One couples experience with Overland Explorer

[S2DM]

The events that transpired during our interactions with Overland Explorer and Lite industries have been gnawing at me for more than a year now. After receiving several pms of clients of theirs with similar issues and un-warrantied mechanical failures, I’ve decided to share our story. I’d received quite a few inquiries from people who’d heard about our experience and wanted my take on them who ultimately went with a different vendor based on our experience. I think its important to share that information publically so consumers know what they are getting into with a vendor and others don’t experience the same situations we did.

Please note, first, I am going to try and present a balanced account, both the good and the bad. Second, if you’ve had a positive experience with them, please feel free to share it on your own thread. Plenty of people seem to have had a positive experience with them and I can certainly see that being possible, so this thread isn’t meant to be a global condemnation of their work, nor a place to sing their praises. It's just one couples experience and a place for discussing it.

As background, over the course of several years, my wife and I built our own custom camper. I’m a physician by trade, but have large chunks of an engineering degree so am no novice when it comes to mechanical design. However, when it came time to mount the camper, I didn’t feel comfortable designing a mounting system and I also wanted some help actualizing the motorcycle lift and outdoor kitchen concept I had detailed in sketchup. We ultimately decided on Overland Explorer to do the work for us after quite a few emails with Mark. During June of 2016 I drove the truck up to their shop in Canada..

So, here’s the short of what happened. I’ll provide a detailed accounting in subsequent posts.

1. The quote Mark gave us was 25-30k for everything which is what we committed to drive to Canada based on (flatbed, mounting, motorcycle lift and outdoor kitchen). We did have a few small add ons, but the final bill was 95k. With travel expenses, I spent over 120k. Their quote for the flatbed alone was 10k which was already pretty high side compared to US builders, and the final flatbed bill was 26k with the only change order being the addition of a headache rack. I wasn’t notified of any base price changes prior to leaving California. For reference, a high end highway products all aluminum flatbed is around 7k which is the high side of industrial pricing in the states.
2. At multiple points during the work, Mark assured this would be the final bill, only to later add 20k. We had three separate 20k escalations after being assured this was the final bill. At the last invoice, after a very lengthy conversation, we agreed on an out the door price. 2 weeks later I got a bill for another 9k. When I confronted Mark about it, he got very aggressive with me. We finally paid the bill as they still had the camper and suing them would be impractical, but it was completely out of line with what had been agreed upon.
3. Mark promised us a flatbed that weighed 750 lbs or less. The final product weighed 1200lbs. I ran the solidworks plan on my own computer and it showed a similar weight, so they designed a flatbed they knew was substantially heavier than agreed upon, didnt notify me, and just proceeded. I was never told it was overweight and only discovered it when taking everything off the truck.
4. Without exception, all of the components they built had major mechanical failures within 5 months of leaving their shop.
   1. The attachment of their locker system to the camper was so poorly executed that the camper almost separated from the truck during a Baja run.
   2. The locker itself was substantially underbuilt and actually bent as it separated from the camper.
   3. Their motorcycle lift and outdoor kitchen, which differed substantially from the lift system I had spec’d, broke on the trip home and came crashing to the ground, really tearing up the box in the process. It left me stranded in the remote Oregon desert for a day while I cobbled it back together. Imagine 1000lbs crashing down from 5 feet up and diving to get out of the way.
   4. I had to completely rebuild the outdoor kitchen pullout while in their shop because of gross errors in the design of the pullout mechanism which left half the kitchen in its box.
5. The outdoor kitchen unit itself ended up being 31” long (measured as it contributed to overall vehicle length). I submitted detailed plans that had it at 18-20”. They added almost a foot to my total vehicle length without consulting me. That put the total length at almost 24’ instead of just shy of 23’ like I had spec’d and which is the cutoff for numerous state and national parks and had been an early design rule.
6. Despite being charged eggregiously high full custom prices, very clear, written design instructions and detailed CAD drawings were frequently ignored. Mark basically charged us to build something the way he wanted despite my explicit instructions about how I wanted certain components to be built. In many cases, the design deviations were directly causative of the failures or reason for removal.
7. The flatbed mounting system created excessive play in the finished unit which resulted in substantial shear forces and forced us to abandon the quick mount system.
8. Basic solidworks stress analysis shows all of this to be likely based on the unit design, so apparently they aren’t really engineering any of their products.
9. There were just constant design and build errors which never ended up on OE’s books and we always had to pay for. And much of it veered into the ‘what were you thinking/smoking’ category. The outdoor kitchen slide out was full length, it required full extension. They bought and heavily modified a super heavy truck bed slider that was only ¾ extension and didnt realize it until the slide out was installed and the kitchen only came out ¾ of the way such that you couldnt use it. They put the storage boxes on with through bolts before they attached the deck of the flatbed. It was impossible to take the boxes off without either destroying the deck, plasma cutting the head of the bolt off or hole sawing around the bolt. The list of these kind of errors is numerous.
10. Despite being assured they had their customs paperwork in order prior to leaving for Canada, by the time the camper was done, they were still nowhere near ready on customs. I ended up having to wait several more months and make another trip to Canada to finally be able to bring the camper to the states.

In the end, we had to strip everything they built off of the truck. I rebuilt their locker and re-attached it, but the flatbed and outdoor kitchen just weren't at all what we had asked for, had major mechanical issues and would have cost more to fix than to start over. Of the ~120k I spent between their invoices, travel expenses (hotels and flights), 2 full months of my time working at their shop to keep costs down, I’ll end up recouping only 2-3k after I sell the flatbed and outdoor kitchen.

I’ve spoken to several other people who had a similar experience with them, though not as bad as ours. But it seems that extreme cost over runs and major component problems they are unwilling to fix isn’t an isolated scenario.

If your business model is to sell 1200lb flatbeds at a price of 26K CAD, that is fine, but you had better be very upfront about it. Their initial bid was probably low, and I figured we would be closer to 50k, which is inline with 2 other quotes I got in California, but to triple the cost, and to charge 3x as much as the product would cost in the states is just nuts. Furthermore, Its just unconscionable to charge as much as they did for those products and then provide zero support when they completely fell apart. The failures of engineering on this product weren’t just unsightly, they were dangerous.

Given my experience, I’d approach buying something from them with caution and advise you have a detailed written contract, detailed description of the warranty and how its applied. For most of us in the states, even if they’d agreed to fix it, it would be quite expensive to bring it back up to them and that in and of itself is reason enough to consider shying away from purchasing from them.

What follows is a detailed account of what happened for those interested, including the good parts of doing business with them.

 

[S2DM]

The Good

Always wise to start with the positives, so here they are.

1. First and foremost - I don’t believe OE secretly got rich on this deal at my expense. At least as far as the financials go, I believe they just significantly underestimated how much it would cost them and how much time it would take, coupled with quite a few design snafus on their end which added significant time. I just don’t think that shop is set up to build things at a reasonable price and has primarily survived through industrial contracts.
2. When all is going well, they are genuinely nice guys. Albert seems like a prince of a man most of the time, and Mark was also gracious and generous with his time. I shared some meals and beers with them, they both frequently ran me back to my hotel during the 2 some odd months I was up there working trying to shave costs. Mark let me fill my water tanks from his well and helped plan a nice vacation for us on our first test run of the camper. They were also both generous with sharing information and I learned alot being in their shop.
3. While its a bit of a double edge sword, seeing their process was a big part of me realizing I could do it myself, so when things fell apart, that experience gave me the confidence to go learn solidworks and dust off the cobwebs of my old engineering classes. There are many things they do well, projects I saw being built I was impressed with, and until my components failed, I would have said they are outrageously expensive but do good work.
4. They tolerated me working in their space - this is a big one. I’ve been in this position a few times (working in someone else’s shop), so I really go out of my way to be clean and orderly, condense my questions, just be generally helpful etc. But that said, even a perfect guest is still a guest and I was up in red deer for almost 2 months working 7 days a week. They tolerated me being there the entire time and opened the shop for me to work on weekends.

 

[S2DM]

The bad

Here's the general synopsis of my take on what happened. While I don’t begrudge the extra time as these things always take longer than planned, I ended up going up to Overland Explorer 3 times. Each time as I was leaving, the invoice went up 20k from the previous visit despite no significant change orders. Each time it would happen, I’d remind Mark of his previous estimate and he’d assure me that this would be the final price increase, then I’d go back again and it would have gone up. In the end, I spent almost 2 months up there staying in hotel rooms and working 70 hrs a week on it trying to keep costs down and putting out design fires (man, there were a ton of these) and walked away with a completed project that was almost triple the agreed upon price. While we were pretty disappointed about the price, the camper seemed solid and we were just happy to be done with it.

Unfortunately, over the next few months, everything fell apart. On my way home, the motorcycle lift, which had been built substantially deviant from my specs, bound up and snapped its line on the second use, leaving me stranded for a day out in the middle of nowhere Oregon desert. I took the lift off to rebuild when we got home and then did a trip to Baja for 2 weeks. During that trip, the problems with the mounting system and locker attachment resulted in us almost losing the camper off the truck as we were heading into Punta Cono.

I took the camper to a friend with a Phd in mechanical engineering specializing in stress analysis. Overland Explorer had given me the CAD files at the end of the project. It was very obvious with even a cursory stress analysis that the mounting systems and attachment to the camper were poorly designed and destined to fail and that the locker and its attachments were very poorly executed.

Here’s a list of the main failures

Flat bed

General; Quoted price was 10k- final price was 27k. Only change order was a headache rack which I couldn’t believe wasn’t included. Even at the 10k price point, its a very expensive flatbed compared to high quality offerings from Highway products etc. At 27k its just egregious. And It was so far beyond his quote. They are telling people 20k now, but I can’t understand where they justify that price. Either way, if someone chooses to pay it, thats fine. Its quite another thing when you triple the price after someone has driven 4 days to get to your shop

Specifics

1. Weight - was almost 1200lbs and we’d agreed on no more than 750. I decided on steel, which arguably should have been cheaper all the way around, because it would allow me a lower COG. MArk assured me that moving to steel would lower the COG almost 4” while only adding 150-200lbs over their aluminum flat bed build. I can understand how things get away from you in a FAB shop, but this was done on Solidworks and even a pre welding, painted etc analysis of the step files shows a weight over 1100 lbs so they knew it was way overweight and just didn't care to tell me.
2. Storage Boxes - I’ve never been a fan of their design aesthetic, its just boxy and angular. Same goes for their campers, some like em, but I just really don’t like super boxy, irregular angles on top of angles look, just nothing sleek about them. On multiple occasions, I mentioned verbally and in writing that I really wanted inset doors as opposed to the outset doors they do on their builds (mostly because I can’t stand the aesthetic of their storage boxes). When I came to pick up the camper, the boxes were outset doors. And the locker above them was built with inset doors, so they just looked hokey together. I had atleast 3 conversations and also detailed that in my designs goals prospectus, and they just ignored it.
3. Storage Boxes/Attachment - When they installed the storage boxes, they did so before they put the deck on the flatbed. And they did it with through bolts. The through bolts were placed from the top without a captive nut. Once the deck was installed, the bolts became inaccessible. As I was trying to sort the problems on the truck, I realized the only way to remove the boxes was to hole saw around the bolt head or cut the bolts out with a plasma torch. I then had to reinstall them myself with HD rivet nuts.
4. Fuel Filler - When the truck left the shop, it was basically impossible to fill the tank, it tripped the vapor sensor at every pump every ¼ gallon. I mentioned it to Mark after our first trip while we were waiting for customs to clear us and they agreed to fix it. When I did final pick up, they told me it was fixed, but at the first fuel stop, clearly it wasn't. I looked inside the filler neck and realized someone had just tried to grind it out to a wider ID which is just lunacy with a 16 gauge filler neck. I’ve had 4 other customers of theirs contact me for my fix, so clearly this isn’t a sole occurrence.

 

[S2DM]

Outdoor kitchen Motorcycle lift

General - this unit failed spectacularly on the second day I used it. It also deviated greatly for what I’d specified in my design criteria. It was also egregiously expensive for something so un-engineered.

1. There were multiple hurdles getting this to work at the outset, and I ultimately had to design the buttress system used to attach it to the camper (which worked flawlessly but added 3” which I’m responsible for). The main problems were that the unit bound when being lifted due to uneven weight distribution. I had specified a strap winch for this reason, but Mark substituted a cable winch because he thought having something serviceable would be preferable. I actuated the lift while fishing in the boonies in the oregon desert, my second time using it, and it snapped its cable and dropped the entire 1000lb kitchen unit on the rocks, stranding me and really bending up the exterior aluminum box. I ultimately had to go roman style and rigged up a lever from some large pine branches to get it up enough to splice the cable back together. I was able to get it aligned enough that I could tie the steel cable in a knot (not an easy job) and get it back onto the truck. I then had to torque the box manually with straps and a 2x4 to get it aligned enough to close its doors.
2. I had spec’d a width of 18-20” and had drawn it all up in sketchup. When I came, it was almost 31” and added a rear storage area I hadn’t spec’d. Adding almost 12” to length of the truck isn’t trivial and all this was done without discussing with me. It looked terrible, but also put us beyond 23’ feet total length, which is the cutoff for a lot of state and national parks. The only trip we did with that on was the trip home from Overland Explorer. My wife said what the hell is the dingleberry on the back when I pulled in the back (thanks honey
3. Design flaws - there were just a ton of design flaws on this one. THe biggest is that they used a heavy duty truck slide for the kitchen pull out. While the kitchen pullout itself was designed to be the full length of the box, they ordered and isntalled a ¾ extension slider. So when you pulled the unit out, it stopped with the stove still ½ way in the box. I ended up having to take the whole thing apart and add a second layer of sliders on top of the original so it was a two tiered mechanism. Of course they charged for re-design time and refab time in addition to my time.
4. They built the carraige out of 2x3” 3/16 wall steel, but they built the track it ran in out of 2x4” .25 wall aluminum. So, despite the quite obvious materials strength discrepancy, the carriage itself was also buttressed so the discrepancy was even greater. The carriage had zero flex and the track had very little support other than its internal shape strength. So after just a few articulations, the carriage had started to deform and bend out both sides of the aluminum carrier track. As it bent, it got even more play, which hastened the deformation. Even if the unit hadn’t bound and snapped its winch line, the carrier track would have eventually completely deformed and would have dropped the motorcycle carriage on the road, which could have been disastrous. The materials choices should have been reversed, keep the carriage light because it was internally buttressed and retained by the track, and make the track steel.

Locker Attachment to Camper and mounting mechanism

When we were in Baja, we travelled up a medium technical road into a remote beach. Halfway up the road I heard a shearing sound. When we got into camp we realized that the camper (which was attached to their locker which was then attached to their flatbed) had started to separate from the locker in a few spots and that the rear portion of the locker had actually bent where it was separating from the camper. I was able to retrofit it back together and limp home.

When we made the decision to just remove the entirety of their stuff from our build and start over with me designing I realized how poorly the two were attached and how dangerous. I’m all for adhesive based attachment systems vs mechanical, and I think this would have been fine if they had actually done the proper prep. When I removed the supposedly glued on panels I found that in the majority of cases, they hadn’t even sanded through the paint to the glass, and that the glue was very uneven in its distribution. Prep is everything with adhesives, and not sanding all the way down to glass prior to doing an adhesive only mount on a camper like ours is borderline criminal. I had to remove the locker completely, rebond with proset 176/276 (substantially stronger than sika 252) and then do a series of mechanical fasteners (epoxied in 3” x1/4” bolts) and then large through bolts at several spots on the floor. Their glue was so uneven that water had been getting trapped that had seeped down the panel and had started to infiltrate the foam so it forced me to remove some fiberglass which was extremely tedious.

The other main failure is their ‘quick release’ spring mount system which they still use on builds and I would highly recommend avoiding. The problems with the system is that it uses an additional set of springs which can result in substantial spring travel when considered in conjunction with the flatbed to frame rail travel. In my build, I was able to flex the chassis and see not only the springs attaching the flatbed to the truck, but also the spring attaching the camper to the flatbed, hitting full travel very quickly. What this amounted to is when traversing rough roads, we could get ~3” of camper separate from chassis travel pretty easily. So basically, whenever we were on rough roads, that flex was happening often and then quickly stopping at the end of its range, basically acting like an impact hammer at all those attachment points. Hence the locker actually separating from the camper (which is substantially more rigid) and getting bent.

I had to use a complicated hydraulic ram set up to straighten the locker they built, then I went and epoxied in Coosa composite board into the framed voids and then riveted and glued on 4 .125” wall aluminum sheets, creating 4 shears walls. The original locker design also held up really poorly on solidworks stress testing, which, given they don’t have any engineers employed, leaves me feeling like they aren’t even looking at it, more just relying on “I think that will be strong enough” shade tree style engineering.

 

[S2DM]

Conclusion


I have so many mixed feelings on this. So much of this was so bad, tripling the price even after reminders about the original agreement, poorly designed parts I had to rebuild while still in their shop, parts that failed on the way home that they had zero interest in fixing, the list goes on. That said, I’ve seen other stuff they did that looked fine, so of it impressive even. So, my recommendations would be,

1. stick to products they build that have been iterated (I wouldn’t have them do any high tolerance custom work IMO), and get a firm price ahead of time,
2. Get a signed contract, not just Mark’s word. Also, ask about their warranty and how its applied and get this in writing. Given where they are in Canada, its a super long haul from most places in the states, which functionally means you are on your own for anything other than catastrophic failures that would make a return trip worth it.
3. Verify they will have your export paperwork ready when you are ready, and what will happen if it isn’t. We had another trip and a few months of waiting because they didnt have the stickers they said they had, all of which added cost. They kept saying they’d take care of us, but I can’t tell that it did a thing to the final price.

When I think about it in total, it is pretty unreal. What’s not reflected in the total is 8 days travel time to Canada (there and back), 2 months of hotel accomodations, and 2 months of my personal time basically working as an upaid shop hand all day long to try and put out fires and keep the costs down. If I hadn’t had the time to do that, I think our final price could have easily been 20k higher yet. And many, many promises about final product and price that were just completely false. I know others are happy with their products, but I’d proceed with caution.

 

[SootyCamper]

I understand the custom expedition camper world is a place for folks with fat wallets, but $120k for a flat bed and some cabinets is obsurd.

I had such high hopes for Overland Explorer, but unfortunately for them one bad review is one too many.

 

[Kevin108]

I have dealt with businesses like this that screw the pooch, won't take responsibility, and either because of pride or finances, never make things right. Few things are more frustrating.

I do residential construction and commercial building maintenance, and there's one detail that throws a red flag: you worked on this with them for two months.

That's unconventional, to say the least. But it made me think of a sign I've seen...

 

[Fatboyz]

I have dealt with businesses like this that screw the pooch, won't take responsibility, and either because of pride or finances, never make things right. Few things are more frustrating.

I do residential construction and commercial building maintenance, and there's one detail that throws a red flag: you worked on this with them for two months.

That's unconventional, to say the least. But it made me think of a sign I've seen...

To the OP, I know nothing about this company so I can't comment on their work. As mentioned above I also find it strange that you worked in their shop for 2 months, including weekends to "keep them on track". This reminds me of my mother in law who always had to "help" in the kitchen so it would be done right. A build that goes from 20-30 to 95 thousand sounds like there's more to the story. If my current build took that type of turn I'd have to sell my house to pay the bill. It would be interesting to hear from others who have used this company and their thoughts. I know there's one fellow here who had all the suspension work on his 5500 done there, but the box was built and installed at another place. Just my $.02.

 

[S2DM]

A few points of clarification. I didn't say to "keep them on track", I said "to keep costs down", which literally meant just being an extra laborer doing things that were supposed to have been done as part of the agreement. I spent a week at their shop when I arrived to get the design work done in conjunction with them, at the end of that week we had agreed upon an approach, and I created a document with all of the drawings I'd done and a list of what we'd agreed on. At that point, Mark quoted 45-50, which I agreed to even though it was about double. I spent ~10 days when I was supposed to pick it up but it ended up not being ready, and then about 4 weeks at the end trying to get it out the door after we had already agreed on a final 'to not exceed price', after which I got an additional 9k invoice. I was more aggressive with questioning that invoice and Mark went nuts on me.

• By the time I arrived for that 4 week stretch, we were already at 70k+ with more invoices on the way, and Mark agreed to have me come up as we were way past the agreed upon pick up point and he knew I was very concerned about the price at that point and wanted to do the things I could do myself.
• I just functioned as a shop hand doing the ******** work that needed to be done to get it out the door. I've got a lot of experience in the realm so I just worked like any of their guys would be doing, and I was fixing things that werent working as they got installed. Mark actually commented numerous times that he'd normally never let a guy work in his shop but that I was super easy to work with and it actually helped. I also cleaned the shop at the end of each day, helped Mark clean on weekends, bought the guys lunch etc.

From a pricing standpoint, I think the flatbed is most illustrative and I wasn't present for any of that work. So, "PITA client factor" couldnt have played a role. Mark quoted 10k canadian. When I arrived they were installing it and I got an invoice for 26k. The 10k was for an aluminum flatbed and we changed it to steel once I was up there prior to building it, but materials and labor are both generally cheaper on steel flatbeds vs aluminum across the industry. It was also substantially deviant from the weight we agreed upon and they completely ignored my request to do the doors on the storage boxes the way I requested in writing and in person. All of that work occurred prior to my long stretch working in their shop and during a time when we had not much contact other than his status updates. So its almost triple the price for a cheaper product, that didn't meet spec, and for which I was not in the shop.

So despite whether Mark would assert my presence was a factor, the vast majority of the cost over-runs occurred before I arrived. And many items were priced at a point that was atleast triple what they quoted and triple what high side prices are in the states.

If you are getting anywhere near double to quoted price, I think its incumbent on a business to communicate that, explain why, and be open to a discussion on how to proceed. With their shop there was none of this. There just isn't any way to justify a 26k steel flatbed short of "I told him it would be this much and he wanted to proceed". There just isn't. I don't doubt they had that much time into it, and thats the problem. They don't have engineers on board, they have one pretty good guy with a solidworks certificate, one not so good guy, and then Mark whose background was in building offroad racers. Which is fine, but coupled with high labor rates, long design and redesign times, and then things that had to be completely rebuilt because they didnt work, the prices get crazy fast.

The other big issue is handling serious mechanical failures of expensive components. Mark wrote me after my initial descriptions of the failures on my build thread asking for info on what failed, and then replied that he thought it was likely due to the glue not being entirely cured, the implication being that I started using it too soon. This was nonsensical because that glue had been on for a month when I left their shop and 5 months when we got to Baja. After dissasembling it, it was 100% due to poor prep. You just don't do a structural adhesive to paint, and you need spread the adhesive out with a notched trowel to ensure maximum surface area.

Same thing with the motorcycle lift. When you build someone a 15k motorcycle lift, ignore their design specifications and substitute a different type of winch, and then the whole things falls apart after its second use, you've gotta fix that. When I told Mark about it, he said he wasn't happy about it and kinda intimated he wasn't happy with a few of the guys in the shop that did the work on it, but was completely disinterested in helping me remedy the situation or fix it.

 

[S2DM]

The other thing that I would really caution anyone considering getting work done at their shop about is how trapped we became by the situation. If this had happened in the states, I probably would have ok'd the first invoice increase. But i would have been 50/50 on the second, and most likely would have just sent a semi and a crane to load everything up and bring it home, and then hired a mediator to negotiate those final invoices before paying anything. I most certainly wouldn't have agreed to the third. And I probably would have sued if this happened in the states, both for breach of contract surrounding the prices, and also for the mechanical failures later.

With the way this happened in their shop, we ended up feeling like hostages to them. After the second invoice increase, the wife wanted me to bring it home and we got quotes on doing that at around 5k. The problem was, we literally couldn't do it without abandoning everything because of customs. We would have had to ship it home in pieces and probably would have had to leave the flatbed and lockers behind, even with that, it wouldn't have been easy to bail as it was all apart, stuff was partially installed etc. The truck was also in pieces, so I would have had to have it come home on a semi as well. So we ended up in a situation where we felt like we had no recourse other than to pay the invoices or get super gnarly with a lawsuit. And it seemed after doing that, we'd end up paying even more to not have a completed project. We've been fortunate financially so we could handle the bill. But for the average guy who'd already dropped a bunch on a build, this would have been an absolute disaster. Mark knew I'd made some money, and I'm not sure how much that might have contributed to our invoices, but I just know the average self builder could never have paid an extra 90k to get it home, and certainly not the additional 35k I put in to tear all their stuff off and build it right afterwards.

Despite all of that, we left on good terms though I wasn't happy. We decided to just pay the invoices, practice some serenity now, and just try to enjoy a finished camper. It wasn't until all these high priced items fell apart that we got angry and the relationship deteriorated. Not to toot my own horn, but I don't think too many folks would have stayed civil after a tripling of the price, 2 months of personal time to get it out the door and another few months of waiting for customs.

 

[ripperj]

I don’t know any of the parties involved, and there are always two sides to every story, but I can’t envision a situation that makes sense for a job to quadruple in price.
I also don’t see how you spend a $100k and don’t even get a camper


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[motoboss]

Exact reasoon why I would never have any work done outside of the US., where I live.

 

[zip]

Bummer.
Sorry you had a bad experience.
I had a vehicle built by Sportsmobile West that I was very disappointed with.
My current rig is a Roadtrek, and the quality of the workmanship on this 90K mile vehicle is better than my SMB when it was brand new.

 

[Terra Ops]

Wow, this sounds nothing short of criminal. Even if you were involved and made unexpected changes, the increases in price should have been disclosed.
While this forum is an excellent resource it can also have its traps by vendors/sales people who troll here looking for business.
I almost had a similar experience when purchasing composite panels from Canada. Long story short, the seller/business owner did not honor his original prices
at time of purchase. I tried asking why the change and got the response "I don't have to explain myself to you". I walked away after many months of planning.
I just can't do business with this mentality, it is wrong. However, it turned out for the best as I went on to build my own panels and flatbed camper.
Learned a lot especially about dealing with products/companies outside the US. China was the worst. Interestingly the Canada panel business imports their panels from
China.
Material cost for my build was approx 23K. Aluminum flatbed with boxes, $6500.00.
This will probably continue to gnaw at you for some time because you know what happened to you was wrong. Not much different than a robbery.
If it were me I would obtain legal counsel and tell them whatever they get, they can keep. That should invigorate any attorney to pursue maximum recourse.

 

[Brewdiak]

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/h_ca02207.html

worth a try... as far as your experiences - i'm another "at least 2 sides of any story...then there's the truth". Not saying you didn't get screwed, but there's several issues in your narrative that make my brain hurty.