Is it me? I think I am Victor Meldrew's twin brother. Am I odd? I did discuss this with a couple of salesmen at the show last week. No, not me being odd, the issues of bed height and body length.
My perception of the majority motorhome buyer is a newly retired, pension just paid out, insurance policies just paid out, or big house just sold and small bungalow bought type of person with grey or no hair. Like me.
1) We will NOT climb a ladder to get into bed. OK we can now, but we are hoping the new motorhome will last us until we cannot climb a ladder to get into bed.
2) We may be thinking that we only need one vehicle, and it will have to be a compromise between a car and a holiday home. So if our one vehicle is to be a motorhome we need it to fit into a supermarket parking space, we need to park it at home on the drive, or we want to be able to park by the side of the road when we see a pretty cuckoo clock town in Germany, rather than have to drive to the out-of-town park-and-ride motorhome park. So we set ourselves a maximum length limit on what we want to look for.
So what do the magazines and advertisers do? They tell us everything we don't care about and ignore the length and whether it has a drop down bed. Except in the case of this month's magazine that ran a special and potentially very useful article on '8 coach built motorhomes under 6 metres with drop down beds'. Aha. Except that in no case do they tell us how low the drop down bed drops to. So we have to go phoning round the dealers to ask, or go to the show to find out. It turns out, just for those of you who want to know, that only two of the drop down beds go low enough to get into without a ladder. That is on the Roller Team and Chausson. Except that I now know of 3 occasions when the Roller Team bed could have lowered but it didn't. At a dealer, the salesman couldn't be bothered to show me it lowering - 'the battery needs charging'. Hmmm. Well plug the van in then if you want to sell it to me. I actually suspect that you know it is broken and you don't want me to know. (This is a brand new camper) The magazine journalist took one for an overnight test, and the bed refused to work. Hmmmm. He slept in the lounge bed. If you are going to do that, why buy a van with a drop down bed? At the NEC show, the salesman got the bed to move down about one foot and there it stopped. He tried several times but it would not lower more than a foot. 'It's stuck' he said. Well at least he was telling the truth. So of course I won't be buying that model. On the other hand the Chausson one at the show was going up and down all day, every day. And it went right down to the lounge seat bases.
Now, how can you write a 20 page magazine article whose specific job is to 'review sub-6 metre coachbuilts with lowering beds' without telling us how low the bed goes?
My other gripe is advertisers spouting fluff about the vehicle and not saying what the length is. Obviously the length is less important than telling us that it has an oven. Most dealers will tell you when you are looking at used vehicles 'and there is the oven, never used, obviously'. Why oh why is telling us that it has a device that most people don't use, more important than telling us the length? I used to send emails to the dealers expressing my desire to know the length and that I regard it as being more important than the colour of the upholstery but now I have given up. One of them couldn't even be bothered to measure the vehicle, or look it up, but replied to my email with 'we're not far away, come and see us'. He didn't think that knowing the length would be useful information. They are about 70 miles away. No I am not coming to see you.
I am pretty well convinced that 6 metres is the current preferred length, and that grey/no haired people don't want to climb up a ladder into bed. Either the salesmen at the show were being professionally polite, or they genuinely do agree with me, because when I asked them if that was correct they all said yes.
There was an absolutely GLORIOUS Hobby coachbuilt, at an ordinary price, and fabulously glittery and shiny inside and outside which made my legs go all wobbly. We went in, looked at the bed over what they call a 'garage',. sighed, and sat down. It needs a ladder because the bed is located over the pesky, next-to-useless garage. Oh no, we can't have this one. We sat down in the lounge area of the motorhome for a bit of a rest and within 3 minutes two other couples, with grey and no hair, poked their heads round the door, looked at the bed and said 'no, the bed is too high', and left. The garage has a funny shaped door which means you cannot get a scooter in it, and if you got a bike in, it would have to be a folding one. So for this 'garage' they have lost quite a few sales, I am pretty sure. I looked carefully to see if I could chop the bed out and lower it, but in discussing this with the salesman who discussed it with the factory team from Germany, the conclusion was no you can't because the bed needs re-inforcing beams built into the side and back walls. If you hacked it out and lowered it you would have nothing substantial to fix it to inside the walls. And of course the warranty would disappear faster than a politician showing his face at a flooded part of the countryside.
I don't BELEEEEEVE it!
My perception of the majority motorhome buyer is a newly retired, pension just paid out, insurance policies just paid out, or big house just sold and small bungalow bought type of person with grey or no hair. Like me.
1) We will NOT climb a ladder to get into bed. OK we can now, but we are hoping the new motorhome will last us until we cannot climb a ladder to get into bed.
2) We may be thinking that we only need one vehicle, and it will have to be a compromise between a car and a holiday home. So if our one vehicle is to be a motorhome we need it to fit into a supermarket parking space, we need to park it at home on the drive, or we want to be able to park by the side of the road when we see a pretty cuckoo clock town in Germany, rather than have to drive to the out-of-town park-and-ride motorhome park. So we set ourselves a maximum length limit on what we want to look for.
So what do the magazines and advertisers do? They tell us everything we don't care about and ignore the length and whether it has a drop down bed. Except in the case of this month's magazine that ran a special and potentially very useful article on '8 coach built motorhomes under 6 metres with drop down beds'. Aha. Except that in no case do they tell us how low the drop down bed drops to. So we have to go phoning round the dealers to ask, or go to the show to find out. It turns out, just for those of you who want to know, that only two of the drop down beds go low enough to get into without a ladder. That is on the Roller Team and Chausson. Except that I now know of 3 occasions when the Roller Team bed could have lowered but it didn't. At a dealer, the salesman couldn't be bothered to show me it lowering - 'the battery needs charging'. Hmmm. Well plug the van in then if you want to sell it to me. I actually suspect that you know it is broken and you don't want me to know. (This is a brand new camper) The magazine journalist took one for an overnight test, and the bed refused to work. Hmmmm. He slept in the lounge bed. If you are going to do that, why buy a van with a drop down bed? At the NEC show, the salesman got the bed to move down about one foot and there it stopped. He tried several times but it would not lower more than a foot. 'It's stuck' he said. Well at least he was telling the truth. So of course I won't be buying that model. On the other hand the Chausson one at the show was going up and down all day, every day. And it went right down to the lounge seat bases.
Now, how can you write a 20 page magazine article whose specific job is to 'review sub-6 metre coachbuilts with lowering beds' without telling us how low the bed goes?
My other gripe is advertisers spouting fluff about the vehicle and not saying what the length is. Obviously the length is less important than telling us that it has an oven. Most dealers will tell you when you are looking at used vehicles 'and there is the oven, never used, obviously'. Why oh why is telling us that it has a device that most people don't use, more important than telling us the length? I used to send emails to the dealers expressing my desire to know the length and that I regard it as being more important than the colour of the upholstery but now I have given up. One of them couldn't even be bothered to measure the vehicle, or look it up, but replied to my email with 'we're not far away, come and see us'. He didn't think that knowing the length would be useful information. They are about 70 miles away. No I am not coming to see you.
I am pretty well convinced that 6 metres is the current preferred length, and that grey/no haired people don't want to climb up a ladder into bed. Either the salesmen at the show were being professionally polite, or they genuinely do agree with me, because when I asked them if that was correct they all said yes.
There was an absolutely GLORIOUS Hobby coachbuilt, at an ordinary price, and fabulously glittery and shiny inside and outside which made my legs go all wobbly. We went in, looked at the bed over what they call a 'garage',. sighed, and sat down. It needs a ladder because the bed is located over the pesky, next-to-useless garage. Oh no, we can't have this one. We sat down in the lounge area of the motorhome for a bit of a rest and within 3 minutes two other couples, with grey and no hair, poked their heads round the door, looked at the bed and said 'no, the bed is too high', and left. The garage has a funny shaped door which means you cannot get a scooter in it, and if you got a bike in, it would have to be a folding one. So for this 'garage' they have lost quite a few sales, I am pretty sure. I looked carefully to see if I could chop the bed out and lower it, but in discussing this with the salesman who discussed it with the factory team from Germany, the conclusion was no you can't because the bed needs re-inforcing beams built into the side and back walls. If you hacked it out and lowered it you would have nothing substantial to fix it to inside the walls. And of course the warranty would disappear faster than a politician showing his face at a flooded part of the countryside.
I don't BELEEEEEVE it!
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