How Not to Spend The Golden Years

Blindsided and lied to ...

10/15/25: This is something Robert and I went through in 2018 and it lasted over three years. It’s been behind us now for another 4 years. Last night I read a post that gave me the courage to tell our story. The specific excerpt was one by

Harley King

:

“What challenges in your life do you need to reframe—to retell? We are all here to learn lessons. What lessons are you learning from the challenges you face? How are you retelling your stories to give you more power over the challenges?”

Thank you for writing this,

Harley King

. You gave me the courage to set aside pride and embarrassment to share a difficult story so others won’t make the same mistakes we did.
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What is the saddest case of poverty you have ever personally come across? I’d have to say, at least for a while, it was us, my partner, Robert, and me.

Robert and I are both seniors and at our age, we’ve had to start all over again. This was partially due to us being too trusting and naive. But it could also have been avoided, had sales personnel at an RV dealership been people-centered and honest, rather than only money-focused.

In 2018, my osteoarthritis was getting worse. This made even short car trips difficult and painful. Our children and grandchildren were all up north and we wanted to see them more often than once a year when they were able to visit us here in Florida.

We decided maybe a motorhome would be an answer for us. If I got too uncomfortable sitting in the passenger seat, I could walk around, lie down, or even cook supper while Robert was driving. We always wanted to travel and see the country, too —another plus. We talked about it for months and then it was decided.

We spent weeks combing the Internet, looking for a used one-owner Class A motorhome with low mileage that was affordable, as well as big enough to be comfortable living in. We knew other seniors who did this and were happy.

At a dealership in Winter Garden FL, we found a 1-owner used 2000 Class A 39’ Safari Zanzibar Diesel pusher motorhome with very low mileage (30,000).

It looked perfect for us from the photos on their website. There was even a place to set up both computers and the printer, since we were both writers. We drove to Winter Garden to see the motorhome and fell in love with it.

(The 1st photo is bathroom sink, sliding door is open to kitchen, fridge is to left, table and chairs just visible to left of fridge. To right of sink, is a mirrored wardrobe. Under wardrobe is cabinet with washer/dryer combo.)

(2nd photo shows table and chairs, storage above and below, fridge on right, window blinds are all pulled up).

(3rd photo shows kitchen stove, microwave, sink with cover on for travel is in front of window; to left of stove is closed sliding wood door to bathroom and bedroom).

We confided to the salesman we were new to RVing and asked him to have their mechanics check everything thoroughly. It had to be safe and everything in good working condition. If they found any problems, we asked to be told, so we could look at other used Class A’s.

The next day, we were assured everything checked out fine. They also gave us the phone number of the 1 previous owner. He kept complete records of regular maintenance and all repairs —we were given the records, but he would also welcome phone calls and questions.

In July 2018, we sold everything (house, car, furniture) to be full-time RVers, traveling the country, visiting our four children and eleven grandchildren up north, and to enjoy just being together.

We didn’t realize we should bring our own mechanic to check the motorhome. We also didn’t know to get everything the dealership, sales, and service department told us in writing —like what was actually checked out? We know now, all that mattered was making the sale.

We settled on a price of $30,750 which included a two-year extended warranty, for $7,200. This still left us with a good-size slush fund in our bank account for travel, fuel, visiting family, having fun and an occasional repair.

Problems began the first day when we drove it off the lot. As soon as we turned into 4-lane traffic, one of the wheel covers came off and flew into traffic. A driver pulled up to Robert’s side window at a stoplight and told us about the wheel cover. We turned off, went back to retrieve it and made it back to the RV dealership 5 minutes before it closed for the day.

This marked the beginning. No matter where we went, we ended up in an RV repair shop. That also meant paying to stay in nearby campgrounds or motels, while waiting for parts and/or repairs.

Our very first trip was up the coast to visit a daughter and 4 grandchildren in NC. By the time we got there, one of the air conditioners had died and leaked water into our carpeted ceilings. That left a huge 3-foot soaked circle on the bed and the carpet in the living room was soaked.

At a NC service center, we bought another air conditioner and paid for the installation. After a short visit, we said our goodbyes and headed to a second daughter’s home and 3 more grandkids in NY.

While we were parked on the street in front of their house, we found our black sewage tank was leaking and pooling a ‘brown liquid’ onto their street —an embarrassing nightmare!

Another repair shop and a replacement tank had to be ordered and replaced. The service people found the other owner had patched a crack in the tank with putty of some sort. It had dried out and flaked off. We were in a campground for 2 weeks waiting for a new black tank and the repair.

We said our goodbyes in NY and headed further north to visit a third daughter and 4 more grandkids in NH. We spent over a month in a campground in a neighboring town waiting for more parts and repairs. I’m sorry, but neither of us can remember what was fixed there.

We said our goodbyes and left NH, headed west to OH to visit Bob’s son and our siblings on both sides. We were on I-80 somewhere mid-Pennsylvania, heading west to OH. He was driving and as I turned to say something to him, I was horrified to see daylight down the right side of our motorhome’s large slideout.

Note: Our motorhome was 39’ long and the slideout contained the living room (from just behind the driver’s seat), and the entire kitchen all the way back to the bathroom. (The entire right side in this picture to the full length mirror in the back of the photo).

Shocked, I told Robert what I saw. He looked in his side mirror and he could see the slider had eased out roughly two inches into the next traffic lane! We immediately pulled off the highway at a rest area, parked, and fully opened the slider, then closed and locked it again.

We were so new to RVing, we thought maybe we hadn’t followed the proper procedure when we last closed the slider at the campground in New Hampshire.

We got back on I-80, relieved to have solved the problem, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the slider where I had seen the gap —just in case. Sure enough, within ten minutes I could see daylight again, but this time I also saw blue sky along the top where the slider meets the ceiling. This was NOT good!

“Pull over, Robert! Pull over NOW! This time it’s REALLY BAD. If it goes out any further, someone is going to knock it off, or it will cause an accident by dropping onto the next lane, or onto a vehicle!”

Robert looked in the side mirror. This time, the slider had edged out FOUR inches! We pulled off I-80 into a truck stop at the next exit. Using the Internet, we contacted nearby mobile RV repair services and found one who could meet us there in fifteen minutes.

After studying our slider from all angles, the repairman said the best he could do is cut some 2x4’s and shore up the slider from inside to keep it from going out again.

As we paid the man ($250), he warned us to get it to a reputable RV service center ‘ASAP’ because it was such a huge and heavy slider. He was pretty sure the 2x4’s would hold, but he couldn’t be 100% positive.

We decided to stay the night where we were at the truck stop. As I was getting dinner, Robert called Camping Worlds online. Most were backed up three to four weeks, but he found one in Richmond IN that would take us as soon as we could get there.

In Richmond IN, we found we had to have the entire cylinder motor rebuilt that opened and closed the slide out. A rebuild would cost a fraction of the cost of a new cylinder motor. They told us to figure on a couple of months for the rebuild.

We were lucky to hear we could hook up right there on the side of the Camping World lot for free while the rebuild was being done. While we were there, we had a bad storm and the roof leaked again as the other air conditioner quit working. They had to also patch the roof. We were in Richmond IN for three months.

It was looking more and more like we would need a new roof, but would insurance cover that?

We decided from Richmond, to go back to Florida. We needed to pick up our mail and that was in Green Cove Springs, a USPS mail drop for RVers.

We made it to the panhandle of Florida that night and found a campsite in Tallahassee. When Robert opened the door to pay for the site, the motor that opened our steps didn’t work. Getting in and out of the motorhome was a 3’ drop. We would have to find another service center to have that fixed.

When we sat down to a late dinner, Robert turned on the 11:00 news and the weather portion shocked us. Hurricane Michael was heading directly for Florida’s panhandle and due to arrive later the next day.

Exhausted, we left early in the morning heading west, just ahead of the hurricane. We were pounded by heavy rain and wind and more water was leaking into the motorhome from somewhere … again. We had another leak in the roof.

We got as far as Shreveport LA and found a Camping World and asked the service department to put it into a garage for repairing the roof. We had to rent a car to find a motel with a kitchenette because we were told the insurance company had to send an appraiser before the roof could be repaired. We spent four months in the motel with a kitchenette with a rental car to get around.

Up to this point, we had paid nearly $20,000 out of pocket on repairs not covered by the extended warranty, or State Farm Insurance. Included in that were campgrounds and motels while waiting for repairs, or parts. We headed south to Florida again, the Gainesville area, Green Cove Springs, to get our mail.

Throughout all of this, we exhausted every avenue to recover our money from the RV dealership. No attorneys were willing to take us Pro Bono, or any other way.

We reached out to consumer fraud attorneys, the Florida Bar Association, Legal Aid, senior students at Florida law schools, Florida State Senators Rubio and Scott, our 3rd District Congressman, Ted Yoho, investigative reporter, Todd Urlich, from Channel 9 TV in Orlando, State Farm Insurance Claims Dept., and finally, a Legal Professor in Fort Lauderdale.

He was the most helpful —-and the most honest. He told us we would never find an attorney willing to go after a Florida RV dealership. It would be impossible to prove consumer fraud under the laws set in place by the current administration in the State of Florida.

“Unless you have proof in writing of consumer fraud, judges will side with the business. It would be a long drawn out litigation —and very expensive. Worse yet, if you lose, you will be ordered to pay your own legal fees as well as those of the business.”

Because it was ‘used’, when we drove our motorhome off the lot, Florida law considered it to be ours, problems and all. He suggested we sell the motor home for parts, get whatever we could out of it, forget about the RV dealership, and get on with our life.

With nothing in writing to prove we had been lied to by the dealership, we had no other choice but to put it behind us. “Live and learn”, they say, but that is so much easier said, than done.

To make a long story shorter, we drove to a Buy/Sell Your RV place just above Ocala FL. We thought we found a buyer in Ocala, but they brought their mechanic to go over the RV carefully (something we wish we had done) and after his findings, the buyer walked away. The mechanic gave us this report:

—>1. Both front air bags (the entire braking system for our RV) were bad, a critical and dangerous problem, and they needed to be replaced. One had an obvious hole (he could hear hissing as the air leaked out) and the rubber outer coat was worn down to the metal cords and they were showing.

If air bag brakes completely go, the chassis will drop onto the front wheels, the wheels will lock up, and the RV will flip over in traffic, causing an accident killing us and/or others.

—>2. The mechanic also found a broken differential pressure switch on the master cylinder. The brakes could fail, or cause uneven brake control, pulling right, or left, causing a serious accident.

—>3. There was a rusted tie rod which could go and it would affect the steering column, resulting in a loss of all steering ability.

—>4. The brake on the driver’s side was glazed.

—>5. The fuel gauge was broken. (We knew about this. Robert just did the math to know when to fuel up again.)

—>6. It needed a new roof ($7,500 rubber, $12,500 fiberglass).

The mechanic told us our Safari was a safety nightmare. “Do NOT drive it! Have it repaired, have it towed to a junkyard, but under no circumstances should you drive it on any road.”

We had no money for towing, or more repairs. So, with our hazard lights blinking, we slowly limped to a campground in Ocala FL where we spent over a year with those crucial repairs we couldn’t afford to fix. We had orders not to drive it under any circumstances. We had no luck finding someone that might own a motorhome like ours and want to buy it for parts.

Oh, and did I mention that through all of this, we had no car?

This was not how we wanted to spend our Golden years. We had no money, no car, no home —only our Social Security each month but we still had each other! We were in bad shape, but it hadn’t broken our spirit, nor were we going to give up —we were embarrassed, yes, and we had been naive. We wished we had made better decisions.

We called a bankruptcy attorney and both of us filed.

Then we got a phone call from an attorney friend in NY. He started a GoFundMe Page for us. It was the only thing that saved us. It enabled us to buy a used car. After several months, the fund also helped us buy a small 2 BR, 2 BA furnished manufactured home in a 55+ community with two pools, a gym, library, clubhouse, and woodworking.

A junkyard paid us $2,500 for the motorhome and they towed it away for free. For the first time in a little over three years, we felt unburdened and finally, safe.

As we watched them tow it away, I cried tears of relief. To watch it go was one of the greatest feelings in the world. I hope you never have to experience anything like this.

Through it all, we managed to keep a positive outlook —and it’s true, nothing bad ever lasts forever. As to Robert and me, this did test our relationship, but as bad as things got, the ordeal only brought us closer.

It is my wish that by setting our embarrassment aside and writing about and sharing our ordeal, we can help others to not make the mistakes we did. Always get everything in writing. Take your own mechanic with you to check out the major components of any used vehicle and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is …