RV Parts Scam Site?

When you see something for sale for 1/4 the normal price, beware!

Mark wants to replace the microwave in the van with a combination microwave, convection oven, and air fryer.  I was looking at microwaves at Walmart and the cheapest ones are $65.  I remember only a few years ago, they were selling for the startlingly low price of $25.  But someone told me there is now a "microwave shortage" (read: price gouging). Oddly enough, there were several dozen stacked up at Walmart.  So much for the shortage!

And yes, they had a combination microwave, convection oven, and air fryer for about $225.  And that is for a tabletop model, not a built-in unit with forward venting.

Anyway, we measured the opening and found a Furrion FR77AD microwave that seems to fit our existing opening in the cabinet.  With the mounting bracket (faceplate) it comes to over $400 (!!).  I searched online for cheaper alternatives and found most people were selling them for about the same price.

Then I found this.  Not only was it less, it was a startlingly amount less - less than 1/4 the ordinary sales price!  $87.80 - what an odd number.  Who was "premiumrvparts.com" and why were they selling so cheaply?  Going out of business?  Well, it turns out the domain name is only a few months old, and the "trustmeter" on "scam detector" gives it a 5.7 - a very low score.  I look at other products on their page and see that everything is selling for a quarter or less of ordinary retail prices. They are fighting inflation!

Notably missing is an address or phone number for the company.  If it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, and sounds like a scam - it even tastes like one! - it probably is one,  If these prices were real, someone could make a lot of money arbitraging these items on eBay and then having them shipped directly from this (apparently nonexistent) company.

And I was inclined to get reeled in, too.  I was looking for a Genie, and Genies can be deceiving.  There it was, like a mirage in the desert - a microwave combo that would fit the opening, cost less than a cheap tabletop model!  Free shipping to boot!  But Genies lie - there are no Casita trailers for $1957 or Harley Davidsons for $1500 - as you see (or used to see) all the time on Craigslist.

But why such penny-ante cons?  Sure, they can cheat me out of $87.50 but is it worth the hassle?  On the other hand, they probably pasted the code from some other RV parts site, and it took some third-world computer genius less and a day to set up the site.  And once shut down, a matter of minutes to move the site to a new domain and start all over again.  In the meantime, they can sell credit card numbers on the side.

UPDATE:  I skimmed the site and saw dozens of products for sale for less than 1/4 of retail price (and I know pricing in the RV world!).  E-Trailer lists the same items for far more money, often by a factor of four or more.  They also put an "E-Trailer" logo hidden in all of their product pictures.  Hey, guess what?  Guess whose logo appears on the pages of "premiumrvparts.com"?  Yup, the photos were "scraped" from E-Trailer.  

I will have to revisit that site in a few months and see if they are still around.  I am guessing that once they "sell" a few items, they will vanish like the wind.

UPDATE:  Apparently my suspicions were correct.  The same site is resurrected from time to time under different names, such as "getrvparts.com" or the like.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

UPDATE:  A message appears in my SPAM box today from "mail@order.xinwushop.xyz" offering an additional 20% off on the microwave combo with free shipping!  Only five bucks more than the cheapest model from WalMart!

Oops! Looks like you left something behind

Hi Robert Bell,

We noticed that you added some great items to your cart but didn’t complete your purchase. If you got distracted or had any trouble, no worries—we saved everything for you.

To make it even better, here’s a little thank-you from us: 20% OFF your order if you complete it by 2025-09-28.

Subtotal	USD 87.80
Discount (20% OFF)	− USD17.56
Total	USD 70.24

Wow!  What a deal!  Sounds too good to be true! (It is!).

UPDATE:  Same e-mail, a few hours later, this time from "order@order.ordershops.xyz"

The xyz domain is cursed!

New Scams?

You have to be vigilant with money, even if it isn't fun to do!

I bought some parts for the new camper today - a thermostat kit for the hot water heater.  The heater works great with only one problem - it won't shut off.  There is no temperature adjustment on this model, and with an aluminum tank, no zinc required, either.  But two "thermostats" (disc  type temperature switches) are provided, one to cut off at 60 degrees (C) for hot water, and the other to shut it down at 80 degrees (C) as a safety.  Neither are working.

I used Amazon, as when I checked eBay, they had the same kit for $5 more, no doubt an attempt at arbitrage.  The parts kit was cheap - only $14.  Anyway, the usual Amazon "soft" scams at checkout - you want to sign up for prime?  Oh, and we default to paid shipping, even if free shipping is available.  The usual Amazon soft scams.  But credit to them, they don't charge your credit card until they ship and they have a generous return policy and usually deliver the goods.

We took the Hamster in to town to get groceries.  We stopped to wash it and I noticed that after a decade, the floor mats were looking a little shabby.  I was scrolling online while we waited for tacos at our favorite Mexican dive, and saw a set for $50, factory OEM.  I clicked on it and they offered four levels of shipping, starting at about $11 and going up to $117 (!!).  I clicked on $11 and it sent me to PayPal to pay.  "Congratulations!  Your charge for $167 went through!"  WTF??

I checked the "invoice" and sure enough, they upgraded me to overnight shipping without me asking.  Plus, they added "Route Package Protection" for $1.95 (without asking) which I wrote about before.  Basically, "Route" just sends you the same tracking information that USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. will send you for free.

UPDATE:  The "Route" charge is automatically entered and you have to uncheck a box to make it go away.  Easy to do on a computer, but on my phone, the invoice page conveniently appears half off the screen, so you don't see this check box.  Convenient - for who?

So I try to cancel the order, but there is no cancel link, just a phone number, and they close at 4:30 (!!).  Looks like I will have to dispute the charge.  Never do business with a company that only accepts PayPal.  Or uses "Route."

Anyway, I felt beaten down at this point.  So off to Walmart "Ghetto Gourmet" (Neighborhood Market) to restock the house after being gone for several months.  Mark gets food, I get beverages, and we check out separately.  I used to self-serve scanner and it is acting up.  I won't take my credit card unless I swipe it.  It checks out and I pull a suspiciously long receipt out of the machine.  I am charged over $300 for beer and wine (mine) and ham and bacon and $150 worth of groceries (not mine!).

I call over the cashier and show her my cart - no ham, no bacon.  What gives?  Well, the people ahead of me at scanner #9 rang up about $150 in groceries and when their card didn't read (as mine didn't) they went over to customer service.  Somehow, the charge then went through - on my credit card!  Is this a new scam to get other people to pay for your groceries?  I dunno.

Anyway, the nice cashier, who was going off shift and was looking forward to going home, had to manually enter each item code and issue a credit for about $150.  What a pain in the butt.  Meanwhile, the manager is on the phone to corporate trying to figure out what happened.

It makes me wonder if this hasn't happened before, and perhaps on purpose.  When I approached the scanner, it said "Enter your phone number or start scanning to begin."   There was no listing of $150 of groceries on the screen. By the way, whose bright idea was it to have recently scanned items appear at the TOP of the screen?   In a cash register, the last item scanned appears at the bottom of the register tape, not the top.  Be consistent, people!  And use a larger screen that doesn't require scrolling down after you've scanned five items!  Sheesh!

Anyway, it is all fixed, I guess.  But it made me realize how important it is to get receipts and to look at them.  If I had merely stuffed the receipt in my pocket and went home, it would have been a lot harder to prove I was overcharged.

I was at a gas station once and the clerk asked (nicely) why baby boomers always ask for receipts.  I told her I keep receipts so if I am ever accused of murder, I have a paper-trail to prove I was out of town that day.  Just kidding.  But it pays to keep those bits of paper, particularly when you have to return something.  And retailers are getting more and more strict about "no receipt, no refund."

Sorry not to post more often, but it is hard when traveling to type on a laptop in a cafe with sketchy wi-fi.  Plus I don't have the energy I used to have.  Off to the doctor tomorrow and then Mayo next week.  Meanwhile, Mark is having new teeth installed.  Getting old isn't as fun as it looks!

Fail-Safe

If cars were made like RVs, we would all be taking the train to work!

Yes, I am still alive, but busy with travel and such.  Prior to our Spain trip, we went to Ocala, Florida to an RV show to check out van campers.  We were appalled by what we saw.  One camper had an open-able "pop-out" window located behind the sliding door.   If you slid open the heavy steel sliding door, it would instantly demolish the open window into a shower of glass fragments.  Poor design!

I asked the salesman about this, and he replied, "There is a sticker next to the window reminding you to close the window before opening the door."    Of course, elderly owners and their spasmodic grandchildren would never forget this simple precaution - right?

Think about it - would you buy a car or SUV or minivan where if you "forgot" to close the window in the back door, it would be instantly demolished when you open a front door?  Of course, not.  There would be a huge hue and cry, demands for a recall, and lawsuits galore.   But in the RV world, a sticker saying "do not press!" located next to the "self destruct" button is deemed an adequate precaution.

There are other, less perilous examples.  The van we rented in Spain had a high-tech "Truma" hot water and furnace system that ran on bottle gas.  The vent for the furnace was beneath one of the open-able windows.  Next to the window was a sticker advising you to close the window before running the furnace, lest carbon monoxide fill the coach and kill everyone inside.

Our European friends, not being complete blithering idiots like their American cousins, also installed an interlock switch so that if the window was opened, it killed power to the furnace.  Sadly, if this switch was tripped, a convoluted reset procedure was required.  What puzzled me was why they didn't merely relocate the furnace to another location in the van where there were no windows.  There was, after all, a huge compartment in the back.

She sure is pretty, though!

Our "new" (10-year-old) Mercedes/ERA/Winnebago "touring coach" has some similar foobars.  Winnebago spent a ton of money painting the black bumpers and rub strips (and wheel arches) to match the silver paint job - and spend even more installing decorative stainless trim. They installed chrome-plated aluminum rims, but the chrome plating all wore off.  Nice looking, but for my dollar, I would rather they spent it on better construction and layout. And this is a good quality coach, too.

With only 18,000 miles on the clock now, the "Mercedes" part seems to be working well, although I swore I would never own an old German car again.   German cars, like any car, depreciate over time, and as they age, repairs become more often and more expensive.  Parts cost more and finding talent who won't make things worse is always problematic.  There is a "sweet spot" of ownership, where a substantial part of depreciation has already taken place, but before the car depreciates down to nothing, as they tend to do around the 20-year mark.  You can't give away an old 7-series BMW with six digits on the odometer and a host of broken toys, a check engine light and the accompanying litany of OBD-II P-codes.  Only a dedicated BMW mechanic or nut would buy such a thing.

And I swore I would never be that nut! (again!)

But the old gal gets 17-19 mpg and seems to run like a tank - so far.  But some RV conversion issues crop up.  For example. the Winnebago people installed swivel bases on the front seats, so you can turn those seats facing backward and form a conversation pit (not while driving! - again, a sticker!).  Problem is, modern airbag SRS-equipped cars have seat switches to determine whether you put on your seat belt, whether you are in your seat, and some even have small explosive devices to cinch your seat belt tight in the event of a crash.

With our E36's (1997 BMW 328iC), it was a common occurrence to get an "airbag light" after someone rode in the back seat.  The wiring harnesses for the front seat were loosely attached under the seat, and rear seat passengers would kick the wires, causing them to briefly become unplugged.  If continuity is lost, even for a millisecond, the SRS computer kicks out an error code and lights the SRS light, which cannot be reset unless you have an SRS reset tool.

Well, sure as shit, the van pops the SRS light and the instrument cluster display advises us to take the van to a "workshop" for repairs.  I am envisioning old-world craftsmen and cuckoo-clocks here.  This went off while Mr. See was driving, putting him in a panic.  I told him to relax - it was likely a seat switch.  And sure enough, that evening, Mr. See rotated the driver's seat and said, "what's this loose wire?"  The seatbel switch wire was chopped clean off - sliced by the seat swivel as cleanly as by guillotine.  The wire was just hanging there, waiting to be chopped - not secured properly or armored with a corrugated wire loom.  Again, people wouldn't put up with this in cars, right?  Although I guess I put up with it for a decade or so with my BMWs.  But I have a high threshold of pain.

All that being said, we love "Aunt Helga" and hope she gives us many miles of enjoyment.  But like with any RV, she has a continual punch list of things that need fixing, adjustment, or re-working.  But that's RVing for you.  Read the stickers!

Screen Time

I have been trying to spend less time looking at  screens.

Thanks for the kind e-mails, they really cheer me up!  I have not posted in a long while for various reasons.  We've been busy with health appointments for starters.  Also, it seemed that it would be easier to drive a van camper (after renting one in Spain for over a month) so we went and bought one.  A 2015 Winnebago ERA Touring Coach model 170A on a Mercedes 3500 Sprinter chassis.  Only 17,000 miles in ten years, serviced at the Mercedes dealer annually.  Of course, such little use presents its own problems, notably with dried seals and such.  But the chassis part seems indomitable - so far.  And yes, it came with new tires.

First stop: Mistletoe State Park, near Augusta!

So, here we are in the Poconos, and I am finding it less and less attractive to look at my phone or to go on the computer.  Google searches return only incorrect or plainly wrong AI responses - or worse, ads for things they think I want to buy.  The "News" - particularly the once-storied Washington Post and New York Times seem to be all click-bait and rage-bait.  Might as well click on a Taboola feed story!  Social media is flooded with SPAM and trolls.  The lowest common denominator is now the norm.  Pseudo-science and conspiracy theories are bandied about as gospel and those who try to say otherwise are attacked.

Why bother?  There is no "there" there.

Others are fascinated.  Juan loves his tick-tock and not just for the porn content.  His phone sounds like a cacophony of noises and weird music as each short video plays.  Mark and I spent a considerable sum buying him iBuds, but he never uses them.  The other day, I heard the similar sounds coming from Mark's phone.  We had a discussion about that.

There is little to be gathered online anymore, other than the weather and maybe a few headlines (most of which are clickbait or ragebait as noted).  Even e-mails and texts are SPAN and junk.  I find myself not looking at the phone for days.  Juan looks at it constantly, as I assume most Americans do - based on the erratic drivers we pass, which you can see texting at 75 MPH in a construction zone.

In a way, it is like when I contracted the Norovirus on the Carnival Valor.  Three weeks of explosive diarrhea and the pounds just melt away!   My appetite for food disappeared overnight - for the first time in my life! I lost 20 pounds in two weeks.

Similarly, my "appetite" for screen time has shrunk to nearly zero.  I am just not hungry for click-bait news or garbage postings on social media.  It just isn't worth the time and effort, for the ever-diminishing returns involved.

Well, that and we've been busy.  The new camper has seen some neglect, or worse, half-assed attempts at repairs by the late owner.  The $8 rubber coupling on the toilet flange was dried out, so Dad decided to use 20 lbs. of spray foam to "fix" it.  PSA: Spray foam is NOT a sealant!  In fact, it is pretty useless for anything.  Just leave it on the shelf.  And never hire a contractor who has half-used cans of spray foam rolling around in the back of his pickup truck.  Not only is it not a sealant, it absorbes water like a sponge.

Some of the poop-soaked spray foam, which came out in chunks.  Ugh!

So, after gouging away 20 lbs of poop-soaked spray foam from around the toilet flange (after crawling under the coach!) I was able to remove the offending rubber sleeve and replace it with one from Lowe's for eight bucks.   What would have been a ten minute job became a two-hour long nightmare in the 95-degree Georgia heat, thanks to spray foam and Dad/s half-assed previous repair job.

The toilet flange with the spray foam removed and rubber sleeve removed.

Weird thing, while Parkinson's is making it hard for me to walk (and even type!), my dopamine levels seem to boost when I am confronted with a repair problem.  Put a wrench in my hand and the trembling stops right away!  I guess some musicians have this same effect - shaking like a leaf, until they pick up the guitar or sit at the piano and play.

The rubber sleeve, cracked as I expected.

Well, at least that's something!  Maybe I should take up the piano!

The new sleeve - longer and no leaks!

So Mark has a laundry list of things to fix on the new camper - together.   I guess this will keep me busy for a while!

The New Modesty

Granny was way ahead of her time!

You leave the country for a couple of months and all hell breaks loose.  Maybe it is being away for a while that puts new perspectives on things, but it seems some dramatic changes are happening, in social standards, styles, mores, and laws (or lack thereof).

I leave an America where women are wearing thongs or "Daisy Duke" cutoffs, and return to a puritan country where women are wearing "granny dresses."  Even in sin city New Orleans, I see flocks of tourists, with the wives all covered from head-to-toe in ugly, ill-fitting dresses, with puffy sleeves and some sort of embroidered panel covering their boobs. We visit WalMart - the real "heartbeat of America" and racks and racks of granny dresses are on proud display, right up front - your choice of primary colors!  When it makes it to the aisles of WalMart, it is become mainstream.

I mean, I get it - the far-right has ascended into power, but such changes so soon?  So fast?

I suppose it was inevitable.  Over time, women have shorn themselves of more and more clothing and exposed more and more flesh. In the late 1800's even showing your ankles was considered scandalous. By mid-century, dresses were knee-high, off the shoulder, and showing some cleavage was considered the norm.  By the swinging 60s, it was bikinis and cutoffs.  Eventually, there was nothing left to do, but go naked.  And today's "swimsuits" amount to little more than a patch of cloth and a string. Some women argue that they should be allowed to go topless - as the men are already allowed to do.

So it makes sense, in a weird way, that there was nowhere to go but to do a re-set back to ground zero.  The granny dress is "in" and it may be another 100 years before the thong rears its ugly head. Again.

Of course, maybe it is time men tried a little modesty.  Man-boobs are not appealing, even if it is a "norm" for men to go topless.  And shorts don't have to be the default dress code.  Combined with "manspreading" it leaves little to the imagination.  Ugh.

But maybe that is the point - misogyny.  Women must cover up their shame, while men flaunt it for all to see, whether invited or not.

Maybe time for the Muu Muu to make a comeback!

Health Update:  It seems you can't go on a Carnival cruise without getting the Norovirus.  On the mend, I hope! Instead of on the toilet!