At some point during this RV search, it finally dawned on me: buying an RV online is nothing like ordering something from Amazon. There is no “customers who bought this also bought,” no easy returns, and absolutely no delivery driver showing up with a smile and a dolly. Instead, you’re placing a whole lot of faith in a handful of photos, a description written by someone you’ve never met, and the hope that the phrase “runs great” actually means something. After walking away from Florida, we pointed the compass west. I’ll admit it — I was starting to get a little jaded. Still, jaded or not, we found ourselves back online again, hunting for the right RV. If you’ve been following this blog, you already know we have a pretty specific set of criteria. I know what I want, what I don’t want, and what I’m willing to compromise on.
That list has been refined by experience… and a few disappointments.
One of the nice things about RVTrader is that you can check off boxes for the features you’re looking for. Solar? Check. Mileage range? Check. Floorplan? Check. In theory, that should narrow things down perfectly.
In reality, it gets you close — but not close enough to trust blindly.
I dove in, and before long, a pile of ads popped up. After slowly whittling them down, I ended up with two serious contenders. One was in Grimes, Iowa. The other was in Tucson, Arizona. The RV in Grimes had a bigger solar package, but the one in Tucson was a year newer and had fewer miles. Naturally, I was leaning toward Iowa.
Then I made my first mistake.
I asked Mrs. Weeble which one she liked.
Without hesitation, she picked Tucson.
The Tucson RV was still within our budget, though definitely closer to the upper end. We talked it through, and she made some very solid points. It checked most of our boxes. It had just 22,500 miles on it and a 190-watt solar panel. It also had a healthy list of aftermarket upgrades, which usually tells me the owner cared about comfort — and often about maintenance as well.
The photos looked good. Really good. Clean, organized, and not staged like a real estate listing.
Of course, I’ve learned the hard way that pictures can lie.
So I sent an email saying we were interested. This was late Saturday afternoon, and I figured I wouldn’t hear anything until Monday. What I forgot — again — was the time difference between Tucson and Baltimore. About 30 minutes later, my phone rang. The caller ID showed a Tucson number.
That got my attention.
I answered, and the salesman introduced himself. His name was Jerry. He came across — and I don’t mean this in a bad way — as a pretty typical salesman at first. But after a few minutes of talking, I started to feel more comfortable with him. He explained what was in the RV, then offered to show us.
That’s when reality kicked in.
I was sitting in Baltimore. The RV was sitting 2,400 miles away.
Jerry asked if I had an iPhone. I said yes. He told me to give him a couple of minutes — he was going to grab one of the younger guys and call back on FaceTime. A short time later, he called again and walked us straight out to the rig.
As he moved through it, inside and out, he talked us through everything, answering our questions in real time.
Now, I’m pretty jaded about photos that are carefully framed to hide problems or make things look better than they really are. You can’t pull that off nearly as easily on FaceTime — at least not on the fly. That helped. A lot.
Afterward, we told Jerry we wanted to sleep on it and that we’d call him the next day.
The next morning, Mrs. Weeble asked the inevitable question: “So… how much are you going to offer?”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my almost 70 years, it’s this: when negotiating a salary, you ask for the moon and hope to land somewhere close. When negotiating to buy something, going too low can shut the whole thing down before it even starts.
With that in mind, I decided to offer about $4,000 under the asking price.
We called Jerry and made the offer. He said he’d contact the owner and get back to us in a couple of hours.
When he called back, the first thing he told us was that the owner had rejected our offer. That didn’t really surprise me. This is usually the point where negotiations either move forward… or quietly die.
Then Jerry added that the owner had come back with a counteroffer. It wasn’t as low as my offer, but it was much closer than the original asking price. Jerry went back to the owner and worked on him a little more, and when he called us again, he said he’d managed to talk him down another notch.
The final number wasn’t exactly what I had offered, but it was close enough that it made sense.
That was the moment I realized this deal could have gone sideways pretty easily. One hard “no,” one bruised ego, or one poorly timed comment, and the whole thing would’ve ended right there. Instead, it landed in a spot we could live with.
So I said we’d take it.
I also told Jerry that I planned to have a private inspector look over the RV. He said that wouldn’t be a problem at all, which was reassuring. At that point, he asked when we planned to come out and finalize the deal.
Mrs. Weeble and I pulled out the calendar and started doing some quiet math. Between scheduling an inspection, wrapping things up in Tucson, and giving ourselves enough time to drive the RV home without pushing too hard, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a quick trip. We pretty much figured we’d be counting on Presidents’ Day to give us a little breathing room.
After looking everything over, we made a decision. We’d fly out to Tucson on February 11th, then drive the RV back home.
Once that decision was made, the whole thing suddenly felt very real.
Now all I had to do was find an inspector.
And while I was at it, figure out how we were going to get home.
To be continued…