NoBo 10.5 Awning Issues

[Dozer_10.5]

Has anyone had issues with the Batwing awning being mounted to the Rhino Rack Vortex bars?

We bought our 10.5 from Couches in Ohio and 30 minutes from the dealership, the Batwing awning went sailing off the camper down the interstate at 70mph. Crushed the ends of the vortex bars and shredded the awning. Luckily no one was directly behind me and was hit by the 50lb awning flying through the air!

We filed a warranty claim over 3 weeks ago with Couches and havent heard a word from them. No returned phone calls or emails from their warranty dept.

In the meantime, we have a NoBo with no awning which makes a using this thing a bit uncomfortable with no shade or rain protection.

[poriggity]

This is what I was afraid of with such a high volume dealer.. they sell it to you but arent willing to help if you have issues. Sorry this is happening.. have you tried getting a local nobo dealer to warranty this? Forest River should cover that.

[Dozer_10.5]

I was a bit nervous about it myself. The only issue is they were the closest dealer to us that had the 10.5 in stock and they were still 5 hours from us.

I havent reached out to another dealer yet but if I receive no responses from Couches in the next few days, I will definitely be reaching out to a closer FR dealer to see if they can and/or are willing to help.

[KC5LAF]

It simply was not tightened down from the factory, that is the ONLY way it would have came off. I have the batwing on my rhino rack system on my ARE camper shell (I have a 16.7 NOBO so its not on there obviously). But rhino rack is a quality brand, it was simply a QC issue from the factory.

[Dozer_10.5]

UPDATE

For those interested. After nearly 4 weeks of no returned calls or emails, I decided to leave a "review" of Jeff Couches RV on Google laying out my experience. The very next morning, I received an email from the lady I spoke to on the phone originally to file the claim (coincidence?).

She stated she had just filed the claim that morning! Nearly 4 weeks after I reported it and sent them the images they requested! That was on June 6th and havent heard anything from them since. We'll see how long this takes but not looking positive at this point.

[Murometz]

Any update on this... was planning on purchasing 10.5 from couches..

[Dozer_10.5]

Somewhat of an update...

After 3 months of non-returned emails and phone calls from our warranty rep at Couches, we were finally able to get in touch with someone who actually acted like they cared what was going on. He took a few hours to investigate and called us back after about 3 hours.

It turns out our warranty rep was no longer with Couches... sigh. On top of that, our claim that she said she filed 4 weeks AFTER reporting it, was NEVER FILED. So he had us resend him the pictures, etc. on August 27th but we haven't heard anything back as of yet.

This begs even further questions:

1. If the rep was no longer with the company, why didn't someone from Couches pick up her warranty case load?

2. Why was her voicemail still active and accepting messages instead of routing to another warranty rep?

3. Why was her email not routing to another warranty rep?

So we have a 10.5 NOBO that is designed for outdoor camping but have no awning to stay out of the elements. We have only used it twice in the nearly 4 months that we bought it because its miserable. No way to get out of the sun on the first trip. Same on the second trip and on top of that it rained on us 2 out of 5 days so we had no way to keep anything dry and ended up having to sit inside that tiny camper to avoid the rain....

Knowing what i know now, I would gladly pay $1000 more from a local dealer to avoid this aggravation.