Camping World On Trial: The Dealer That Cannot Stop Getting Sued

If you have ever bought an RV, there is a roughly one in three chance you bought it from Camping World. The company is the largest RV dealer in America. It has hundreds of locations. Its CEO is on television. And in December 2024, the Attorney General of Oregon made it write a check for three and a half million dollars for systematically lying to its customers. The company called the campaign Dare to Compare. Oregon prosecutors called it deception. Camping World is not having a public relations problem. Camping World is the public relations problem.

The Oregon Hammer

On December 16, 2024, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum announced the conclusion of a multi year investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice's Civil Recovery Section. Camping World agreed to a three and a half million dollar settlement. Three million of that went directly to consumer refunds. The remaining five hundred thousand went to the state. The Dare to Compare scheme worked like this. Camping World would advertise a discounted price relative to a so called comparison price. Then the dealer would tack freight charges and prep fees onto the customer's invoice, charges that were already included in the manufacturer's MSRP and should not have been charged again. The state also faulted Camping World for misleading warranty labels using the word "environ" to imply protections that did not exist. The refund window covered every RV purchased in Oregon between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2018. Rosenblum did not hold back in her public statement. "This is not how Oregonians expect or deserve to be treated."

The Charleston Cluster

Charleston, South Carolina is approximately twenty seven hundred miles from Portland, Oregon. The same patterns surface in both places. In March 2025, Live 5 News, the local CBS affiliate, published the first of several investigations into the North Charleston Camping World location. Customer after customer described the same kind of experience. Dorothy Simms and Shanna Brogdon bought a used camper in November 2024. "They told us so many lies once they delivered the camper." Jason and Carol Santore sold everything they owned for an RV based Airbnb business model and ended up with a defective trailer they returned for which they say they were never compensated. Carol Santore on camera: "It drained all of our wallets literally. It took every dime that we had."

A Charleston consumer attorney named Josh Slavin told Live 5 News in early 2025 that he was managing approximately eight pending cases against the same Camping World location and receiving roughly one new call per week. He continued to take calls through 2026. In May 2026, Live 5 News followed up with the headline "New lawsuits keep coming against North Charleston Camping World." One of Slavin's clients had early onset dementia. The RV sat on Camping World's lot for over a year while she lost the cognitive years that mattered most. Slavin on camera: "She's lost a year or two of her last maybe five years to this RV being in the dealer's lot waiting to be fixed."

The Bartlett Case

A Texas owner named Darlene Bartlett documented her Camping World experience publicly on PissedConsumer with email correspondence and timeline. She bought her RV new on February 24, 2024. Warranty work began in December 2024, with parts delays bouncing the unit between Camping World locations in Mesquite, Sherman, and Denton. Camping World damaged the RV during the repair attempts. Then came the buyout negotiation. The first offer was fifty nine thousand dollars. Then it dropped to forty four thousand. Camping World justified the reduction by citing depreciation. The depreciation had occurred during Camping World's own months of delays and damage.

What happened next is the part of the story that should make you angry. Camping World demanded that Bartlett sign a non disclosure agreement and delete her social media posts about the experience before they would release the unit back to her. Bartlett believed the unit was a fire hazard. Camping World wanted it back on the road with her signature on silence about the cause. That is not a dealer trying to make a customer whole. That is a dealer using contractual machinery to manage public exposure to a defective product. The NDA demand is the tell. It tells you the dealer believes the public would be alarmed if they knew the underlying facts.

The Naoum Camp Out

Alex Naoum dropped his travel trailer at a North Carolina Camping World for repairs in April. Months later he was still waiting. Naoum stopped waiting and started showing up. He set up his office at the dealer. He worked from the dealer's parking lot. He documented the experience. The dealer cited parts delays. Camping World damaged his awning while the unit was in their possession. WITN-TV and RV Lifestyle both covered the story. This is what hostage taking looks like in 2026 in the RV industry. Dealers hold units. Owners pay loans on units they cannot use. Insurance keeps running. Loan interest keeps compounding. The dealer faces no clock.

The Pattern

Oregon. South Carolina. North Carolina. Texas. The pattern is consistent across thousands of miles and different state regulatory regimes. Deceptive pricing. Repair backlogs measured in months. Damage caused during repair attempts. Lowball buyouts that cite depreciation the dealer caused. NDA demands as a condition of release. This is not a series of bad locations run by bad managers. This is the operating procedure of a national company. A separate but related point: Lazydays RV, a competitor and the named dealer in the Gorecki v. Grand Design case, settled with NHTSA in May 2022 for a civil penalty over delivering vehicles with open recalls. The misconduct that draws regulatory action is not unique to Camping World. It is the standard.

What Marcus Lemonis Has to Say

Marcus Lemonis is the CEO of Camping World. He hosts a CNBC show. He is active on social media. He has made his persona a brand asset. If Mr. Lemonis or anyone at Camping World would like to respond to anything in this piece on the record, this byline accepts email at mike at fixmyrv dot ai. I will publish unedited responses.

What To Do If You Are A Victim

Document everything in writing. Preserve every email, every text message, every repair order, every estimate, every offer. File a complaint with your state Attorney General. If there is a safety issue with the vehicle, file with NHTSA at nhtsa dot gov. Find an attorney who actually takes RV cases. The Defense Kit I built for this series includes the attorney directory and the documentation playbook.

Next Week

Part six closes the series. The Canadian Vacuum. Canada has no lemon law. The voluntary arbitration system that protects Canadian car buyers does not cover RVs. Canadians have less recourse than even McAuley did. That story has not been told. Next week.