Swift charger failures

[Jack_374416378]

A number of people are experiencing charger failures on there new caravans after only a few hours use - resulting in no 12volt or 240volts. Resulting in spoilt hoildays, if you have a new caravan run the charger for a few hours to check it out before you leave on your holiday or you could be left without any electrics for your first night.

Posted on Caravan Talk Forum by Swift

"As many of you are aware from previous posts we have suffered recent problems with the chargers supplied to the Swift Group by Nordlectronica in Italy. This problem was caused by their supplier who made an unauthorized component modification which in turn caused the chargers to fail prematurely. Whilst Nordlectronica have committed to replace faulty chargers and currently have engineers from their company replacing faulty units they have struggled to rectify the problem as quickly and efficiently as we would have hoped.

The Swift Group has been and continues to be in daily contact with Nordlectronica and is committed to resolving this problem as quickly as possible, on behalf of the Swift Group I can only apologise for the inconvenience this has caused to our customers.

Regards,

Andy Spacey

Design & Development Director

Suggest contact Andy who will, I am sure, be able to tell you which caravans are affected by build batch and serial numbers from there records.

 

[rainman_374416682]

Do you need to check the serial number of your van or charger to find out if you have an effected charger

 

[Jack_374416378]

Hi Rainman

I would have thought Swift would have records of the affected caravan serial numbers because I am sure they would know which builds would have had the faulty units fitted.

They should be able to contact the owners by the caravan vin numbers through there PDI registration records.

Swifts computer registration system is, I am told, the best in the buisness.

 

[rainman_374416682]

Do you need to check the serial number of your van or charger to find out if you have an effected charger

Makes sense Jack it must be reassuring to know that all the effected ones will have been identified and notified by Swift so owners will not be stranded on their Hols without power to their vans

 

[rainman_374416682]

Makes sense Jack it must be reassuring to know that all the effected ones will have been identified and notified by Swift so owners will not be stranded on their Hols without power to their vans

 

[Jack_374416378]

Yes is does make sense - I assume Swift will have put plans in place to ensure that there customers wont have there holidays spoilt.

Imagine the compensation claims they will have for spoilt holidays otherwise.

I know Swift monitor this forum and will respond to reassure us this is the case.

 

[SwiftGroup_374327846]

Jack,

If I can correct you on one point, if the charger does fail it only affects the 12V not the 230V as you suggest.

With regard to our customers we are focused on replacing all the chargers that have failed with customers first. As you can see from the statement above this is not happening as quickly as we would have liked for which we have apologised.

Once this is done then we will look at the other potentially affected units.

Thanks

Andy

 

[DAVID_374417055]

Two of us on the same site have had our holiday spoilt with the faulty chargers we both have bought new Stirling vans, I have had my van since November, I bought a new battery because I thought that was the problem at first,so I contacted the dealer who supplied me the van, and we are still waiting for the charges being supplied to the dealers.

 

[FrankandLiz]

I have been unfortunate enough to have been a victim of owning this faulty charger. Fortunately I discovered the problem whilst prepping my van at home and not actually out on site.

There is quite a bit of comment on the caravan talk - swift forum on the matter.

Basically, there is no recall system in place, the faults are identified by owners discovering the fault themselves.

As an aid to identifying the faulty charger, Chris, from Nord electronics has posted a photograph that helps to identify the faulty charger, basically, if the charger has an orange internal component visible inside, then it is highly likely that it is from the faulty batch.

Hope this helps.

 

[SwiftGroup_374327846]

We now know that the affected vans were manufactured between 01/05/08 and 31/08/08, but I must stress not all have the issue. Vans built before or after this date aren't affected by this issue.

We are firstly focussing on our customers with faulty/failed chargers this is to get them up and running, but this is taking longer than we hoped as our supplier is struggling to meet the demand for parts, hence the apology to our customers for letting them down.

Once these customers are sorted then we will move onto the others who havent failed but are at risk. Unfortunatley our hands are tied as we haven't parts and we aren't in full control of this.

We are committed to resolving it with our supplier as quickly as possible.

Andy

 

[Allyson]

Andy

Someone on the other forum's has problems with their charger. looks like it went down at midnight, poor people if this has happened to them on an Easter Bank Holiday with nothing open!

Posted under the heading "12v System Not Working", it's the other forum that you monitor.

I hope it's not spoilt there holiday too much or they have had to come home early

If this has happened are you looking at compensating the loss of their holiday?

 

[SwiftGroup_374327846]

Hi Allyson,

Yes I am aware of the posting, I telephoned the customer a couple of times on easter Sunday to discuss it and I will be talking to him again today.

Andy

 

[Hamer_5041128]

Allyson,

If something had been open what difference would it have made?

At the point at which the charger failed the battery should have been fully charged,so why should they have had to come home early? As Andy has said the 240 volts would still work and a fully charged battery will last at least 2 to 3 days.

Swift are doing everything they can to solve the problem.

5 years ago we had the mains electric unit fail on a new Bailey Senator on Boxing Day in the Northern Lakes. The temp was below zero but with gas and 12 volt we got on and enjoyed our holiday.

Compensation---no way. It beggars belief to even think of it.

Hamer

 

[franco_374417324]

Nord Franco

 

[franco_374417324]

This is Nordelettronica Italy and I'm Emiliano Piovesana, President of the Company.

First of all, I'd like to apologize to Swift all Dealers and the Customers for the problem when the battery charger stop to work normally.

We have discovered only recently that a small quantity of of the Van build between May and July 2008 by Swift may have a Battery charger

that fail after few days working.

This faulty is not source of any secondary problem, just the leisure battery is not charged and also the control panel don't display

the indication of the battery charger operating.

Because our stock rotation make impossible to identify exactly which van are affected with the potential problem,

we have selected a wide period of time where the chargers may be used and started the operation to recover this problem

immediately jointly with Swift to swap all of them a proactive action.

To prevent this faulty we have decided to swap all the unit mounted on the Van

build between May and July 2008, and still not sold even if we know that this problem is effecting

1 in 30 vehicle so even if a small percentage is involved

we wish to reduce a small as possible this problem.

In any case our UK Service Team Operation is operative to assist all the Swift Dealers

to solve any issue as quick as possible.

To avoid misunderstanding we have to inform all of you that the

indication about the orange transformer isn't the cause of the problem,

we have more than 30.000 Battery chargers with orange transformer inside,

working as should be across Europe.

I'm sure you will appreciate our commune effort and attention for the Swift Customers.

Best Regards

Emiliano Piovesana

President of Nordelettronica S.n.C.

 

[Geraint_374417399]

I have a May 08 Sterling Eccles Ruby which was picked up from its 1st service April 3rd. Last wednesday I fetche dit foprm storgae aas we wer going to devpn onthueyrsady....No electic so I thought, as the symbol was not showing on the control panel. I plugged a hairdyer in and it worked. So 240v ok. Puzzled I eventually traced fault to battery charger.It was not charging.It was the make mentioned here. 1 st thing on Thursday I rang Carafit in Cross Hands,a service only dealer, who serivces my van. They said bring it down. Within 40 mins of arrival, we were on the road again, heading for Devon having had a new chager fitted under warranty. Luckily they had one in stock. It's the same make but a bigger capacity model. thanks to carafit ... no spolit weekend in devon and the sun shone as well!!

 

[Geraint_374417399]

We now know that the affected vans were manufactured between 01/05/08 and 31/08/08, but I must stress not all have the issue. Vans built before or after this date aren't affected by this issue.

We are firstly focussing on our customers with faulty/failed chargers this is to get them up and running, but this is taking longer than we hoped as our supplier is struggling to meet the demand for parts, hence the apology to our customers for letting them down.

Once these customers are sorted then we will move onto the others who havent failed but are at risk. Unfortunatley our hands are tied as we haven't parts and we aren't in full control of this.

We are committed to resolving it with our supplier as quickly as possible.

Andy

my van was built in April 08, before the date you have quoted and the charger has failed

 

[Jack_374416378]

Hamer,

Compensation - I think the new bread of customer is always seeking compensation - it's always there first comment - how much are you going to give me because it's your fault.

We have a new breed of caravanner joining us - these people expect too much from this hand bulit product. Those of us who have been caravanners for many years know that each caravan has characteristics with regard to build quality, minor irritations that can always be resolved, but is not the end of the world.

I was at a caravan dealership last week and couldn't believe the abuse the service receptionist was being subjected to - the complainant was expressing his opionions loud enough so that anyone was sure to hear about the quality of his caravan and how he wanted to reject it. he wanted his money back. It turned out that he had a scratch on a door handle, piece of wallboard covering starting to peal, out of line cupboard door, scratch to a table, door lock sticking, scratch on a mirror and a couple other minor faults. He would not listen to reason that these would be attended to under warranty but insited he wanted to reject the caravan under the Sale of Goods Act not fit for purpose - I ask you where do these people come from.

Us caravannners of a certain age take all this in our stride and simply get on with it and let these minor issues get resolved at the first service.

I suggest that we have people entering our caravanning world who quite simply shouldn't, and should stick to package holidays to Spain. They expect the hand built caravan to be engineered to "car" standards and will not entertain anything but perfect.

The poor dealers have there hands full and I feel so sorry for them to have to put up with these rude, arrogant and unreasonable people who expect the dealer and manufacturer to provide an immediate answer and repair to there problems.

The last season I have overheard so many newbies spouting off about there caravan and who they bought it from and how they can't get things working and how rubbish there were and would never go back there - why don't they read the handbooks, half there problems on usage could be resolved if the had a good read!

If they bought a 15k car you can bet they would sit on there drive for hours reading the handbook and playing with there new toy !

Who would be a dealer.

 

[Heethers]

Well said Jack, l have few problems with my new van but working through them with the dealer, l have an Ace Firestar 08 model which l believe was built Nov 07 so should be o/k with the charger l hope.

Andy would you presume that is the case.

Only been out once upto now but enjoyed every minute regardless of a few problems,all will be sorted of that l am sure.

NigelH

 

[SwiftGroup_374327846]

Hi NGH,

If your van was built in 2007, it will not have the charger issue, mentioned in this thread, as the effected chargers were built between 01/05/08 and 31/08/08.

I would also add, as Nord have stated, if you charger is faulty, it will fail in a matter of hours, so if you have used your charger / van for a few trips, without any issues, it is unlikely to fail.

Thanks,

Ash

 

[Heethers]

Thanks Ash for your quick response.

NigelH