Picked up new van !!

[andyp1]

Well despite my reservations we have picked up our new van and wait for it ....... everything seems perfect !

It is a Buccaneer Galera - this is our fourth new van over a number of years and every other one had problems. - but touch wood no problems whatsoever !

We have had a couple of weeks away and another planned at the end of june - whilst not wanting to start a great debate about being lazy - self levelling suspension is the business - and fitting the wheelocks a piece of cake.

The supplying dealer was OK (not exceptional) but then again if you do not have to go back for warranty stuff then that gets forgotten - fingers crossed

 

[thosoneill]

At £32194 rrp I would not be expecting any issues - by the way it certainly looks like a luxurious caravan - wishing you good times ahead

 

[ProfJohnL]

At £32194 rrp I would not be expecting any issues - by the way it certainly looks like a luxurious caravan - wishing you good times ahead

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

 

[chrisn7]

I was up at a local dealers yesterday lunchtime, as a chap was evidently collecting a new Bailey, but sadly, my immediate thought was 'I wonder if he's had it tested for damp'? :dry:

 

[Martin24]

Congratulations on your new van and I hope as the dealer is only "Okay" that you don't have any problems.

 

[Anseo]

At £32194 rrp I would not be expecting any issues - by the way it certainly looks like a luxurious caravan - wishing you good times ahead

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

xZactly Prof.

 

[thosoneill]

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

Don't know whether you are being facetious here - however I for one would expect a genuine degree of quality from such an expensive top of the range caravan - as with most products/items I reckon you pay for what you get - quality generally comes at a price

 

[Dustydog]

Quality hmy:
There's a word we all believe in :dry:
Sadly whether you pay £15k or £33k the piece workers are the same. You just get different trim levels and furniture. Things like the toilet fridge cooker etc mostly seem the same to me.
Let's hope your new baby doesn't throw her dollies out of the pram and you can avoid seeing your dealer. Enjoy :cheer:

 

[Bwlch]

Congratulations. Enjoy your new toy.

 

[Martin24]

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

Don't know whether you are being facetious here - however I for one would expect a genuine degree of quality from such an expensive top of the range caravan - as with most products/items I reckon you pay for what you get - quality generally comes at a price

Makes no difference which van it is in the range from bottom to top they will be constructed by the same people using the same techniques. The important factors in a caravan are how they are put together not the gizmos and the cupboard door fronts. The frills do not change how the van is constructed. You can expect good and bad from every range by every manufacturer be it a van made using Alu-Tech, ABC, SoLid or anything else used to name the method of putting the van together. I agree 100% with the Prof and Dusty on this point.

 

[ProfJohnL]

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

Don't know whether you are being facetious here - however I for one would expect a genuine degree of quality from such an expensive top of the range caravan - as with most products/items I reckon you pay for what you get - quality generally comes at a price

I most certainly was not being facetious I was being bluntly factual. It makes not one jot of a difference whether you buy a mini or a Rolls Royce, as a customer your rights are exactly the same and you should demand perfection from both. The difference in cost has no bearing on the quality Of the product both should function as designed. You should also expect both products to be sufficiently durable.

The principle difference are the number of bells and whistles you get when you spend more. A properly designed and manufactured, hand built products often cost more because of the cost of using 'craftsmen' yet a mass produced Maxine made product is more likely to consistent product to product than a hand crafted one.

There is absolutely no reason why a production facility that uses extensive automation cannot produce product of equal or evenly arguable better quality than a hand made one.

 

[thosoneill]

I am slowly getting the picture - however there is mass produced and mass produced - I'm thinking hymer versus lunar et al - thanks for the informative views

 

[ProfJohnL]

I am slowly getting the picture - however there is mass produced and mass produced - I'm thinking hymer versus lunar et al - thanks for the informative views

Why does the fact a product is mass produced predispose it to being less reliable?

Provided the manufacture has properly researched the processes then the production out put should be far more consistent than the best hand made products. This is part of the current issue with most UK built caravans, the body joints are not machine assembled but rely one humans who simply cannot apply adhesives and fillers as consistently as a machine.

Just look at most car production. Back in the 1950,s through to the 1980's there was little automation and most assembly was manual. The reliability of them was as we know atrocious. These days the bulk of the assembly is now automated and if you were to look at relative reliability is far better these days even considering the explosion of complexity.

 

[thosoneill]

Okay dokey

 

[ProfJohnL]

I realise my contributions to this later part of the thread may have caused thosoneil some discomfort. I do stand by my comments but I do recognise that if you pay more you do expect more. Not withstanding the points about construction and the hand built vs mass production one would hope that a more 'Rolls Royce' product would have something more to offer, and indeed you would expect more.

The CRA clearly sets out that products like cars and caravans should have satisfactory fault free life of six or more years, most mass produced products will look for economies in costs and that maybe reflected in the longer term reliability. More expensive products you would hope to have a longer life expectancy before failure. It's very difficult looking at just small samples to see if this genuinely the case, but a wider sample would probably show that trend.

As has already been suggested, there is not much automation in the caravan industry, so whether it's the cheapest base model or the most expensive model, much of the assembly processes will be very similar, so it's largely down to the way the company induces it's work force to inject pride into what they do. The majority of the caravan industry assembly operatives are employed on a peice rate model, which incentivises speed, and sadly that is when corners start to get cut, glue and sealant not properly applied, screws being missed out or put in the wrong place. A few and these tend to be the specialised manufacturers do use a different pay structure and use genuinly skilled employees, but until they are made responsible for the quality of their work corners will still be cut.

I sincerely hope your caravan will be everything you expect and want. I hope it will remain fault free for a long time, but I also wish the same for all caravanners regardless of how much they pay for it.

 

[KeefySher]

It doesn't matter how much a new product is, they should all be perfect!!!!!

Don't know whether you are being facetious here - however I for one would expect a genuine degree of quality from such an expensive top of the range caravan - as with most products/items I reckon you pay for what you get - quality generally comes at a price

Sadly your expectations have a nearly 1 in 4 chance (23% of new caravans have faults reported by respondents to the Practical Caravan and camc owners surveys recently undertaken, doubtless there are lots of disappointed owners that haven't bothered to fill in questionnaires) of not being met.

We have a Flagship heap of crap, made of common poor quality parts thrown together in a circus in Cottingham, masquerading as a caravan. Well documented over the internet including the circus masters owners forum.

In the caravan world, quality has no relationship to purchase price nor model range nor assemblers (I refuse to use the term manufacturers in respect of the caravan industry).

There are myriad explanations for the abysmal state of affairs from obviously far too much fat in the price between throw together and sale, such that no monetary pain is felt by the circuses. The cartel that means your contract is with the dealer, not the assembler. Decades of customers have repeatedly accepted the status quo and not wanted to upset those awfully nice dealers that were so nice in selling us a caravan time after time, and wouldn't want to have upset them by daring to not accept crap quality as the holiday is booked. We refused to put our heap of crap back on the forecourt that the next unsuspecting mug would buy and have issues with.

Fortunately it appears more people are rejecting poor quality.

The more people that swallow pride and publicly report poor quality the better.

 

[Martin24]

Well said and yes hopefully more and more people will stop accepting the excuses. Lets face it though, it takes less than an hour to fling together a van whichever it is in the range. Great for production line maybe but not good news for the customer.

 

[thosoneill]

Thank you prof for acknowledging my discomfort - folks I am not in the position to purchase a new caravan - my own caravan is a 1998 abbey Iona vogue - I paid £1500.00 and it had a functional motor mover fitted and the seller threw in a multitude of usable and useful extras - the OP paid over thirty grand for a lovely caravan - subsequently we have apparently gleaned that his thirty grand won't necessarily mean that he has a problem free caravan - I have taken on board the UK assembly standards and the forkforce conditions - well having viewed several continental caravans - adria/hymer/ Kabe/ Trigano/ burstner/ - I have concluded that our neighbors across the channel definitely produce a far superior product to the UK counterpart - I recently changed our U.K. assembled Toyota auris for a vw golf and I can honestly say the difference in cars is like night and day - to conclude if I were in the fortunate position to purchase a thirty K plus caravan it certainly would not be one assembled in the UK

 

[Raywood]

I am slowly getting the picture - however there is mass produced and mass produced - I'm thinking hymer versus lunar et al - thanks for the informative views

We have a Lunar and basically the lightweight does result in a more flimsy caravan. After three years we now have a leak at the joint where the roof meets the front panel which seems to be a problem and this is now a claim which the dealer is handling. If it was not for the leak though we would have been happy with the caravan, it is what we expected, and everything else has been in order.
Personaly if I had the choice I would take the Hymer, which looks to be built like a tank, but the weight is way beyond our car or anything I can see us running, and it costs a lot more. At the end of the day the working parts though are still the same so must be just as reliable or unreliable as any other make so what you are looking at between makes is the body rather than everything and it is a case of what you can tow and afford and the Lunar suited our needs.

 

[andyp1]

We thought long and hard about what caravan to buy , we have had a few they all had problems - and the dealers made them worse , to be honest we liked the Hobby's but our storage site does not allow them in - nor does the next nearest one . So that kind of helped with the decision.

3 trips so far and the van is fine , time will tell , but life is too short to worry - its all about the holidays !

 

[parigby]

We are in the process of switching from a MotorHome to a caravan, simply because our usage has changed. Our present MoHome (£70k's worth) and one that regularly walks off with all the industry awards had numerous problems in the early days. Trip one, wardrobe hanging rail fell off : external rear large locker retention fixings worked loose ; oven door catch fell apart ' two large drawers literally fell apart into four pieces. Second trip, wooden surround to flashy Halo lighting system on ceiling fell off, two padded pelmets over windows fell off.

Manufacturers response - " it will all have been caused by road vibration " !! What did they think l was going to do with it - leave it parked up on the drive never to move.

I just have the feeling that the whole industry treats it's customer base not only with complacency, but utter contempt.

 

[RayS]

Over the years I've always had UK built caravans except once - a Burstner.

While the body build quality was undoubtedly better than the UK vans, it was also much heavier. As with all the UK vans ( except the most recent) the troubles were not with the caravan itself but with the equipment and fittings - water, taps, heaters, fridges etc. and with the limited number of makers of such things you tend to get their products regardless of the caravan you buy.
In a way, the build quality f the Burstner and Hymers I've seen made problems with appliances even worse as it too much longer to get the offending units out to repair.
My friends Hymer with a simple failure requires removal off the hob, sink and other fittings before you can get to the fridge to change an element or gas burner. Labour time for removal and refitting was several times linger than for actual repair.
After the 1990 Coachman no caravan has come with a sensible wiring diagram, nor has any maker - including Burstner - supplied one despite repeated requests. This makes tracing electrical faults extremely difficult.
(Modern cars are no better - my Freelander has 3 different fuse boxes in 3 different locations and the fuse listing in the hand book has several differences as to what is actually in the boxes - for example the two fuses for the caravan 12v connections are not in the same box !)
Given the volume of new caravans I reluctantly conclude that most things work most of the time and short of safety issues the makers have no real incentive to do otherwise.

 

[Keefanmaxx]

Congratulations on your new van ....... may you have many trouble free adventures with it.