Select Motorhomes Ltd

Well I’ve decided to write a review after the blood has cooled.
Initial impressions were good, no high pressure sales and very friendly.
The van a Burstner aviano was older 2010 I think but was well presented and the test drive went well!
I paid a deposit and waited 2 weeks as it had to be put through the workshop.
On pick up the eml came on 1/2 a mile down the road and I swiftly returned to the showroom the workshop manager and a technician plugged in a code reader, egr they said, just needs a run they said.
I set off again and 100 miles away the eml light came on again. I tried to lock the van to go and get something to eat but couldn’t as the lock was notchy and stiff. Still it had a Thule external lock and I used that to secure the van. I continued on the trip home and pulled into services to have a sleep and locked the door from the inside. I woke up 4 hours later and tried to get out to check the van before leaving but the door, the only door, wouldn’t open at all.
I had enough fuel to get to Scotland and drove on. I called into a service station en route and found another motorhomer having his breakfast and asked him if he could try and open the lock from the outside, after he stopped laughing, he tried but the lock wouldn’t budge. He had to take the Thule lock off the boot and open the garage door so I could lift the bed and climb out the boot! After having my breakfast at the services I went to the van and the bloody lock opened!!!
I drove the van home. The next day I phoned Simon about the engine light ( throttle position sensor) fault and the door lock. He offered to send me a new lock!
As I was going abroad in the van, I swapped all my stuff from my pvc into the Aviano.
After checking the new (to me) van out I found more faults.
1/The cd player wasn’t working.
2/The fire extinguisher was out of date
3/The kitchen window was broken
4/The spare wheel was out of date
5/There was no tool to lower the spare from under the van.
6/The gas regulator was out of date
7/The safe in the boot had no key or code
8/The aux heater for the hab bit was missing, there was a grille and switch but nothing else and the pipes were tucked away under the bench seat.
9/ gas regulator out of date
10/ spare tyre out of date
11/ Eml light on
When I told Simon over the phone about this list he offered to pick the van up free of charge fix everything and return it to me in about 4 days.
I picked the driver up from Edinburgh airport and took him to Perth gave him a cup of coffee and a caramel wafer and gave him the keys to the Aviano and off he went back to Newton Abbot.
Days turned into weeks and I couldn’t get any accurate information on what was actually going on, it was a farce.
I phoned Simon and told him I was rejecting the van as having owned it 8 weeks and never had a single night away in it!
Simon said he offered compensation, he offered to buy me a bottle of something as recompense for everything! I told him politely that I didn’t want anything from his company just my money back. He said he would only do that face to face and after discussing a review I left on Google.
I travelled down in my pvc and transferred everything over from the Aviano. The van wasn’t at the showroom and I had to wait on it getting brought up from the workshop despite the fact they knew I was driving down overnight (10 hours) to get there!
Simon still maintained that all the faults were “cosmetic” and not real faults.
By the way none of the faults had been rectified on the motorhome when I moved my stuff over!
I don’t consider the only door not working properly and locking me inside cosmetic it’s SAFETY!
I also don’t consider the gas regulator being years out of date cosmetic it’s SAFETY!
The fire extinguisher being out of date is not cosmetic it’s SAFETY!
To a lesser extent the spare wheel and the missing tool to lower it is SAFETY!

The missing hab heating was picked up on pdi and not mentioned to me on the sale of the van! I was offered an electric plinth heater which I refused and asked if they would contribute to a diesel heater which I would install myself. This got lost in translation and they were going to install a Chinese heater if I paid for the labour. It never happened and some poor bloke got the sack in the workshop over this!
As Simon admitted they “let me down badly” but for some reason or another I was being unreasonable, what do you think?
My thoughts on dealers are still the same, I wouldn’t trust one as far as I could throw them and I will NEVER buy from a dealer again.
Alex W