SMC Motorhomes - Buyer beware!

Dear all

In case anyone is in the market for a new motorhome and were thinking of approaching SMC in Newark I wanted to highlight my experiences with them to give some food for thought.

I ordered a new motor home from SMC in Oct 2019. It took a year to arrive. In that time I spent a lot of time and energy chasing them for updates and all I got was either silence or lots of excuses. Then we had covid and they used that excuse over and over again. However, when I read around the topic I find that SMC and their suppliers have a well reported poor record for service and warranty claims. If I’d known I wouldn’t have bothered.

The motor home was eventually handed over in October 2020 and immediately the van had a fault. Rather than fix it under warranty they sent me to a Fiat dealership. Turned out to be a recall that SMC should have discovered as part of their pre-purchase inspections. Not a good start!

After that, I have had fault after fault and multiple trips back to SMC, all at my cost. In the process, I have spent hours and hours chasing SMC for updates and trying to get them to raise warranty claims. I’ve had to cut holidays short and cancel holidays due to faults and quality issues.  

Most of their fixes broke. One issue was fixed with a second-hand part. Other issues were and still have been ignored. And to top it off the faults that were going to be fixed under warranty weren’t reported to their supplier and therefore delayed the process further. Each time they mention a warranty claim they set my expectations that it could be 3-6 months for the claim issue to be fixed however it's now been over 9 months and I’m still waiting.  

When I complained all I got from their sales manager is the curt response ‘give me the van back I can sell it all day!’

They gave me no option but to take legal action, which is no way to look after customers who have parted with a considerable sum for a new vehicle that just isn’t up to standard.

So there you go. That’s been my experience with SMC.

Their new vehicle warranty is worse than useless and customer service the same.

Im sure there are many people who have had positive experience with SMC and who have had faultless customer service and for those folk Im genuinely pleased.  Im just reporting my experience and would be happy to hear if anyone else has had similar.