Campbell's Caravans service department
Comments
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I think a lot of the problems with production and service of anything theses days is down to accountants running companies on shoe string budgets ,whereas in years gone by companies were run by the people who understood their product and apreciated their
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We are guilty of brand loyalty. Stuck with same brand for last 20 years. Stuck with same caravan for 20 years! They were built to last 30 years ago. Sounds like British car manufacturers of 1970's. Shoddy workmanship, poor parts, badly run workforce with
little quality control, buying a good one is a lottery.0 -
Surely a just in time system relies upon a manufacturer giving a supplier an accurate forecast of demand many weeks months in advance. This is simple if for instance a caravan manufacturer knows stating in 3 months time it is going to produce a 100 units
of a specific type per week for 26 weeks then it can organise to have 100 doors delivered per week for those 26 weeks or 20 per day or what ever.However as an individual victim sorry I mean customer of the caravan industry need a new door that becomes an unpredictable demand and doesnt fit with a JIT system. This is of course not helped by the fact that the dealers / repairers don't seem to have
any sense of urgency And as long as they all stick together then you really have no choice but to wait.Btw the way I can only speak for my experience with Hymer and. Lowdhams the longest I have ever waited for a specific part is about 3 Weeks delivered from Germany.
Creating a fixed production schedule and ordering the parts months in advance is not a JIT system. JIT involves a flexible schedule with parts being ordered, in some instances, only hours before production as the production schedule is not fixed until that
point. This also allows spare parts to be supplied faster. I know this as for many years I supported the parts ordering systems of a certain motor manufacturer in Sundeland who pioneered JIT in the UK0 -
JIT used to be called 'panic management'
More pertinent to caravan manufacture would be 'RFT', StOP', 'DFM', 'QA', 'QC', 'SD&Q', 'VMS', 'TQM', 'POKE YOKE', 'CI'.
Attention to detail, customer focus, bang guns with fixed control, mastic control; would all be useful.
If the recent CC Leisure Vehicle Survey is to be believed, at 23% faults with new caravans is more than a day's production. Is there a 'Big Night Out' effect? ie payday is Thursday each week, out on the pi55, Friday is a washout and takes till Monday lunchtime
to sober upIn combination with decades of acceptance of poor quality little incentive to improve.
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AndyNYorks, like you we frequently operated the JIT system at work, it relies totally on a good reliable supply chain. I've no idea how caravan production systems work, waiting times seem quite long but the same could be said for individual car makers where
attention to detail is a big selling point. I don't think caravans come into this category or a robotics system, are they totally assembled by hand, how much is produced in house, perhaps someone knows? But from what I read on here there certainly seems to
be a quality control problem and delays in aftercare. Is it dealers who lack capacity to improve the situation or are they awash with faulty vans?0 -
I assume the JIT approach falls down occasionally due to unforeseen circumstances. Just as in a supermarket, when a product has been featured on a TV cooking programme, it catches them out and the temporarily out of stock signs go up for a couple of weeks.
On a caravan it might be a faulty batch of taps, battery charger or locker door. If enough go wrong in rapid succession JIT will not cut it.0 -
As an aside, my son's Fiat Ducato motorhome diesel tank split in Poland in May. The village garage obtained a delivery 'forecast' from the U.K. main agent of 6 weeks. The little garage owner, bless 'im, went on eBay on his own initiative and had a new one
in his hands, from the U.K. just 3 days later (extra £20 for 'express' delivery) which was 15% less costly than the U.K. dealer's price. The village garage fitted it the same day it arrived. I've worked in U.K. with many Polish people who I've found extremely
pleasant, reliable and resourceful and could teach many U.K. businesses a thing or two. Where's there's the will there's a way.0 -
One of the reasons why the two clubs are not more pro-active on our behalf could be that dealers, like those mentioned above, advertise in the magazines. Can the clubs afford to lose revenue?
Sorry it is just a lack of guts. PC publishes the results of its surveys each year and despite some pretty bad results for some they still advertise as they have nowhere else to go. Basically they have two clubs and two national magazines to reach owners so they have no alternatives.
Basically the clubs have a membership of several hundred thousand potential customers and are probably stronger than the manufacturers and certainly the odd dealers who advertise if they decided to use their muscle.
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Swift took from april to august to supply parts under warranty, as a jesture of goodwill, but refused to pay for the labour as the van was late for a service. The fact that the problem was known to them and they did not send out a warning letter or recall for faulty parts.
Non of our family will purchase another Swift, thats 3 customers they have lost.
If the caravan was faulty then you still have a claim against the dealer under the Sale of Goods Act or Consumer Protection regulations depending on the date of purchase. The late service was irrelevant and the dealer and Swift know it but seem to have fooled your daughter. Might still be worth pointing out the provisions of the relevant act and threatening a small claims summons though.
I had an identical problem a few years ago with a Bailey van and a dealer in the West Midlands. They were not interested until I had the van inspected by an assessor who confirmed it was a manufacturing fault and the late service was irrelevent. After a letter threatening legal action I received a phone call from the dealer asking when I would be bringing the van in for the repair. I told him I would bring it in when I received a letter from him stating that the repair would be carried out at no cost to me. After the repairs were carried out(complete new back panel which Bailey were providing as a goodwill gesture apparently) I traded the van in elsewhere and snce then that dealer has lost the sale of 2 new vans and I would never go back again, not even to buy a fuse, even though they were a 5 minute walk from my house.
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Am I a winner?
8 months for a repair!
I bought a a Lunar Venus I bought from Campbells and had it serviced in January even though it was so new that it's still under warranty damp was found, lot's and lots of damp. That's poor work by Lunar.
Because they have a special relationship with Lunar it only took 10 or so weeks to get the parts and I'm booked in for the job to be done in August. Ohh Happy Day!!
Campeblls seem to have sold more vans than they can maintain and clearly Lunar don't care about their customers.
Even though I have written to Directors of Campbells and Lunar I have had no help.
The Clubs could wake up the industry and dealers easily enough if they campaigned solidly against any big dealer and closed them. That would cause the others to pull their socks up quickly enough.
I'm told that Campbells repair depot is on the site that once was a British car factory, poor service and quality took down the car industry it may very easily take caravans next.
When the vans is fixed I'm considering selling it and giving up, it's just so disheartening.
Regards aamcle
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I sometimes think a good dealership is the way to get things done quickly, even though the manufacturer says 'No'. Our local dealer (Dickinsons of Bradford) pulled out all the stops when we had a problem with our Swift, which was still under warranty. It was dangerous to tow so we had no alternative to take it back to the nearest Alko dealer, rather than the dealer we had bought from, and Dickinsons were faultless in their dealings with Alko and Swift, and dogged in getting things done.
In the end they were so impressed by Swift's reaction to our problem that they became Swift dealers - and we still go back to them seventeen years later, when they remember 'the Speedbird with the faulty axle'.!
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This club of ours seems more intent on changing its name without asking the membership, rather than chasing dealers and manufacturers who leave a lot to be desired! As a couple of people have commented, if the clubs took the lead ON BEHALF of their members, we might get somewhere! If it wasn't for the CL network, we would probably leave the club as we haven't seen them do much for the membership!
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The club has often said it is not a lobbying organisation then took great delight in telling us that it was down to there lobbying efforts that the caravan MOT proposal had been sidelined.
The real reason is the club has no desire to tackle their advertisers.
PS - a good liar has to have a good memory
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