Caravans were introduced in the UK about 100 years ago. Some of the problems with panel joints today are basically the same as the earliest mass produced caravans, despite some fairly fundamental changes to the panel construction 10 to 15 years ago, we are still seeing so many water ingress related issues, clearly the industry has not understood the problem or taken adequate steps to prevent these recurring issues. By any standard of product development systems this shows a gross and totally inadequate response by the manufacturers. There are other issues which could be viewed in the same light. Why haven't these issues been sorted 100%.
We have seen from successive independent customer surveys that on average 20% of new caravans require warranty work . Granted not all of these are necessarily major issues that prevent the caravan from being used, but each one regardless of how small the issue is, is an indicator of how poorly these manufacturers regard customer satisfaction and product reliability.
Most industries would regard this rate of attrition to be entirely unacceptable, and would invest in R&D to resolve these matters to prevent ongoing and future reoccurrence's.
To show how poorly UK caravan manufacturers regard these warranty issues, you should investigate the company's published accounts which should show how much funding they set aside to cover warranty costs, and understand that each customer is paying more for the caravan simply to put warranty funds in place.
Due to the way the UK consumer rights work, the true cost and impact of caravans that go faulty is not borne by the manufacturer. It's the dealers that are legally exposed, and in many cases small warranty repairs are often handled by the dealer and not passed onto the manufacturer. In some cases dealers are prevented from getting reimbursement from the manufacturer s by onerous contractual arrangements as part of their dealership agreements with manufacturers. Dealers are often stuck between a rock and hard place when it comes to some customer issues.
Because manufacturers are effectively insulated from the customer by the dealer they don't feel the pain their poor design and manufacturing processes cause customers. As long as the majority of caravans don't produce significant warranty costs, they seem to be content to produce what we have come to expect.
This is where I cannot be as generous towards the manufactures sincerity and integrity as the in the video. he calls it a cottage industry... well financially as a whole its classed a medium sized industry, and the fact there are so few players in the market means each of their market shares makes then individually look like medium large organisations. Thay have become so large and they are entirely driven by short term profit, they resist warranty payouts putting dealers and customer at financial loss and inconvenience with regards what should be warranty work at the manufacture's liability.
Manufacture's are putting profit before customer satisfaction. Don't get me wrong, making a profit is essential for a business to survive, but they can't seem to grasp, that if they made far more reliable products, their warranty costs would fall which would transfer directly to the profit account, and leave a much happier band of caravanners.