Our 21' Escape Trailer purchase issues

[Greg and Kathy]

Originally Posted by dsbc

I've decided to evaluate the "Escape 19" I ordered ... and make my decision after a detailed inspection.
Thanks to everyone for info and comments in this thread.

That’s a good decision. These are good trailers but like a car warranty is there for a reason. We pick our 5TA in Aug.

[dmdunca44]

Originally Posted by sclifrickson

Did your trailer not come with this label in the main cabin, right above the refrigerator?

Attachment 40459

The parking brake in my car doesn’t even have such clear labeling to turn it off before driving.

The refrigerator in our 19’ does not have this sign, nor does it have an external fan.
Is this a new option? It’s not listed on our build sheet...

[sclifrickson]

Originally Posted by dmdunca44

The refrigerator in our 19’ does not have this sign, nor does it have an external fan.
Is this a new option? It’s not listed on our build sheet...

It’s not a new option. It was requested by enough people some time ago as an Off The Menu option that they made it an On The Menu option. We got it on our 2017 19, but the last I checked I think they had removed it from the menu again, I think, but that would have been 2018. Options change over time. Witness manual awnings.

Regarding the sticker, I believe they had just started adding those around the time we got our 19, as that’s when people started blowing fusible links while driving. I’m pretty sure they only put the sticker into trailers that were actually equipped with the external fan.

[Perry Butler]

Originally Posted by MikeS

Perry & Jim, sorry if my formatting is not acceptable...I don't have much practice writing these long rambling posts and tried to have paragraphs.

I enjoyed reading your "long rambling post(s)" and was surprised to read the last paragraph.
ya dun jus phine!

Enjoy,

Perry

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by dsbc

I've decided to evaluate the "Escape 19" I ordered ... and make my decision after a detailed inspection.
Thanks to everyone for info and comments in this thread.

A very prudent plan and whatever decision you make , good luck !

I wish we would have done a better job of research , inspection and exercised more caution before committing to the purchase of our trailer but I listened to all the hype .
If we had to do it over again the outcome would probably be different ,and less financially painfull .

[Olddog]

Seems to be a lot of positives and negatives about the Escape Trailers. Being a potential purchaser of an E21 I would like to know current Escape owners overall opinion of their trailers. Not saying I would be buying a "Pig in a Poke" by any means. Just want honest answers so the wife and I can make a decision. The investment is something we want to be comfortable with.

[MyronL]

Olddog, I think a thorough reading of all the varied posts on this forum should help mightily with your request, giving you a true feel for what you may or may not be committing to. It's really all there, what we love, what we hate. Of course, it could take weeks to get there.

For me, bottom line was it had to be solidly made, water proof, reliable, easy to maintain, easy to tow just about anywhere, wide enough for me to sleep in, tall enough for me to stand in, (good luck with that) and affordable. Seven out of eight ain't bad.

[azjack]

Check to see how many returning customers.
Azjack with our third

[sallemann]

Originally Posted by Olddog

Seems to be a lot of positives and negatives about the Escape Trailers. Being a potential purchaser of an E21 I would like to know current Escape owners overall opinion of their trailers. Not saying I would be buying a "Pig in a Poke" by any means. Just want honest answers so the wife and I can make a decision. The investment is something we want to be comfortable with.

We've had two Escapes, and will be picking up our 3rd in September. We've had issues, but nothing major. And Escape has stepped up every time. We have no hesitation about doing business with Escape again based on our past experiences and quality of the trailers.



I'm hoping the experience with our upcoming 2019 21 will be as satisfactory given the new corporate structure.

[Olddog]

I have read numerous posts relating to the Escapes.
Sounds like the majority of owners are pleased with their purchases. Thank each of you for your comments and direction.

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by Olddog

Seems to be a lot of positives and negatives about the Escape Trailers. Being a potential purchaser of an E21 I would like to know current Escape owners overall opinion of their trailers. Not saying I would be buying a "Pig in a Poke" by any means. Just want honest answers so the wife and I can make a decision. The investment is something we want to be comfortable with.

There are actually lots of positives along with a few negatives as you can see bu posts on this thread and throughout the forum history. As others mentioned many do not post the positives other than as a response to something as nobody ever complains about the good things. Whenever somebody does have a negative issue they are more likely to post, partially from frustration but most often to find help from all the great supporters of this site to fix the problem.

As mentioned a few times over the years, for the most part everything has been great with a few minor issues that were easy to fix, window seal go on the bath window, A/C fail early on, and bad brakes. All these things were caused by suppliers to Escape, not themselves, but in the window and brake issue they supplied what I needed to repair at no cost.

I have received messages from 7 members about being very frustrated about this whole thread, with a couple who did post a strong positive response, but the rest are afraid to post as many have told me they were in the past too, because they don't want to deal with the accusations of being pom pom wavers. Me, I get that a bunch too, but I am confident in where I come from so just don't let it bother me bad.

Go to any rally where there are lots of Escapes and actually talk to owners and while many have had a couple small issues, for the most part they almost all love their trailers and are happy with the purchase. Many of these, like myself, have bought more than one Escape knowing what they do.

Even with the new ownership there is no reason that production will not continue to be great for the most part, and hopefully they can do the right things on the front end office stuff to. I would not hesitate to order an Escape again if I wanted a different trailer, though very happy with what I got.

[MikeS]

Originally Posted by Olddog

Seems to be a lot of positives and negatives about the Escape Trailers. Being a potential purchaser of an E21 I would like to know current Escape owners overall opinion of their trailers. Not saying I would be buying a "Pig in a Poke" by any means. Just want honest answers so the wife and I can make a decision. The investment is something we want to be comfortable with.

No RV is perfect and sooner or later you will have a problem. Potential owners of any RV need to accept that.

Beyond that, the simplest answer I can give is if we had to do it over at this point in our life, we would again purchase a new Escape 5.0 TA, just like we did last year.

[cpaharley2008]

Originally Posted by azjack

Check to see how many returning customers.
Azjack with our third

Four for us.....

[Jim Bennett]

As a comparison to issues posted in this thread, good friends of mine bought a new 37' Thor Aria that cost as much as 5-6 loaded Escape trailers. Not a unit for me, but it looks fantastic, lots of great features, and they love it for their camping style. They built up a great company from scratch and earned the right to have it. Good for them.

They however have come up with a whole myriad of problems with it and the construction of [arts it, from solar, blinds, appliances, and a few other built in features. These things are either not working right, or have some bad qualities.

They talked to Thor a lot about repairs, and Thor never backed away from their responsibility, but as they bought the unit in the US it would be tough to find an RV maintenance company that either would finish it, or be able to easily access the parts needed here in Calgary. It could be a real long drawn out process.

They decided to drive it to the factory near Chicago where it was produced in order to have fast work done with great access to the parts needed. They could stay evenings at the plant in their motorhome. Their work was to take less than a week to finish and our friends just decided to make a holiday of it as they had been super busy with work.

Well, after a few days they discovered that staying in the plants parking area was not all that great, plus the repairs were taking much longer than the week. A few replacement parts were not matching to existing and they were having to rebuild a few things. Anyway, my friends could not take the time to just hang around their room and Chicago, though they did have a vehicle they towed to drive. They ended up flying back home to do some work and will fly back again next week to pick up the motorhome and their SUV.

They are great folks and taking this all reasonably well, but the cost to get these warranty repairs done have been extremely high, which to them is as frustrating as all the time wasted to do so. They did get some time to do fun stuff, but did get a lot of boring time added in too, plus it has greatly affected their available time to do stuff.

This just goes to show that even the more expensive top end RVs can have troubles as well. In this case their costs probably exceed that to an Escape owner by many, many times.

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Four for us.....

While two worked for me as the 19 was a new unit, BUT then the move to the 5.0TA was such a good thing to do, I am done...... I hope.

[sclifrickson]

Originally Posted by Olddog

Seems to be a lot of positives and negatives about the Escape Trailers. Being a potential purchaser of an E21 I would like to know current Escape owners overall opinion of their trailers. Not saying I would be buying a "Pig in a Poke" by any means. Just want honest answers so the wife and I can make a decision. The investment is something we want to be comfortable with.

Escape has deliberately built their business on the principles of building the best trailers - of their type - that they can, and by providing the best customer support that they are able. This doesn’t mean they are 100% perfect every time. But they have always worked to ever improve their product as they go, which is why there are little changes all the time, and why they don’t do static “model years”. They have a long track record of stepping up to take care of their customers when there are issues, and this forum is full of examples of this. My own stories are buried in here as well.

Their business model drew me to Escape as much as their product. How a business takes care of their customers is every bit as important to me as the product itself. If a business makes a superior product but blows off their customers, I stay away.

A satisfied customer is likely to tell one person about their purchasing experience. A dissatisfied customer typically tells nine. Read through this forum and count the numbers and then do the math. Escape has a good track record.

-Scott, two-time Escape owner

[Donna D.]

I keep thinking about Reace and his travels across the United States to repair ONE split waterline in the bathrooms of the new 21' trailers in 2017. Something he didn't have to do. It would have been dollars cheaper to cover under the warranty. Instead he fixed the waterlines himself and used the repair to talk to owners. Tell me ONE other owner, of any trailer company that would have done the same... just one.

While Reace and Tammy are no longer majority owners in ETI, Reace is the Director of Operations and I would bet he's still very much concerned about owners liking their trailers and the reputation of ETI that he and Tammy worked so very hard to build.

For others that are unaware, here's a synopsis of that trip: Where’s [Waldo] Reace? | RVwest

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

As a comparison to issues posted in this thread, good friends of mine bought a new 37' Thor Aria that cost as much as 5-6 loaded Escape trailers. Not a unit for me, but it looks fantastic, lots of great features, and they love it for their camping style. They built up a great company from scratch and earned the right to have it. Good for them.

They however have come up with a whole myriad of problems with it and the construction of [arts it, from solar, blinds, appliances, and a few other built in features. These things are either not working right, or have some bad qualities.

They talked to Thor a lot about repairs, and Thor never backed away from their responsibility, but as they bought the unit in the US it would be tough to find an RV maintenance company that either would finish it, or be able to easily access the parts needed here in Calgary. It could be a real long drawn out process.

They decided to drive it to the factory near Chicago where it was produced in order to have fast work done with great access to the parts needed. They could stay evenings at the plant in their motorhome. Their work was to take less than a week to finish and our friends just decided to make a holiday of it as they had been super busy with work.

Well, after a few days they discovered that staying in the plants parking area was not all that great, plus the repairs were taking much longer than the week. A few replacement parts were not matching to existing and they were having to rebuild a few things. Anyway, my friends could not take the time to just hang around their room and Chicago, though they did have a vehicle they towed to drive. They ended up flying back home to do some work and will fly back again next week to pick up the motorhome and their SUV.

They are great folks and taking this all reasonably well, but the cost to get these warranty repairs done have been extremely high, which to them is as frustrating as all the time wasted to do so. They did get some time to do fun stuff, but did get a lot of boring time added in too, plus it has greatly affected their available time to do stuff.

This just goes to show that even the more expensive top end RVs can have troubles as well. In this case their costs probably exceed that to an Escape owner by many, many times.

Jim, I respect your opinion and believe you are not cheerleading but only expressing your honest opinion based on your experiences with Escape
What i have a problem with is when Escape owners have problems / issues with Escape or their trailer and express their frustration /concerns / disappointments a select group of individuals automatically start an attack on the person expressing their honest views.
Stating that since you’ve had no problem with your Escape ,then no problem exists doesn’t solve a thing
When members PM you expressing their fear of posting about their experiences ( Good or Bad) with their Escape then there is something seriously wrong .

[Chama]

We picked up our E21 on January 14, 2019. We are near the end of our 2nd extended trip since pickup and have spent 136 nights in our trailer since pickup. We have towed our E21 over 7500 miles so far this year. On the day we picked-up, we immdediately headed south figuring that we would sort out any problems during a 2 1/2 month trip. We did not stay close to Chilliwack for a few nights "just in case" as others have done.

Here are the problems we discovered in our 136 nights in our trailer: furnace sail switch got clogged with fibers (easy fix-watch video); EMS not properly adjusted (easy fix- Dave emaailed photos of adjustment screw); bolts holding propane tank base plate sheared off likely during construction (more difficult fix- repaired at home in about an hour); TV swing arm installed so as to hold TV slightly off level (unresolved-undecided what to do about this).

We we just lucky? I don't know but that is our experience. I will add that in the six months we were awaiting completion of our E21, I accumulated a lengthy list of defects others reported shortly after delivery of their trailers. I sent that list to Escape and asked that those items be checked on our trailer before delivery. Were they checked by someone? I don't know but we have had a virtually trouble-free 7 months of Escape ownership. Knock on wood. Maybe we were just lucky? I don't know. I feel badly for those who have not had a similar experience. I feel particularly bad for the person who cancelled an Escape order based on what was read in this thread on this forum.

[Oldtimer]

Glad you stayed Steve and agreee with your statement above. Keep on trolling: