Happy New Year and computer problems

[Guest Sylvia Burman-Hunt]

Just testing out the new computer as the e-mail won't send to anyone, can receive OK. Have missed visiting the Forum during November and December as hard drive collapsed so no computer for a few weeks. Catching up now on Christmas wishes, New Year wishes and all the planning the new season news. Nice to be back in the land of the motorcaravanner. Apropos of nothing, I sold a 1997 Autosleeper Flair privately almost two years ago for about 14 grand, and notice that it is currently on a dealership listing in MMM for (initially) £21,000, now come down a bit but still astronomical. It was a very good van and low mileage but that is a shocking dealer mark-up. C'est la vie.

[Guest PeteC]

Our problem is that while emails are going out We are not receiving any Our son uses a different computer and email He knows people who have attempting to contact him As far as dealer mark up when we were looking round to buy or MH we went to a dealer near Preston selling Hymers We found one that we liked ut it had 21,000 miles on the clock - the sales lady? told us that it was NEW and 21,000 was the "Delivery mileage" SO we looked at the front and it had two number plates the top one said "MADISONS" round the back it was "W" registered We didnt look at any more vans in their display after that

[Guest Mel B]

We had a similar experience to PeteC some years ago, partly due to the dealer's annoying habit of taking off the original number plates and putting on their own name plates. We saw a Herald we liked, we read the info sheet and checked the details with the sales rep and were told it was only a couple of years old - for the money it didn't seem bad value so we were quite prepared to do a deal after another viewing. However, upon looking at the driver's door I saw some rust appearing around the window, funny I thought seeing as it was only 2 years old??? It transpired that it was actually 6 years old and they had 'mistakenly' put the wrong date down on the info sheet. It was annoying since we could easily have done the deal and the sales rep hadn't bothered to check the details when we originally asked. Even when I questioned the 'rust problem' I was told that this can happen sometimes, they took some convincing to go and check the registration document! Needless to say we walked away.

[Guest Derek Uzzell]

In 1997 an A-S Flair was about £25K, so the trader's £21K original asking-price represents just 16% depreciation across 8 years. (Not bad for a motorhome based on a small Ford Transit van.) Sylvia's £14K would be much more realistic. To put this in perspective, at this weekend's Shepton Mallet show there were several examples of the latest RHD La Strada Pronto panel-van conversion on the Transit LWB chassis - the on-the-road price was from £24K.