November
18, 2005
James N. Perdue
Members of the Alfa See Ya Forums on Yahoo’s web pages
Re: Your November 1, 2005 Letter to Alfa
Leisure, Inc.
Gentlepersons:
We are in receipt of your November 1, 2005 correspondence
advising us of your concerns regarding your Alfa Leisure, Inc. motorhomes,
including primarily the issues relating to (1) the living room slide out motor
and (2) air intrusion. Thank you for
taking the time to put your thoughts in writing and to share with us your
sincere concerns.
We at Alfa are always looking for ways to improve our
products and customer service. We
absolutely welcome your input and appreciate the time you have devoted, and the
enthusiasm you have shown, in developing the Yahoo user groups and sharing
information about your experiences as Alfa owners.
We understand how important your Alfa motorhome is to each
of you, especially those who are full-timers.
The design, features and components of an Alfa motorhome make it a great
vehicle for full-time use. We hope that
by now you have realized that the people here at Alfa truly care about you, our
customers, and understand the importance of our relationship with each of you. Because of this, we always strive for consistency,
quality and constant improvement as we develop, build and service our
recreational vehicle products.
We have implemented a customer service and warranty system
that allows us to track the warranty claims relating to our products
nationwide. This system is obviously
more “real time” and detailed than any other database relating to Alfa
products. We use this information to
assist our customers in getting repairs performed promptly. It also permits us to identify problems,
seek solutions and transmit the information to our production and design team
to incorporate into our new units.
Against this backdrop, we would like to address the issues
you have raised in your letter.
1.
Living Room Slide Out Motors
Alfa was made aware of this problem long before your
November letter and has taken extensive steps to investigate it, determine a
cause and develop a response. Through our warranty system, Alfa identified the
problem with slide out motors beginning around June 2004. It appeared that the problem coaches were in
serial order, often grouped together in batches. We believe that in most cases the problem originated with a
defective component in the slide room motors that we received from our
supplier. One of the reasons for many
of the repeat repair attempts was that we were replacing defective motors with
new motors that had the same defect. We
worked with our supplier to identify the cause and it now appears that the
issue has been resolved. As a result of
their investigation, Alfa technical personnel also found other factors that
might contribute to failures. This led
Alfa to develop and publish detailed service bulletins for its dealers and
service personnel relating to slideout motor failures. As early as June 2004, Alfa published a
service bulletin relating to slideout failures in general. This was followed in November of 2004 with a
more detailed service bulletin relating specifically to slideout motor failures
and proper diagnosis and repair of this problem.
At this point, we believe that the problem has been
adequately reviewed and addressed. If
any of your members has experienced this problem and feels that it has not been
adequately addressed, we encourage them to contact Alfa’s Customer Service and
Warranty Department so that we can assess the situation and work to resolve the
issue. You should contact either Danny
Hetzler, our Director of Customer Service and Warranty, at (800) 373-3372, ext.
156, or Steven King, our Warranty Manager, at ext. 259, and they will gladly
work to address this concern.
2.
Air Intrusion And Sealing
You
next raise the issue of air and moisture infiltration in Alfa motorhomes. Of course, this is an inherent issue with
any motorhome (since only submarines and high-altitude aircraft are truly water
and air tight vehicles). Indeed, by
design a certain amount of airflow must exist to make the motorhome livable
(and not a stifling sweatbox filled with condensation). Nevertheless, as early as May or June 2004,
Alfa became aware that certain of its motorhomes were experiencing air
infiltration-related issues that we believed were beyond the norm. Through input from our customers and our
warranty system, Alfa was able to identify the problem so that our technical
staff could begin working on a practical solution. These efforts resulted in Alfa’s developing and publishing a
detailed service bulletin in July 2004 that was directed at identifying and
correcting the problem. Alfa has also
incorporated its findings into its current production processes.
Additionally,
Alfa is now using three fog machines in various parts of its motorhome plant to
check for air leaks and proper sealing at the dash penetrations, air
conditioner supply and return ducts. We
are also documenting the results of this testing and any necessary adjustments
or repairs in the production line.
We
believe that we have adequately reviewed and addressed the infiltration
concern. Again, if any of your members
has experienced symptoms which they believe are related to air infiltration and
feels that it has not been adequately addressed, we encourage them to contact
Alfa’s Customer Service and Warranty Department so that we can assess the
situation and work to resolve the issue.
3.
Quality Control Procedures
You
have suggested improving our quality control and testing. We agree with you that these are vitally
important concerns for our business and our relationships with our
customers. Because we believe in
quality, we have implemented many changes and improvements at Alfa in this
regard. To begin with, Alfa’s Quality
Department constantly reviews its own procedures and is working to drive
quality checks into each department of Alfa’s production facilities. We have implemented significantly longer
test drives of our units and more detailed checklists to insure that we catch
and address problems before our motorhomes ship to our dealers. We also have developed communication and
data sharing processes between our quality, production and customer service
departments so that we can more quickly identify and correct problems that
arise.
In
the eighteen months, Alfa has also made changes to our management team, with
the direct intent of improving the quality of our products and the service we
provide to our dealers and customers.
We have a new President, Larry Jones, who has brought to Alfa his
experience in working for companies like General Motors and Allied Signal. He has been steadily and successfully
improving our production techniques and processes, with quality and safety as
our primary goals. Since the time when
most of your members’ motorhomes were originally built, we have brought new
production managers into both our motorhome and fifth wheel plants. These gentlemen report directly to Larry
Jones and interface with Alfa’s entire leadership team on a regular basis to
monitor our company’s performance and the quality of the recreational vehicles.
Overall, we can assure you that over the past eighteen
months we have redoubled our efforts as a company to improve the design and
overall quality of all our products.
From what we have seen thus far, our efforts are paying off and our
products are better than ever. Of
course, we have also stood behind the products we have built and sold. We offered each of your members a limited
manufacturer’s warranty and went so far as to purchase a four-year service plan
for every unit we sold. We have always
done our best to honor our warranty and to repair warranted problems as they
developed and were reported to us. We
believe that quality extends to every area of our company, including our
customer service and warranty department, where we support the people who have
invested in our products.
4.
Customer Service Information Sharing
Lastly, you request that Alfa consider assigning someone
from its management team to become an active member of your Yahoo discussion
group. Alfa has decided that the best
approach is to develop its own, improved website and to continue to use its
established customer service procedures to best address customer concerns. This approach assures that all Alfa
customers receive a reasonable and fair level of attention and service. We can assure you that our management team
is very involved in monitoring the performance of our customer service and
warranty division. Moreover, our
warranty system collects nationwide data on service and repairs, which is then
communicated to our quality, production and product development departments so
as to constantly improve upon our products’ performance, livability and
durability.
We are presently developing a new Alfa website that will
provide Alfa owners and potential owners with a wealth of information about our
products. We are expecting to have the
new site up in the first quarter of next Year.
In closing, we thank you for your concern and for the
support and loyalty you have demonstrated toward our company and its
products. We hear you and have taken
your concerns to heart (even before you raised them in your letter!!). For over 30 years, our company has dedicated
itself to building quality homes for our customers. It is a never-ending process of constant review and
improvement. We have made our share of
mistakes, to be sure, but we have never shied away from trying to make things
right whenever we could. It has always
been the Alfa way to build its products well and to stand behind them. We intend to keep following this approach
and to be vigilant in our efforts to build quality products.
Very truly yours,
____________________________ _____________________________
Johnnie R. Crean Larry
Jones
Founder, CEO President
Alfa Leisure, Inc. Alfa
Leisure, Inc.
____________________________ _____________________________
Michael S. Kelly John
Nelson
Vice President, General Counsel Director of Quality
National Sales Administrator Alfa Leisure, Inc.
Alfa Leisure, Inc.
____________________________ _____________________________
Tom Holder Sal Flores
Director of Quality Assurance/Audit Plant Manager - Motorhomes
Alfa Leisure, Inc. Alfa
Leisure, Inc.
____________________________ _____________________________
Ron Brown Art
Rivard
Director of Engineering and Director of Sales
Product Development Alfa
Leisure, Inc.
Alfa Leisure, Inc.
____________________________ _____________________________
Danny Hetzler Steven
King
Director of Customer Service/Warranty Warranty Manager
Alfa Leisure, Inc. Alfa
Leisure, Inc.
____________________________
Ove Ellingsen
Director of Purchasing
Alfa Leisure, Inc.
MSK:wp\11-18-05
Crean to Perdue.doc