SamandRose said:
I agree entirely with Prof but also struggle to understand how low people's expectations seem to be. For example, how on earth can the Swift Group can earn a satisfaction rating of 75% when well over 80% of its products have one or more faults? With so many new caravans costing well over £20k, anything less than no faults at all should be regarded as unsatisfactory and surveys such as these completed accordingly.
The good news is that, if the JD Power survey for cars ias anything to go by, they do seem to influence an improvement in the quality of the product over the years so here's hoping. In the meantime I'm keeping my old Avondale for as long as she's serviceable ...
I believe there are a number of factors here,
It seems quite strange that when it comes to major purchases, the buying public's ability to perceive faults in both physical goods and the service they receive falls by the way side, and they become more forgiving. I'm sure the analysts have a name for this characteristic, but I do wonder if its its also the fact that bigger products like caravans and homes it seems a struggle to get minor issues put right, where as with a car, it is mobile and can be easily taken to the dealers for remedy.
But more specifically with caravans, we have been fed a succession of poor quality product for so long, Ill bet most caravanners expectations is that something will either need fixing or will fail withing hours of using it, and more than likely the problems will be small and whilst they detract from the caravan they don't render it unusable and the owner will live with for a short while.
What I do find interesting from the survey, is the results for secondhand caravans, and the comment that they seem to be more reliable possibly becasue the first owner has suffered and corrected the faults. But it clearly points to the fact that most issues are down to the manufacturers failure to build/assemble/install properly and consistently.