Many readers have asked about the outcome of our
failed RV trip. In the interest of telling the end of the story, I'll give a brief summary here. Then I'm moving on to better things!
We were stranded in Omaha for two nights. When it became clear that
Cruise America was not going to help us, we took matters into our own hands. There was no way we were getting back into their unsafe RV, so we rented an SUV to take us and our gear home.
The financial outcome was this:
Cruise America refunded the money we spent to rent their unsafe RV but that's it. In order to get our money back, we had to sign a form that said we weren't entitled to any additional money. They didn't pay for the SUV rental, for the hotels we stayed in when we were broken down, for the food that went bad in the RV when we were in hotels, for the restaurants we had to eat in instead of eating our own food, or for the $130.00 in overages we paid on our cell phones to talk to them (My husband was on hold with them for 73 minutes one of the times...).
Most importantly, they didn't really try to make up for how poorly we were treated. The person who finally refunded our money apologized for what happened to our family but her few words hardly make up for days of mistreatment. She was the only person from Cruise America who ever expressed even the tiniest bit of concern for our family.
Yes, we probably could have sued them and won, but that would mean they'd have all of our rental money in their bank account while we fought it. And frankly, we never want to interact with Cruise America again. I stick by my original statement:
NEVER Rent an RV from Cruise America. If you haven't read my original post, please do, and spread the word.
And now, here's a photo collection to show how we made lemonade out of the rotten lemons we got. When things get tough in your life, I hope you'll be able to make a little lemonade, too.
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| My "brother" in Sac City, IA (Filipino host brother) |
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| LEGO Land Discovery Center, Kansas City |
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| National WW1 Museum, Kansas City, MO |
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| Toasting Marshmallows, Horse Cave, KY |
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| Diamond Caverns, Kentucky |
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| More spelunking! |
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| We stayed with two of our favorite people in the world. (MD) |
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| "Fanny" by Chuck Close, National Gallery. Made entirely with fingerprints. |
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| I swear they posed that way all on their own! |
We never made it to the southwest and most of these stops were not in our original plan. Despite a very rough beginning, we had fun and made memories during our two week trip home from Omaha.
When have you had to make the best of a bad situation? How did you "make lemonade?"
