Renting vs buying a motor home for a short term (3 month) trip

[Barry West]

My wife and I have just returned to Australia after a 3 month motorhome trip around the UK and Ireland. Before heading across I researched the option of buying vs renting and discovered that it should be better to buy than rent so long as we could lock in a buy back price (approx 50% cheaper). So I contacted a number of dealers from Sydney and found that not all would consider a buy back agreement. However I did find some and we followed up with site visits once we landed in England. We finally chose CamperUK in Lincoln which is only a few hours travel from London where we were based. They had a wide range of vans which were all very well presented and the price differentials (our buy price and the repurchase price) were all reasonable. However I was still a little concerned as I had read stories from people who had tried the buy/buyback option and had a bad experience when it came to the buyback part of the arrangement. I am happy to report I had no such issue. CamperUK, and Neil Holt (the guy we dealt with) were thoroughly professional throughout and in fact gave us advice and support during our journey when we had a little 'bingle' in Devon.

 

So if you can find a dealer that you are confident you can trust, the buy/buyback option is far and away a better financial proposition. You will also find that when you buy a van you can expect far more and better features than you will get in a rental van. We were also lucky that the Australian dollar fell significantly during our time away so we actually got more $AU back than expected for the English pounds received when we resold to CamperUK. So it was more than a 50% saving on the rental option.

[Tracker]

Glad you had a good experience Barry and it leads me to wonder if similar guaranteed buyback schemes are available in Australia?