third time lucky?-saga! (1 Viewer)

kaspian

Free Member
Aug 16, 2009
24
0
bonnie Scotland
Funster No
7,996
MH
c class
Exp
9 months and counting!
As some of you will know we bought our first motorhome late last year , only a year old from Discover only to find out a week later that it had major damp problems. A fight resulted in our money being returned and this went on a brand new van from Webbs mid Nov last year. The van was driven the 421 miles home and SORNed immediately without any further use until a month ago when I moved in out from its resting place in our garden to give it a good wash ready for the Easter break and our maiden trip away.

Imagine our horror when we discovered that down the side closest to the wall the paint was flaking ,crazing and micro blistering from a 5ft by 2 ft section that on closer inspection had been repaired, filled , masked up and resprayed prior to us picking up the van ! Obviously over the 3 and a half months storage the repair area had sunk ,reacted with the base layer and was now highly visible !
Elddis denied any knowledge of a repair being done at the factory - (apparently they are very good at recording any damage repaired during assembly) and the dealer (after an independent local Elddis dealer inspection agreed 100% with my findings ) admitted no liability seemingly leaving the burden on us to prove it was them to blame and not damage inflicted by ourselves. More than a 'few' calls later to dealers and a repair was offered but our faith in the van had gone. How would you feel having paid good money for a new van- to have to get a sizeable area resprayed for the second time BEFORE you had even had any use from it ? While fighting our case we lost the first week of our holidays.
After asking for a replacement van and rightly offering to pay for a higher spec van on sale we were told that we would have to lose £2500 vat from what we paid originally and this was apparently a great deal!:Eeek:

Trading standards informed us that they could not do this if agreeing to take the van back -so we ended up going the 421 miles back to the dealer to meet face to face, let them see how bad the van was and after standing our ground for over 4 hours on the forecourt one of the directors had a change of heart and offered the full price paid against a van a few £000,s more. Laugh was, on the way down in the old van ,the large side habitation window got sucked open any time a lorry passed and the battery boiled, spilling a lot of acid into the drip tray! Dealer agreed the window had been fitted too high and all 5 catches were just holding and no more! Obviously ,as I stressed the pdi was not properly done at delivery. We checked over the new van carefully and agreed the sale.

New van got tested over 5 days last week from Warminster to Moreton and Weston super Mare ,before the long journey home , everything worked and we are happy so far . Weather was great and I even got to visit Bovington tank museum to see the awesome Tiger! Only problem was, the tires were set at 35,40, 46 and 51 psi leading to interesting handling on the M5 and apart from the tires being 4 years old?? (on a new van !) a quick bit of air restored correct pressures of 60/65 psi.

Many thanks to Peter on this forum for moral support and advice . It has cost us a lot of time hassle and expense returning the van and losing the accessories we had retro fitted to our old (new ) van but as I quoted to the dealer -any fool can sell GOOD vans and get a great reputation but it is how the rare problems are dealt with that defines how good a dealer really is ! We did not deserve the grief,expense or stress !

Hopefully we can now put it all behind us and get stuck into enjoying our new van and make more mistakes ,like allowing our 4 year old sat nav to lead us into a cul-de- sac in a new build housing complex in Weston super Mare leading to a 9 point turn (much to the amusement of the residents!!) (think -Austin Powers scene turning the golf cart in the corridor) Got to take on the mindset of a motorhomer and forget the tugging now !!! If you meet an Autoquest 130 on the road driven by a family with big smiles on their faces, give us a wave!! :thumb:
 

DESCO

Free Member
Mar 11, 2009
2,646
266
London
Funster No
5,894
MH
low profile
Exp
18 years +12 years tugging
Hi

Lets hope this is the end to it all, and you can finally get to enjoying your purchase as it's intended.

Best of luck

Dave :thumb::thumb:
 

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