Campervan conversion company failing to rectify snagging faults, what can we do to threaten them?

Chris_derby

Hi,

We purchased a campervan from a conversion company (they sourced and converted the van) just over a year ago. We've had so many snagging issues since day 1 of owning the camper such as paintwork defects, electrical problems due to them trapping cables and causing us to breakdown while we were on holiday, leaking water tank, creaking pop top roof, and various other things. The camper has been back to the converters 5 times within a year and on more than one occasion the camper has been returned with new addition faults such as scratched flooring, badly scratched paintwork from when they replaced the roof, over spray paintwork defects and also returning the van in a horrendous state full of workshop dust etc.

The reason why the snagging has taken so long is because the company have used so many excuses when it comes to getting our problems such as moving premises, factory floods, Covid, sickness of staff, staff leaving etc. They always have excuses ready but the real reason is because they focus on getting as many new vans out the door as they can and they don't have time to look after existing customers.

We were assured by the company that our camper was finally sorted a few weeks ago, however the creaking pop top roof has now returned this week and is worse than its ever been. We are now at a point where we have to contact the company again to get the roof issue rectified again. This will be the 6th time the van has had to go back in just over a year and we are very reluctant to let them have our van again.

So we're currently constructing an email to inform them we still have problems and we are very unhappy. We feel like we need to threaten them with legal action somehow as we don't seem to be getting anywhere with getting our issues sorted and they don't seem to be taking us seriously. What can we actually do at this stage, can we go to trading standards to make a complaint that they are failing to sort our snagging issues? What would the possible outcomes be if we did this? We also feel we are due compensation as we have had to pay out all fuel costs, time, inconvenience and wear & tear on our camper for all the previous 5 occasions it has already had to go back. The company is located 1.5 hours away from us.

If anyone can give any advise what we can do that would be great, thanks.

JJ_Egan

LBA  letter before action , google for templates .

Alderbank

Chris_derby said:

...can we go to trading standards to make a complaint that they are failing to sort our snagging issues?
What would the possible outcomes be if we did this? 

You can go to Trading Standards and if they have enough similar complaints they might investigate for unfair trading or illegal business activity but the outcome would be prosecuting or closing them down, neither of which would be any use to you.

As Citizen's Advice says, 'Trading Standards can take businesses to court or stop them operating, but they won’t help you fix your problem - for example, they can’t help you get a refund.

mobileron

Social media can help you ,imagine people wanting to have there van refitted, seeing reports there fitting is poor.