Swindon Caravans - A Story of deflation and elations

Inflatable awnings – The future!!!! – We recently purchased a Kampa Rally Air 390 inflatable awning – we used it on a trip to Yorkshire in August and by god were we impressed (no more so than Mr Two Dragons who has realised that being beaten with an awning pole during an awning rage incident is now a thing of the past!!!!).  After it had been up for a couple of days the right hand “pole” made some loud “pinging” noises, we thought it was just expansion due to some very nice weather and so isolated the tube from the rest and reduced the pressure in it.  That was the end of that for the rest of the holiday – happy days. 

We went down to the New Forest last week and erected the awning in the approved manner it pinged again.  Again we isolated the tube and reduced the pressure –all was well – or so we thought.  We noticed a slight bulge in the pinging pole but as pressure had already been reduced we thought we would investigate when we took it down – and so proceeded to go out for the day. On our return the right hand side of the awning had collapsed (thankfully it was isolated so rest remained intact and upright).  We unzipped the tube and had a look at the damaged a 2 foot rip in the outer sleeve and a hole you could drive a car through in the main rubber tube – deep joy!  Reached for the puncture repair outfit only to find that the patches supplied where no way near big enough – more deep joy.  Mr Two Dragons being an engineer never goes anywhere without a large role of duck tape and temporary repairs were carried out however we did have to re-inflate the pole every 12 hours.

LINDA at Swindon Caravans came riding in to save the holiday.  Rang Swindon caravans on Tuesday (the supplying dealer) and informed them of our saggy bits (the awning if you hadn’t already guessed!!).  She contacted Kampa straight away and rang us back within the hour to let us know that a spare was winging its way to her direct from Kampa.  We asked if she could call us when it arrived as we were moving on to Manor Farm in Dorset for the remainder of the holiday.  As we were setting up at Manor Farm on the Wednesday she rang to tell us it had arrived, we gave her Manor Farms address and it arrived the next day – What service.  The guys at Manor Farm also were amazing – we advised that we were expecting a delivery; they signed for it on arrival (as we were at a local supermarket purchasing medicinal juice (BEER!!!!) to alleviate the trauma.  As soon as we arrived back at site they were knocking on our floppy awning with a beaming smile and the package in hand.  Fitted the replacement tube – posted the damaged one back to Linda who is dealing with Kampa directly.

This story illustrates that anyone can sell you anything – but it is how they deal with any subsequent problems that counts. Swindon caravans (especially the lovely Linda) get our vote.