WE did a factory delivery on our new Monaco in June. The was a charge for it, but it was offset by the delivery charges you would normally pay for having the RV delivered.
We spent the night before delivery in our old RV at the Monaco Service Center in Harrisburg, OR. They have water and eletric hookups for 40-50 RVs anda number of additional dry camping spots. This place is also referred to as "Camp Monaco."
The next morning the Monaco tech met us at our RV and took us to the new coach and went over all the systems, followed by about a 20 mile shakedown run. We found a number of minor issues, most of which were fixed immediately. We then moved our stuff into the new RV and spent the night at "Camp Monaco."
The following day, we reported a few more issues that we found overnight to the tech who immediately started working on them. while he was doing thta, we attended a number of seminars that Monaco offers continuously at the service center including a Ladies Driving Course.
The next morning most of the issues were fixed and we took off to Newport Shores for a few days. On the way home we stopped back at Camp Monaco for a day (two nights) to get an item that had to be custom made.
Would I do factry delivery again? HECK YES! ;D
You asked about buying from the local dealer. I feel that location of the dealer is of minimal importance, far after reputation, accessibility and RV price. There is a vast difference between dealers! The dealer I bought my coach from happened to be my previous dealer, but he was also the cheapest of eight dealers I got quotes from. He was close to my home for my first coach, but he's now 600 miles away from "home." He even picked up my trade-in at the factory!
Also Murphy's Law, 14th Corollary says that you only need service when you're 500 miles away from you dealer anyway!
FWIW, I'm sitting at Camp Monaco right now getting a number of minor, but hairy issues fixed. So far they've had two techs working on the coach for two solid days (the techs change based on the problem, they have a number of specialists here) and will probably continue for most of next week. Most dealer service people would either try to get me to live will the probles, break twice as much as they fix, or take months to fix the problems. That's not meant to be an indictment of the dealer's techs, just the fact that a dealer can't normally get the level of experienced techs that the factory can; most of the techs built coaches for years before going to the service center. We have the best dealer techs I've ever seen in Las Vegas; they used to work at the service center delivering new coaches! But, they are only two people and there's lots of work in Las Vegas and I didn't want to tie them up for weeks.
Hope this helps!
Al