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Truma? german!?? I dont belieive it!

they must have bought it off E-bay!

2 out of 2 Truma failures is rather a lot for one van, hein?

Geoff

This kind of stuff really gets my back up...

Honest, hard-working folk, grafting to save money up for something new.  And you're "repayed" by getting faulty merchandise!  There can't be anything more disheartening than that.

Anyway, I'll get back down off my high horse now...!

I think it's about time that a consumer satisfaction survey was in place for caravans - similar to the JD Power/Top Gear surveys that are done for cars.  Does anyone think that that would buck the caravan manufacturer's ideas up?

Good idea - that would put some of them to shame huh.

Ali

2 years ago we bought an elddis sunseeker and that had a really bad PDI and had quite a list of problems with it.  However our new caravan, a sterling windward has no problems touch wood and is immaculately finished to a very high standard and the dealer couldn't do enough for us.

I think it's down to luck.  i bought a brand new car last year and i have had no end of problems.

Jaydee,
If I was you I'd insist they do a FULL PDI and provide you with a checklist before you pay them a penny. I think to some extent they are a victim of their own success, and I think their customer focus is not as good because of this - it was a completely different story 25 years ago when we bought our first van from them at their small dealership in Blackhall in Edinburgh.

It was obvious that they were doing the PDI as we were handing over the money - there was some frantic phone calls to the Alarm company and much twiddling of screwdrivers etc when they suddenly discovered that the alarm didn't work - in fact they had to pinch an alarm unit from another van - I hope it wan't yours! The new alarm was sounding off as we walked across the forecourt to have our van demo.
Incidentally, what a waste of time the demo is - 'this is how the taps work, turn it to the left where the blue marker is to get cold, turn it to the right where the red dot is for hot!'. I had to ask how the alarm worked though and whataver you do dont tell me how to adjust the water pressure of the inboard pump or where I find the damned AV Inputs!
Oh well, all will be revealed tomorrow when the manager appears at my door - he did sound genuinely concerned so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

By the way, dont get me wrong this is a fantastic van, if only everything worked!

If it was Julie that sold you the van, tell her you were talking to me - it might stir them into action

Derek.

Said it before but I will say it again .... after 'issues' ourselves and hearing of many other people having 'issues' we drive past Knowepark (less than 10 miles from our house) and head for Perthshire Caravans 60ish miles away!

If I was looking for a 'van the Duncans of Waterloo sold I would be happy to buy from them too as we have had good service from them in the past.

Thought I would just update you on progress.
One of the Knowepark partners came to my house, went through all the problems, agreed with me the van wasn't right, took the caravan away, researched and fixed(where possible) all the problems - they even moved the reading light to the corner where Swift should have placed it in the first place (I understand that Swift have now mounted this reading light right in the centre - who is it that designs these caravans?  do they have a brain?).
They then delivered the caravan back to me,  went through everything they had done to the van and made sure I was happy before leaving
So only problem now is the noisy water pump, which seems to be a design problem which they will address with Swift when they return from the summer shutdown. They researched this as much as possible and found that by removing the filter from the end of the filler pipe, the noise reduced significantly. However it does seem that from reading other forum topics that the problem is with the Sureflo pump combined with the whale inlet pipe.

I haven't used the van again yet, but I have to say that the service I have received since complaining has been first class - what a pity they hadn't sorted all these issues out when the van was PDI'd.

Using the van in a weeks time - watch this space.

Derek