To the interested buyers and those who have given Overkill Campers LLC a deposit, you rate an update to the posts, replies, and passion on this thread...
A few final thoughts from me and the Expedition Portal community can decide for themselves:
1. There is no arguing the passion, ingenuity, and work ethic of Dave Poe and his team. They love the industry, love overlanding, love the community, and have a genuine desire to manufacture a unique and capable product. Dave, his family, and his team are the type of individuals you'd love to camp with and have a beer. Overkill Campers LLC is comprised of and run by passionate people with creative minds.
2. The passionate, creative minds of Overkill Campers LLC are horrible business people with terrible communication skills and a flawed business model. It's one thing to take every aspect of your product and manufacturing process to the limit (overkill). It's another thing to use the deposits of paying customers to reinvent industry standards. Dave used Boeing as an example in his post. The aviation industry is one I'm intimately familiar with so I'll follow that thread as an example. When Boeing sets about designing a new plane or a new piece of a plane to perform better than the competition and the industry standard, they use their own research and development dollars (partially funded by investors and the consumer, true), but at no point does their R&D effort or investment prevent them from meeting customer orders for new planes they've contractually obligated to meet in components, avionics packages, and timeline. To give an Overkill example: they started off by using the industry standard for quality offroad trailer suspensions, Timbren. What's wrong with Timbren? Overkill found something their awesome, creative minds could improve upon and set about reinventing the wheel. They sunk customer deposits into inventing a new suspension and diverted time, effort, and resources into the project. All of this was at the expense to customer wait time and their own financial ability to manage sunk costs, mitigate supply chain delays, etc. How many trailers were delayed in the process? Did the customer sign a contract for Timbren axles or Overkill's proprietary design? Did Overkill tell the consumer they were changing the terms of their contract by installing a new, unproven but "probably" better axle? The same can be said for their expansion efforts into MARS truck campers (deny it if you want, but a joint venture in Prescott was the plan) and ROAM rentals. Expanding your business before you have the capacity to meet current customer demand, with a standardized product that is bulletproof, isn't a business model for success. Hats off to Overkill for having the courage to reinvent the wheel, but the customer shouldn't bear the risk to timeline and end product. I certainly didn't know my money was being gambled in that fashion on numerous other inventions until it was much too late.
3. Quality control is an evolving process. I truly hope Overkill's newest S.O.510's and checklist have solved all the issues I had with my trailer. As an update to my last post, here is a brief list of this issues I experienced:
--Off-gassing resulting in bubbling and warping of the laminate. Contrary to Dave's remarks, this wasn't superficial and cosmetic. The laminate in the walls and ceiling warped to the point water leaked in from the corners of the cabin and Fantastic Fan side seals on the roof.
--Every slide out with the exception of the bed slide (fridge, kitchen, rear Zarges box slides, and table) broke or came loose. The slides are affixed using rivets that are too small for the forces of a bumpy dirt road, let alone actual overlanding. Again, in the aviation industry we use rivets twice the size as Overkill for this very reason. When every other part is strong, but the rivet is the size of a ten-penny nail, it's going to fail every time. Mine did. I replaced 90% of the rivets on my slide outs.
--The rear cabinet tray broke at the hinge weld, resulting in an uneven cabinet system and all of the Zarges box slides, table, and electrical components to drop about two inches below the intended, level spot. This was due to an inadequate weld and two and a half points of attachment when there was supposed to be four.
--Complete electrical system failure. This was a slow (nine months to a year), annoying process that resulted in countless troubleshooting hours, wire by wire. This issue was never resolved (by me), but I believe the main bus to be the issue (no way to know for sure since it's a sealed bus, riveted to the side of the trailer, without a fuse or "tripped" indicator). What started as intermittent "flickering" of power eventually degraded to zero power (except for running and brake lights) for the last two months I had possession of the trailer; no water pump, no lights, no refrigerator, no fan; nothing but a $40,000, 3500# hard-side tent with storage.
--The aluminum cargo boxes on the front of the trailer weren't sealed correctly and filled with water when it rained. It took me about three tubes of silicon sealant to make them somewhat water tight.
--Every door latch mechanism failed. Overkill has changed their latch system, so I hope new customers won't experience this as well, but my latches failed, resulting in one inch gaps in the slide doors, hatches, and boxes; not ideal for an "offroad" trailer in dust, mud, and inclement weather.
I revived this thread a few months ago out of frustration with a company who'd ceased all communication in what was, at the time, a private dispute between customer and manufacturer. I've never posted to any forum in this manner and I don't give customer reviews, good or bad. When Overkill wouldn't respond to phone calls, emails, or texts I was left with this forum or the legal process while concurrently moving across the country with my family. I think it says everything you need to know about Overkill's customer service by the fact they would only respond when I posted on this forum and highlighted their inadequacies. They didn't respond to me. Their response was the post Dave left in the thread above; not a phone call or letter to me personally or a renewed plan to make it right. In the end, I drove to Overkill's shop in Bend from SoCal, dropped off the trailer, and negotiated a refund from Dave; contrary to the original promise of a new trailer I left with a signed agreement for a partial refund. That was in July, it's now mid-September and I haven't seen a penny...but I guess the check's in the mail.
