New Caravans and Dealers

[Barry_5132760]

Hi All,

Being newbies and still planning to buy our first caravan, I have been reading posts about the quality of new vans and the service (or not!) offered by dealers with some interest.

Our situation is that we live in Orkney. The nearest caravan dealers are in the Inverness area - a ferry trip and 120 miles away. These dealers will not neccesarily stock the make of caravan we want - our initial leanings are towards a foreign van like an Adria or a Burstner. In practice, it would be as easy for us to buy on the Continent as in the UK. We have done this in the past with a car so are quite confident about it.

Our concers are that given our remote location, getting any van back to a dealer for warranty work and/or servicing is going to be very expensive and time consuming, especially if the dealer looks at a faulty part and then says it will take 3 months to order a replacement.

My question is are we worrying needlessly or is there a real issue to be concerned about? How do we go about choosing manufacturers and dealers with good reputations?

We would welcome any views on what appears to us to be a real dilemma.

Thanks in advance

Barry

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Barry

The best way is word of mouth - do any of your neighbours or friends run caravans? Ask them.

One of the down sides of this forum is that Haymarket who own the site are publishers. They are sensitive to negative comments about any of their potential advertisers, so all you can really do on this forum is to search for any dealers who has attracted high priase.

 

[RobRoy]

Hi Barry,

In July I was on the Torvean site just on the outskirts of Inverness and I met a guy there who came from Orkney. He was unloading his van preparatory to getting his new one brought round from the sales area adjacent to the site.

Said he came over every year at a ferry cost of