Pre Purchase caravan Inspection Service

[Dustydog]

I see The Caravan Club in conjunction with the MCEA have set up a pre purchase inspection scheme. Discounts for members.
Costs range from £130 to £210.

A good idea in principle and a reasonable cost bearing in mind the potential of getting it wrong and sued.
What initially worries me however is that only the silver and gold inspections check for damp.
I would expect damp / water ingress to be the most important single factor in deciding the purchase of a caravan

 

[ProfJohnL]

It really does make sense to have a pre-purchase inspection on any secondhand caravan even those from main dealers. The cost will almost certainly be less than the cost of an expensive repair.

The idea of a menu driven inspection has some merits, but it may not address your specific concerns with a given caravan. The other issue may be if you arrange it through the CC, the CC may take a cut of the price you pay, so just remember they may say your getting a discount, but perhaps they also inflate the price!

There is nothing stopping you from contacting any reputable mobile caravan engineer directly, and asking them to quote to do an inspection covering the points that YOU want. It doesn't have to be the CC's/MCEA menu, you can pick and choose what you want. - just discuss it with the engineer and make sure its written down so there is no dispute.

 

[Damian]

The most important part of a pre purchase inspection is DAMP and that should be automatic on whatever inspection is undertaken.
Other possible faults are split panels, bad sealant and faulty appliances.
The damp test should red flag any possible split panels or bad sealant as the damp must come from somewhere and all the inspection will tell you is if there is or is not damp.
Faulty appliances are something which can happen at any time but are normally fixable at reasonable cost and an inspection will only tell you that an appliance is working or not AT THE TIME OF THE TEST.

The costs as outlined by Dustydog look more like full service costs, which an Inspection is not.

When I was working until last year an inspection was under £100, more like £60 so I fail to see how costs have gone up as much as is being stated.

Also bear in mind that only the NCC Approved Workshop Engineers are industry recognised as far as manufacturers are concerned and warranties are concerned.

 

[Spurtle]

Make note to self....... put prices up

Most , if not all NCC AWS technicians will offer a pre-purchase inspection and I'll bet that there'll not be many of them that charge upwards of £130....I certainly don't .

What I do know though is that the vast majority them ( if not all) ,will carry out a damp inspection.
To have any pre-purchase inspection carried out that does not include a full damp report is an utterly pointless exercise ...