Caravan from Hell: How an owner got a full refund, eventually...
If you thought caravanning couldn’t get any worse, imagine spending close to six figures and being stuck with an irreparable lemon. Here’s how one unlucky grey nomad couple beat the caravan industry.
Not only are caravans hideously expensive, poorly insulated, cramped and cumbersome boxes on wheels, they can also be the promiser of nomadic ambitions coming true out on the open road.
Unfortunately for Bill and Deb Hoskin, theirs would prove to be far from the caravan of their dreams by instead being a leaky interminable defective plastic box.
This is the saga of the Hoskins versus their dealer Hinterland Motorhomes (download here>>) in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT). The caravan in question is an Avida Topaz multi-terrain Caravan which is just shy of $98,000 - and on paper it's a very impressive caravan - as hard as it is to believe such words coming from me.
However, after multiple return trips to the dealer to get it fixed, unsuccessfully, and a final brush-off turns the tide on their showdown, five and a half years later they finally got a full refund under Australian Consumer Law. Is that not an example of the system working at optimal efficiency? (That was sarcasm.)
This caravan is a decent size, where you’re not sitting on the toilet with your legs half in the shower and within arm’s reach of the dining table while the family eats their meal as you eject your former breakfast. This is a proper Taj Mahal, so to speak.
You look at the specs on the website and it is very well equipped. The customer service on the other hand, couldn’t be further from the illustrious claims made in Avida’s 9-minute promotional video with high production values, boasting about how their:
industry-leading single piece sandwich panels ensures strength longevity and sealing…
Oh really? they also say that the roof is:
glued, screwed and fully waterproofed
I'd suggest that the only people who were screwed here were the Hoskins, but only for five and a half years. In any case, fate is not without a sense of irony with this one.
There’s something of a gulf between these claims and the experience Mr & Mrs. Hoskin went through, I think you’d agree.
The Hoskins took delivery of their Topaz in February of 2017, and after numerous return trips to the dealer to fix the leaking roof, repairs which failed, they finally got the result they deserved from the beginning.
Watch the full report to understand just how badly the Hoskins were treated and how blatantly obvious it was that their Topaz was more like fool’s gold than some shining gem of the caravan industry it was sold to them as.
This case is a perfect example of why I say the caravan and motorhome industry is the wild wild west of consumer law. Made much worse by COVID because everybody who would otherwise have traveled internationally or just gotten on plane to go somewhere within out shores, instead, these many additional people bought caravans.
Not only did they wait for months and months because production was maxed out and supply was high, but you might also assume some corners could have been cut as businesses tried to stay afloat or even just to maximise profit in a booming market - whatever.
But there's certainly going to be a glut of the portable-toilets in the used market for years to come, thanks to this blip in sales.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigated the caravan and motorhome industry after a bulk of complaints. You can read the full New Caravan Retailing report here >>
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