I want to thank everyone for the replies. I am scheduled into my sixth repair facility for one last try at getting them repaired. Part of my problems were that we were on the road for the winter and could not leave the rig at a repair facility for a long enough time to get parts after the first or second attempt to repair the rig.
One thing that I have learned from this experience is that I will never buy another RV with Power Gear electronic jacks. All of the replies except for one have been negative toward Power Gear. That one positive reply identified a preventative solution toward one problem, that is excessive rusting of the jacks. To my knowledge that problem is not a problem that I have had. Here are my list of reasons why I don't like Power Gear jacks.
Bad design - If you think about it electronic jacks are really simple to design. All you need to drive the jacks is a way to turn the worm gear up or down with the electronic motor and a way to figure out when the jacks are at the top of the gear and when they are at the bottom of the gear. 95% of my problems are due to a design that only very very experienced technicians can figure out how to work with. I have had 8 to 12 drive/shear pins broken by technicians trying to repair my jacks. The first cause of that difficulty is the strange placement of magnets that determine when the jack is at top and bottom of its play. Only experience can teach how to install these jacks with the magnets correctly installed.
The second difficulty is the control board setup. Again it is non intutive how to set up the system and clearly not for the faint of heart. Again only experience and a large number of calls to Power Gear seem to allow you to do this correctly.
Customer Service - You can not buy parts as a customer from power Gear! They will not identify a supplier to by parts from and have policies to stop customers from buying parts directly. When I was on the road it would have been nice to be able to buy parts and carry them with me till I got to a repair facility that could install them. In addition it takes an excessive amount amount of time to receive parts again making scheduling a repair on the road almost impossible. When we were on the road this winter the longest time we were in one RV park was waiting for Power Gear parts that were incorrectly installed causing more damage than we started out with and requiring again excessive delays to order more parts just to repeat the cycle.
Now lets talk about repair facilities. They will not identify authorized repair facilities. They will shift the problem to manufactures like Fleetwood. Again difficult to deal with on the road. I had repair facilities recommended a state away in the wrong direction.
Lastly telephone support. Again not for customer use. Only for "authorized?" repair technicians!
Jim
