I want to smack those folks and ask "Do you even know how the market/supply & demand works?" Your need for a particular price does not affect me as a potential buyer, especially if I have other options.
Yeah, I read a cruise board occasionally, and fairly often people say things like, "The cruise line should offer alcohol for free, add such-and-such feature, but not raise the prices!" And they're serious.
I'm looking at an RV purchase to take a cross-country trip starting April 2018. Paddedhat, any tips for sourcing a lightly used rig at a good price, avoiding the above owner delusions? I prefer not to pay the dealer markup, and still get something lightly used but already much depreciated. I may simply re-sell after the trip. If you can point me to other treads on this, or PM me to not go too far off topic, that would be awesome. I'm thinking I'll just have to go look at a LOT of RVs.
We took a western driving trip a couple years ago, and we started with the idea of renting an RV. In our minds, it was a perfect choice: No need to pack/unpack and get into hotels every night. A kitchen at our disposal. Logical choice, right? Wrong. When we investigated the cost of renting, we realized it was just too much. Plus we thought about the logistics of driving that big box through cities. Also, we realized that the historical sites, etc. that we planned to see were not necessarily next to campgrounds ... so we'd have needed to unhook everything /drive the RV long distances to see the sites we planned. And the gas. Oh, the gas.
Then we looked at tent camping, but we weren't really willing to do that big set up /pick up every day ... and, again, the things we wanted to see weren't always next to campgrounds.
In the end, we stayed in hotels. We had two years' lead time, and my husband travels occasionally for work, so he chose his hotels with a plan in mind /saved his points, and many of our hotel stays were free (or reduced). We used Priceline for other hotel stays. And we splurged in a few places. This choice had its pros and cons, but it turned out to be MUCH cheaper than our original RV plan.
If we'd had a friend who owned an RV, we might've offered to barter for its use, but we didn't have such a friend.
One interesting usage for a RV is having a business where you rent out your RV on College football weekends. You can rent an RV delivered, provisioned and set up from Friday morning to Sunday morning right at the campus RV parking lot for a specific game. The customer flys in, shows up, uses the unit for the weekend, leaves it where it is and the rental company comes and collects it.
A friend of mine's college-aged son had an unusual job: He'd drive a big RV belonging to a NASCAR fan to the race track (sometimes this meant he'd drive the distance of several states) ... set up the RV ... stock it with food and drink ... then disappear to a local cheap hotel until the race weekend was over, when he'd drive the RV back home ... clean it ... leave it ready for the next outing.
I thought it was a great job for a college kid like him, but who would pay for that service?