We collected our brand new Burstner on 19 June 2017. We spent the first month getting ready to move house, before spending 10 days fulltiming while we were between houses, then had a month in France in September, and 2 weeks away in October/November. Since becoming motorhomers in 2013 we have been away for at least a long weekend once a month and now that we are both retired have been looking forward to longer trips.
During our UK trip we discovered that the second key had not been coded, this was finally sorted out by our local main Fiat dealer (our motorhome dealer reluctantly agreed to our local Fiat dealer doing the work as we said we would expect them to pay for the diesel if they insisted on us making a 140 mile roun trip instead of less than 10 miles).
We had to make 2 visits to Vospers to prove to Chelston that the key could not be coded snd would need replacing. The second appointment was 8 December, the day after receiving a recall letter. Vospers confirmed our van was affected. The replacement key arrived from Chelston on 20 December, and was coded by Vospers 2 days later. They could not carry out the recall repair as parts were not in stock.
We were finally contacted in mid January with the good news that all parts were now in stock, but the bad news was that Vospers could not get us into the workshop until 8 February.
On 8 Feb they phoned us after a couple of hours to say that the heat exchange pipe had also cracked and they would have to get authorisation from Fiat to replace this £300 part. They also confirmed that our van is subject to yet another recall. Now nearly 3 weeks later we are still waiting for our van to be returned to us in a usable condition.
In 9 months of ownership we have been unable to use our van for a third of that time, would other motorhomers think that we have a vehicle that is not fit for purpose, as we have not been able to make use of it as intended. Especially with the lovely weather we are having at the moment we would definitely have gone away. As it stands we cannot even think about making bookings as we do not know when we will get our van back.
During our UK trip we discovered that the second key had not been coded, this was finally sorted out by our local main Fiat dealer (our motorhome dealer reluctantly agreed to our local Fiat dealer doing the work as we said we would expect them to pay for the diesel if they insisted on us making a 140 mile roun trip instead of less than 10 miles).
We had to make 2 visits to Vospers to prove to Chelston that the key could not be coded snd would need replacing. The second appointment was 8 December, the day after receiving a recall letter. Vospers confirmed our van was affected. The replacement key arrived from Chelston on 20 December, and was coded by Vospers 2 days later. They could not carry out the recall repair as parts were not in stock.
We were finally contacted in mid January with the good news that all parts were now in stock, but the bad news was that Vospers could not get us into the workshop until 8 February.
On 8 Feb they phoned us after a couple of hours to say that the heat exchange pipe had also cracked and they would have to get authorisation from Fiat to replace this £300 part. They also confirmed that our van is subject to yet another recall. Now nearly 3 weeks later we are still waiting for our van to be returned to us in a usable condition.
In 9 months of ownership we have been unable to use our van for a third of that time, would other motorhomers think that we have a vehicle that is not fit for purpose, as we have not been able to make use of it as intended. Especially with the lovely weather we are having at the moment we would definitely have gone away. As it stands we cannot even think about making bookings as we do not know when we will get our van back.