we're talking about a full timer, let's go with 12,000 miles per year. And let's take a conservative 8 mile per gallon. At $4.50/gallon for diesel, that's $6,750 per year, a big chunk of change. But wait, even when everyone thought it was a good time to buy, they didn't give diesel away, so you can't figure that whole amount in the decision. Even when fuel was affordable, at say $3.00/gallon, you would have spent $4,500/year, so you can only figure the difference in your decision, $2,250 per year. Where this really gets crazy is when you compare that $2,250 per year to the annual depreciation on the rig, if there were a place to base a buy / don't buy decision, that is where the decision should be made. A $200k coach today will sell for $15k or so in 10 years, if you're lucky. You're spending $18,500 per year to have that coach, which makes the $2,250 more in fuel prices seem rather insignificant.
Just my ramblings, I'm sure I'll catch hell for a lot of it. But you can't take any of it with you when you die, so enjoy life while you can. Have fun!
Alan
RE: sales tax when buying out of state?
Yup, and if the CA Franchise Tax board denies it because you have insufficient records they levy a fine which is double the tax owed.
This is not exactly true. Just got off the phone with CA BOE. If they deny your exemption claim, (you didn't jump through the hoop correctly, lost your records, etc...) then the tax is owed. The penalty is 10% of the tax owed, plus 11% per year from the date it should have been paid (date of original purchase). So there is definately a risk, and you must keep good records and jump through the hoop correctly, but the risk is not double the original tax. The guy at BOE laughed at me, asked where I had heard that! Not trying to say what happened to recurry's buddy isn't true, not sure what the details are there, just trying to shed light on the true risk as stated by BOE.
