Caravan Dealers - are any of them any good?

Thanks for that everyone.  Some really good points here.

Our latest caravan we bought from a certain dealership we found later was a former a seconded hand car dealer needless to say they closed down a short while ago  

We always had excellent service from Oxford Caravans at Thame but that was a few years ago. It’s always best to find a local dealer because you WILL have warranty claims.

I speak as a customer and also retired employee of a caravan dealership.When I was looking to buy caravans for myself and family I preferred to wander around a sales site,find something I was interested in and then find a sales person to talk to.These days it is harder as due to theft of parts a lot of dealers have found it necessary to lock the stock and you need to talk to a sales person in order to look inside a particular caravan.The dealer I worked for for 17 years still,as far as I am aware,allow browsing without interference (all easily removable items removed before put up for sale) and most people prefer this,but,as is the way of joe public,you cannot please all of the people all of the time!

Unfortunately the first of the two, Nene Court Caravans, are no longer in the business of selling caravans. They expired during the financial crash. We had two caravans from them and a third on order but they rang me to tell me about the decision to close and refunded my deposit. My last caravan and both motorhomes have come from White Arches at Rushden/Irchester. I am of the view that you should try and buy as close to home as you can. Worth pointing out that all my purchases have been for new units and I see that you are looking for a pre-owned caravan. Whether that should make any difference I am not sure? It's also not helped by the fact that it seems to be a sellers market at the moment, at least buying from a dealer should mean that the van has been checked and you should get some sort of warranty, even if only a short one.

David

 We had consistently  excellent service from Camper UK of Lincoln when we owned Burstner caravans and we have also had excellent service from Derby Autosleeper Centre over the last two years of ownership of our AS.We have had a some minor faults when the  MH  was new but they were speedily and efficiently rectified. Not faults which PDI would have identified to be fair but ones which developed later from faulty componentry.Thing is they were fixed properly for us.

Hi, Many good points made and would agree that making a recommendation is problematic when the contact is some time past-bought last van in 2017.

The one point I would  make however is in regard to buying locally-if its possible, which it may be for you, that's great but if not I would not be put off.

In regard to new vans I have bought 5 and all but 1, a Hobby, had to have work carried out under warranty and since 1995 I have had this done at a local, well local for us at a near 130 round trip, service centre.

They are an approved workshop, NCC and both clubs, and  can carry out warranty work on most makes of van.

As they do not sell vans they are more inclined to be customer focused and it may be worth looking into this, near to you, as a way of reassuring yourself that any issues you have, and sadly that's more likely than not, can be addressed 'locally'.

This then gives you the freedom to look further afield for the actual van.

Good luck!.

We bought from a dealer close to home for our last caravan and really wish we hadn’t!! The staff change so often you rarely see the same person twice.

Our previous van came from a dealer 70 miles away but they were much better for after sales, which as already mentioned, is far more important.

The salesmen have been good in both establishments, obviously they want your custom, but the quality of aftersales and dealing with problems have been poles apart.  Would we recommend our present dealer, probably not, although we have seen better reports recently.  We would hesitate to recommend our previous dealer as things could well have changed in 5 years.

I would try to read various reviews or ask some customers (if possible) to get more up to date information.

That's an interesting point which someone else on this thread has brought up (buy local, best in case of problems).  Now you're saying, not in case of, you WILL have problems/ warranty claims.  Owing to budget restrictions, we have to buy used not new so I'm not sure what kind of warranty we'll be offered.  We visited Oxford Caravans and spent a couple of hours there looking around caravans.  Only at the end did a member of staff show up to tell us they were closing and that we'd have to leave - that was the sum total of their interaction with us!

This is exactly what we've been doing.  And only at one dealership (in Bristol) did a member of staff even approach us to ask what we were looking for and to make suggestions.  Otherwise we were ignored, which is fine to a point but we did have some questions and could find no-one to ask!