Caravan Industry

My van is currently in with a dealer having a new floor.  It was taken in on the 3rd February after they told me they had all the necessary materials to complete the works and had 3days workshop time allocated and a return date of 2 weeks.  I am hopefully going to pick the van up this coming Friday just in time for our trip to Germany??  The problem is that dealers are really only interested in selling new vans and doing what they need to do to get them out the door.  Most have insufficient workshop space and I believe that they play customers off against each other and the one that shouts the loudest gets shifted up the queue.  I will let you know on Friday.  Fortunately I have everything in writing so if things go wrong I will be looking for caravan hire etc from them.

I don't remember problems back when I started in the late 60s and we never had new vans either (I still don't). Even if I had the money now I wouldn't go for new seeing the problems people have!

Oneputt how old is yours that needs a floor?  I hope you are looking for a free loan not hire!  But hope yours is back in time.

It seems to me that the caravan industry is pandering to the British disease of building cheaply so that they can sell their products on price rather than quality, which is what we seem to want.

All very reminiscent of the British car and motorcycle industry before the Japanese took that over and showed us how to do the job properly.

Pippah it was a year old when we discovered the problem

Fingers crossed as I type this 😉. We bought our motorhome at almost 4 years old and haven't had any problems with it, he'll be 15 very soon, but it did need some work 2 years ago. We've found a great independent person reasonable charges swift turnaround as he doesn't have space to store what's not being worked on. I don't think we'd ever buy new or even recent like we first did having  read what's written about on here. It seems they are churned out as fast and using as cheap as possible materials little or no quality control and dealers, with a few exceptions, looking to push them out quickly to make their money. It's very difficult to find decent independent people with capacity but I'd rather wait a month or two to know who is working on my pride and joy.

An aside on our local BBC East news they were saying that lots of caravan maker employees are now working on the blades for wind turbines as they have the required fibreglass experience 😲. I will be watching developments with interest.

I supposed compared to the car industry caravans are a cottage industry. When I owned caravans I was fortunate enough not to have any major problems with the four new caravans we purchased. Any minor issues were dealt with at the regular services. I did have a caravan which needed a gel coat repair and that had to be done by a third party specialist. That did take longer but the dealer was happy to arrange that at a time convenient to me when I was not using the van. Perhaps I have just been lucky with the dealers I have come into contact with?

David

I suppose one of the reasons they get away with it, is that folk are prepared to tolerate the delays. Many of us on here are retired and use our vans a lot, however many are only used a few times a year and if off the road for several months it is no big deal, as long as it does not coincide with the main holiday.

Compare that to a car, which most working folk use every day. The pressures on dealers / manufactures to be able to turn round repairs fast is that much higher.

Hi Oneputt, tell us the make of your van so we can badmouth it bad publicity is good for buisness it tightens them up a bit 

I don't wish to act as their defendent, but I can try to offer an explanation. As David so rightly says, compared with car manufacturers the caravan industry is a cottage industry. Their volumes are relatively low and it's not worth their while making just one specific spare part for a caravan that is out there at some dealer's. Therefore, they wait until they can make or order a batch of the same or at least similar parts and, due to the low volumes, that can take time. Anythings else would just be uneconomic and drive the cost of spare parts up even more.

Hear what you say Lutz, but floors come in sections so I'm only guessing that Lunar must have quite a few being produced every day! I just can't believe that it took 6 months to manufacture and deliver.  (they are probably brought in for a contractor)!

Another issue is that they only deliver spare parts to dealers once a month from the factory, obviously not heard of overnight delivery.

It seems to me that its not about customer service its more about what's convenient to the manufacturer. 

Until  is taken seriously by the manufacturers I for one won't be buying another new UK van.