Paying a garage which hasn’t fixed my car

Herzlos

fred246 said:

I was wondering what would happen to old motorhomes though. A 20 year old motorhome is selling for roughly £20K. So if it breaks down the option is to repair or scrap. Would you scrap something you had just paid £20K on? If anyone on this forum has a problem with a 10 year old car AdrianC will be straight on it. What do you expect? It's 10 years old. Vehicles are scrapped at 14 years. You should expect a 10 year old car to have loads of problems. If people can't fix things themselves there are going to be some expensive repairs I predict.

I suspect a lot of people will be sorely disappointed that they've paid £10k+ for a scrap van, and will then spend a fortune trying to get it back to an MOT state (sunk cost fallacy) before giving up and selling it as a project van for £5k to some other mug. It'll probably end it's life being stripped for parts or used as a shed or glamping pod somewhere.  I've been considering buying one to turn into an office, but most of them are nasty inside.

AdrianC

fred246 said:

I was wondering what would happen to old motorhomes though. A 20 year old motorhome is selling for roughly £20K. So if it breaks down the option is to repair or scrap. Would you scrap something you had just paid £20K on? If anyone on this forum has a problem with a 10 year old car AdrianC will be straight on it. What do you expect? It's 10 years old. Vehicles are scrapped at 14 years. You should expect a 10 year old car to have loads of problems. If people can't fix things themselves there are going to be some expensive repairs I predict.

Is unrealistic to be surprised if a 10-20yo van has issues? Yes, of course.
Is it realistic to expect more comeback against a supplier if that van cost you £20k than if it cost £2k?

We have a damn-near 20yo campervan, a home-brew conversion of a panel van. It was about 8yo when converted, and covered 120k miles before conversion, 25k since. We paid <£5k for it.

A neighbour has recently bought a coachbuilt on the same basic van, but a couple of years older. It has 40k miles on it from new. She paid roughly 3x the price of our van. Hers is (obvs) a much more professional and complete interior.

I know which of the two I expect to give fewer mechanical problems in the next year or two. Some of that is basic DIYability of the owners, obvs. But not all.