Keith Gooden
Welcome back to the Motorhome Matt Podcast. I’m Keith Gooden, and with me, our resident expert, the man the whole thing’s named after – it’s Matt Sims.
Matt Sims
Hi, Keith, how are you?
Keith Gooden
I’m fine. And you?
Matt Sims
Yes, really well. Really well.
Keith Gooden
Excellent. Well, you’ve been very busy over the last few weeks as we’ve been hearing on these podcasts. In February, you went to the NEC, to the first motorhome show of the season. How was it?
Matt Sims
It was absolutely brilliant. Yes, it was great to be back at a live show, seeing friends, colleagues and customers.
Keith Gooden
And plenty of people there, even though it was ticketed only, in the market to buy a motorhome. Now we’ve talked in the past about the difficulties of getting new stock or even used motorhomes from dealers these days. But what is the best way of buying it?
Because I’ll tell you what, I went onto a very famous auction site the other day, and people were flogging motorhomes. And if I had £15,000 or £20,000 maybe I could have bought one. Or I could have gone to a dealer and spent a lot more. Now, I know what you’re going to recommend. But why are you going to recommend it?
Matt Sims
You say I’m going to recommend buying from a dealer. Well, what’s interesting – I’m guessing you’re talking about eBay.
Keith Gooden
All I can say is a very well known auction site. I’ll see you in court.
Matt Sims
So there are lots of motorhomes listed online privately for sale. And there are lots of scams out there, that’s very true. Buying from a dealer, you do get some peace of mind, that’s for sure. But what’s interesting is the pricing between a private offering and one from a dealer is these days, at the moment anyway, not really very different. There’s such demand in the marketplace and a lack of supply, that often the prices are the same and private sellers can command a much higher price than perhaps they could normally.
Keith Gooden
Now, your worldwide audience might not know this, we have covered it in past podcasts. But what is the reason that there is no difference in price between a brand new one off of a forecourt – if you can get one – and a secondhand one?
Matt Sims
Ah, well, that’s a different issue. I’m talking about a secondhand one that’s from a dealer and from a private seller. The new ones and the secondhand ones are indeed the same prices at the moment, particularly one or two years old. And that’s just because the new ones don’t exist. There are huge delays in the supply chain. There are lots of issues with microchips, wiring looms, components that go into them being built and the throughput of the products are slow, slower than normal. There are big delays on when they’re being supplied.
And also there’s massive demand. So where previously a dealer might have three or four models exactly the same on the forecourt, now they’ve got none. There’s no duplicate stock around, there’s a queue of people waiting to buy them as a result of coming back out of COVID and lockdown. A motorhome or caravan holiday is deemed to be a very sensible and safe choice for the family.
Keith Gooden
So in this podcast, you’re going to solve my problems for me or go some way to doing that if I want to buy that motorhome?
Matt Sims
Well, we’ll certainly try. So there are lots of benefits of buying privately. Sometimes you can get a better deal. But there are equally, I believe, more benefits of buying from a dealer. And it’s about peace of mind, particularly if you’ve never done this before. You really need to know what you’re looking at and the dealer’s going to fix a lot of issues for you.
Keith Gooden
Talking of dealers, you’ve been speaking to some people over the last few weeks, haven’t you? Getting out there into the industry and talking about this very thing.
Matt Sims
I have. Up the road from our offices is a dealership called JMT Leisure in North Somerset. And I spoke with Jez, the owner, about some of his views on buying privately versus buying from a dealer.
Jez Bray, owner of JMT Leisure
Jez Bray
There are probably a number of reasons why we believe it’s obviously better to buy from a dealer. What we tend to find is a lot of people don’t actually know which vehicle it is that they want. We quite often will see customers visit us at JMT with a particular vehicle of interest and they actually end up buying a different vehicle. So obviously by visiting the dealer, typically you’ll have a lot more vehicles to view and obviously a bit more choice as well.
We’re a family run business and we’ve been trading for over 10 years now. We have quite a niche area in the market. We tend to deal with vehicles priced from around about £10,000 topping out at about £30,000. So we’re very much the newbie market as we call it. Quite a lot of our customers have not had motorhomes before and they want to enter the market at a level that’s not too expensive for them, but they can obviously enjoy it.
So we have anything up to about 30 vehicles in stock ranging through that price range. We do both van conversion vehicles, vans that are converted right up to big coachbuilts and A-classes right the way through that price range. So there’s really something for everyone.
Vehicle preparation
Matt Sims
So one of the benefits of buying from a dealer, we were talking about earlier, is the preparation that you carry out, which is not something you can rely upon if you’re buying something off of eBay. Tell us a bit about that.
Jez Bray
So if we were to take things back probably a couple of years ago, typically on the private market you could pick up a vehicle quite a bit cheaper than you could from a dealer. That’s certainly changed in recent years. In fact, if we look at the private market, a lot of vehicles are certainly the same price as our vehicles, if not more expensive. And obviously, there are many benefits to buying through a dealer.
Typically a vehicle that we get in, we could spend anything up to £2000 prepping that vehicle, making sure that everything is safe, working correctly, pressure testing gas systems, making sure fridges are working and so on, carrying out a full recent MOT with no advisories. So the customer has peace of mind that that vehicle is the best it can be when they collect it.
Obviously, in the private market, you have nothing like that. It could have had an MOT a couple of months ago. Some MOT garages are different to others. You could in fact find a very expensive bill when you put that in for an MOT when it’s due the following year. And likewise with the habitation side of the vehicle. The cost of a breach for your house in Currys is about £100. You’re looking at anything up to £700, £800 for a motorhome.
Obviously, by buying through a dealer, we ensure that everything is working correctly as it should do so you’re not going to get any nasty surprises. New boilers, fridges, some very expensive items there.
Warranties
Matt Sims
And what happens if something does go wrong a few months into ownership? You mentioned a fridge. Obviously, it’s a mechanical-electrical item – they can go wrong. We all know that. And on a vehicle, I noticed some of the vehicles you’ve got here are 17 to 20 years old, some with original components in of course, or many of them are. What happens if a fridge goes wrong? The customer has some recourse because they’ve bought from a dealer, right?
Jez Bray
Yes, that’s correct Matt. As a dealer, we actually offer a 6 month in house warranty. You do actually have recourse back to the dealer for quite a bit longer than that. And that’s obviously one of the benefits of buying from a dealer. Our warranties are in-house. So we actually deal directly with the customer. If there is an issue, we get them to call us first, we’ll come and collect their vehicle from them, bring it back here and repair it.
The nature of a motorhome, they may well be away in Scotland, for example. What we would recommend there is find someone local that can fix the problem. And we will either contribute to that fix or we will pay the bill in full. Now, obviously buying privately, you’re not going to have any of those things with a private sale.
Rather than buying in warranties, we tend to keep it in house. It’s a nice easy phone call, no call centres, and we get the issue done and dusted as quickly as possible. You’re right in what you say, yes, our vehicles are anything up to 25 years old. I’d like to say that every vehicle we send out is problem-free. That’s not the case. Quite often when vehicles start getting used, hoses pop off, electrical connections fall off, but our customers have peace of mind that they can bring it back to us and it will be fixed under our warranty.
JMT Leisure’s online presence
Matt Sims
Thank you ever so much. So where can people look at the motorhomes that you’ve got for sale at the moment?
Jez Bray
We have quite a big web presence. Our main website, which is www.jmtleisure.co.uk, has all our stock on there. You’ll also find us on all the major vehicle retail sites such as Auto Trader, Trade It and so on. So literally a Google search will find us.
Recourse from a dealer
Keith Gooden
So that’s what Jez had to say. I’m not confused anymore. But I still don’t really understand why I’ve got to spend maybe a bit more money buying from a dealer rather than buying privately. I know you said there isn’t a lot of difference between the two prices, depending on who you buy from. But what are the advantages of buying from the dealer? Can you just boil it down for me?
Matt Sims
Really, I guess it’s about recourse. If something goes wrong, you can take it back. And if need be, you could park it outside and wait for them to turn up. But you can take it back. You also get a warranty, some peace of mind and also preparation of the vehicle. The vehicle has been bought by the dealer and they are then going to go through every component and operation of the vehicle in terms of tires, the engine running smoothly and so on.
Also the habitation area, the living area. They’re going to check the fridge, the cooker, the gas system, the electrical system, there’s going to be safety checks and we call it a habitation check in the industry. And they are going to carry that out for you. So you know all those checks have been done. And the motorhome is going to be presented to you working fully and fully operational.
Things, though, go wrong. They are mechanical, electrical, something’s going to go wrong. You’re going to drive basically a house down the road and something’s going to rattle loose. If you can’t fix it yourself, you would be able to take it back to the dealer and they would – if they’re a reputable dealer certainly – want to work with you to resolve it and sort it.
Keith Gooden
So even though I might be penny-pinching and trying to get a bargain from buying privately, actually when you buy from the dealer – depending on what they’re selling – they do have relationships which then allow them to bring what you’re buying from them secondhand up to I suppose a nearly new spec. Am I right in thinking that?
Matt Sims
Yes. Secondhand was never going to be brand new. But certainly, it’s going to be at a higher spec. And of course, if you want to buy a brand new one, you can only really buy that from a dealer. So you would have no choice but to go to a dealer to buy it. And again, they’re going to be fully checked, fully prepped. And if something goes wrong, even on a brand new one they do, you’ve got some recourse. You could take it back.
Keith Gooden
Well, you’re here to make up your own mind about what you buy and when you buy it. Matt, you’ve been talking to someone else in the industry fairly local to you in the West Country. Who’s that?
Matt Sims
I spoke to a good old friend of mine, Wayne. Wayne is the managing director of Chelston Motorhomes, based in Wellington, just south of Taunton. They’re one of the bigger motorhome dealers in the country, selling a wide range of motorhomes both new and used. And I caught up with Wayne on what was a very busy day in his dealership.
Wayne Kavanagh, managing director of Chelston Motorhomes
Wayne Kavanagh
We’re family-owned and family-run. We started trading in Wellington back in 1973 as a petrol station. The family sold a chicken farm on Bodmin Moor and moved up north to Somerset. We started selling as many pasties as we did litres of diesel and petrol. In the late ’70s, started VW campers and sold those. And it’s spiralled and got massively out of control since then. So we started with Bürstner and Auto-Trail in the early ’80s.
The figurehead of the family business day to day and who we report to is granddad at 97, who’s still causing trouble on a daily basis, telling me all the things I’ve done wrong in my life. And then my father in law and his brother, who along with granddad are the shareholders. I’m the custodian of the business. It will get passed on to the future generations of the family.
Matt Sims
And that’s one of the lovely things about it. It’s a genuine family business, isn’t it?
Wayne Kavanagh
Yes. So Forest and his wife are dealing with the hiring side of the business. I deal with the day to day, my wife does all our website photography, and Alexa our daughter probably in a few years will start doing a bit of Saturday work for pocket money in the shop. Tony’s wife, Lorna, does our HR and that kind of stuff.
So it is, yes. We’re very, very hands-on, very visible. And I suppose I have the great privilege of hiring new members of staff, and you talk about how we are a family business, and we’re all in this together. So as a managing director, if I need to wash a van during the summer, because we’re under the pump, then I’ll spend a week valeting. And I won’t ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn’t do. And therefore, we just all roll our sleeves up together.
And over the last 18 months, 24 months, we’ve achieved what we’ve achieved because of the 45, 50 members of staff who are all in this together. We are one big family. We fall out as families do, we argue with each other, but then we make up and get on with it. And it’s nice. It’s not corporate.
The banks and stuff see us all as SMEs and this is leisure. We have to be relaxed and we all have a common goal. We want customers to be happy. So whether someone is buying something or needing a service or getting something repaired, it’s how we get to the end as quickly as we can for them.
Matt Sims
Wonderful. And in a brilliant pastime, we all love. And you sell new motorhomes as well as used, don’t you?
Wayne Kavanagh
Yes, yes. So we sell Auto-Trails, Swifts, Bürstners, Carados, Carthagos, Adrias, we’ve got Laika coming on board towards the end of this year. And then used as well, wherever it goes, whether it’s part exchange vehicles coming in, or to things that we buy. Because people approach us to say, ‘Will you buy my motorhome off me?’ So yes, that takes us anywhere. And it’s typically £30,000 to… Carthagos can get well into six figures.
Wayne on private sellers versus dealerships
Matt Sims
We’ve been talking about the perils and merits of buying from a dealer and buying privately. Now, you’re buying motorhomes privately all the time. You’re taking them in part exchange, which of course is something when you’re buying from a dealer you can do, part exchange your existing motorhome, which you can’t do privately. What are your thoughts on this?
And for our listeners, somebody might be listening now who’s thinking, ‘I’m going to go and buy a motorhome.’ There used to be a big price difference, didn’t there, between private and dealer and you’re telling me that’s not the case anymore?
Wayne Kavanagh
If we rewound 2, 3 years, you look at – well, what are the best places to go and buy any leisure vehicle or car or anything – you start looking at the Auto Traders, the eBays of this world and Gumtree and stuff. If you look at the listing sites, and we use the listing sites to price vehicles, you would typically say buying off someone’s driveway, you’ve got to beware there is no recourse but you get a saving for doing that. ‘This vehicle is going to be £5,000, £6,000 pounds cheaper than if I bought it from a dealer, but I’ve saved some money. I’ll take on the chin anything that goes wrong.’ You’ve almost got that in your back pocket ready to fix any problems.
Now you look at it, and whether you’re buying a vehicle from a dealer or from a private individual, the prices are the same. And you look at it and you say, ‘Well, why would you buy something from someone’s driveway?’ Okay, hands up, I’m a dealer, I’ve got an interest in this. But if you come and buy from a dealer, you know that you’re going to get a warranty. On a used vehicle, we’ll give everyone a 1-year warranty. With a new vehicle, you’re going to get at least 2 years from the manufacturer. You’ll get a water ingress that goes far past that 2 year period, between 6 and 10 years depending on the manufacturers. And if there’s a problem, we’ll fix it.
Particularly with used vehicles, we see so many part exchanges coming into us, that people don’t know. They just come and say, ‘Yes, it’s fine. There aren’t any problems.’ For one reason or another, it might not have been serviced in the last year or 2 years. And then it comes to us and it’s got water ingress problems, or there’s body damage, and all that kind of stuff. Well, buying from a dealer, we fix all that. So you’re going to get the vehicle in as good a condition as it can be for the age of the vehicle.
Now, if we’re selling a vehicle that’s 10 years old, it’s not going to be brand new. It can’t be made brand new. But it won’t have any dampness in it. All the fixtures and fittings will be working, your oven is going to be gas safety checked. All those things you just don’t get when you’re buying privately. But that comes at a cost to us. As I say we’ve got 45 members of staff and 2 workshops that are just constantly looking after customers.
Private buyer advice
Matt Sims
And if somebody is thinking, ‘Well, I want to buy this privately,’ because maybe it’s the only one out there, there isn’t another one in the dealership. Of course, as we record this in March 2022, that’s been a reality, a shortcoming of some stock and some models. So if someone finds it out there privately, what would your advice be to them?
Wayne Kavanagh
If you are looking at a private buyer, you need to be crawling all over the service history. A vehicle needs to have had habitation inspections done every year. Now, they might not be done by the dealer who supplied the vehicle. There are a number of great workshops out there that are part of the NCC Approved Workshop Scheme. That basically means that they get inspected. The training that they’ve given to their staff and the qualifications mean that they are able to provide a good service, which is recognised by the trade body. But that needs to happen every year.
And you need to be looking for water ingress, you need to make sure that it’s had the checks. If someone hasn’t been servicing their vehicle, then it’s not alarming, but you want to make sure that actually, ‘Well, I’m interested in buying this vehicle, but I want you to go and have a habitation inspection done.’ You want to be aware. Who are the people that have been doing the habitation work? Are they approved? Are they familiar with this kind of vehicle?
So with a Carthago, all the Germans, they want the vehicle serviced by people in the dealer network because we are experienced and used to the vehicles. If someone’s got a £150,000 vehicle, and they’re getting it serviced by a mobile engineer, they might be brilliant, but they aren’t experienced.
Matt Sims
And also not informed by the likes of Carthago of any recall or issues that they need to be aware of.
Wayne Kavanagh
Yes. And there’ll be things that we will pick up, particularly with a new vehicle. Those first and second-year habitations are key. We organise them within the warranty windows to make sure that if we do discover problems – because we will find things that you won’t be aware of, ‘That’s not working right, that needs changing, this needs doing,’ – we just can put the warranty claims in and we can get the parts, get them in, get them fitted and get you on your way to make sure that we’re maintaining the vehicle in as good a condition as possible.
For our Chelston owners, we do service plans. Particularly, you’ll know, workshop programming is a tricky old thing to get right. And the beauty of a service plan is when a customer’s buying it, we know we’re going to book you in the diary in 12 months time. You’ve got your slot, you’re in and we’ll make sure that we’re keeping your warranty and the water ingress warranty up to date because we’re servicing the vehicle at the right time.
Matt Sims
And that’s key, isn’t it? There’s a window which has to be serviced in for the manufacturer to honour that water ingress warranty. If you’re 6 months late getting it done, the warranty’s off.
Wayne Kavanagh
They will try their best, bless them. And that makes absolute sense. They’re very clear with their terms and conditions and again, part of the reason for buying from a dealer is that handover process. The first thing is a physical, ‘This is how everything works. These are the things you need to be aware of, then in paperwork, this is how the warranty works. This is the process. This is what a manufacturer expects of you. This is what we expect of you.’
And we’re all in this together to keep you motorhoming and keep you having a nice experience. Because how do we build and sustain our business? It’s by having customers who are happy with us, so next time they are thinking about changing, instead of going on to the internet and looking at every motorhome under the sun, they come to our website, or they give their salesman a call, or whatever to say, ‘Look, I fancy a change. What have you got?’
If that’s a case of saying, ‘Well, actually, you’ve got an Adria and you’d like another Adria, well, we can get you one. And it’s going to be this time,’ and we do a deal.
Part exchanges
Matt Sims
So on that point, then, you’ve been busy taking in a lot of part exchanges over the last few months. A lot of them are really quite new, where people have gone out and bought a motorhome, maybe from you, maybe from elsewhere. And so they are 1 to maybe 3 years old. And that comes for you with some challenges.
And my reaction was, ‘Oh, that’s great,’ thinking your forecourt is going to look wonderful with very new motorhomes that are secondhand for sale. But there’s a catch for you, isn’t there, and a risk. So at the risk of crystal ball gazing, tell me – what’s that risk?
Wayne Kavanagh
Because of the restriction of supply, and this has affected all markets, not just motorhomes, there’s been a bit of a slowdown and we’re not getting the vehicles when we hoped we would get them. But we are underwriting and agreeing on contracts with customers for part-exchange valuations. And the vehicles are arriving 6, 7 months down the line.
Matt Sims
The point here is that the part exchange happens when the new vehicle arrives, isn’t it? That’s the risk.
Wayne Kavanagh
In effect. You come in to us today. And I sat with a customer yesterday afternoon, rolling my sleeves up and selling motorhomes. It was a little treat for everyone to watch me in action. It’s that case of saying, ‘Well, you want a Bürstner Lyseo. We sold them all for this year. You want this particular model. We are probably looking at the turn of the year, Q1 next year for it to land.’
Now, this customer’s got a part exchange. So we’re sat down and we’re saying ‘Well, what do we think is the retail value and therefore the part exchange allowance that we can offer in that deal?’ But we’re having to do it in potentially 10, 11, or 12 months’ time. The world is a very strange place at the moment. We’ve been through COVID. We thought we’d just got to the end of the COVID restrictions anyway. And we’re starting to see some sense of normality.
At the NEC show, we were so excited about being able to get back to doing what we do. 100,000 people all there looking at motorhomes. But we’re underwriting a long way out. And then we’ve got what’s going on in poor old Ukraine. What’s the world going to look like in 12 months? But we are saying, ‘We will give you this much money for your motorhome.’ If the manufacturers start doing crazy things with prices, then we are going to have to talk to you about what the cost of the vehicle is. But the part exchange, we’re stuck on it. It is what it is.
So we have an experienced team. We have a view as to where we think the market is going to be in 12 or 24 months, and we have to have faith in our gut. Every deal is discussed in the group. If someone’s got a theory or an idea, we will always listen to it and say, ‘Actually, is the strategy that we think is out there going to come true?’
When to buy?
Matt Sims
But this is industry-wide as well. And we are a close-knit industry. Lots of us are friends – even you’re mine, sometimes. But we do talk behind closed doors and those concerns are shared, aren’t they? But for the consumer – there are people saying, ‘Well, I’m going to wait.’ Motorhomes have gone up in price. That’s a given, we all know that. But they think, ‘Well, I’m going to wait until the market’s flooded with used stock and the prices come down.’
I say, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ If you’re thinking of buying a motorhome, buy it now. When’s a good time to buy? Now! Why wait? And actually, from a commercial point of view and a value of motorhome point of view, what you’re saying is this inflated price is kind of here to stay. Is that fair?
Wayne Kavanagh
Yes, I think so. I think if you look at pre-COVID, we would always have had over 100 motorhomes for sale in our yard, new and used. We’ve got a 4-acre site, and people occasionally will come in and say, ‘Have you been robbed?’
Matt Sims
I was admiring the tarmac myself.
Wayne Kavanagh
It’s a lovely bit of tarmac. And what we’re going to do with it, we’re trying desperately to build stockholding to get those numbers back up again. The new vehicles we’re pre-selling before they come in, which is fantastic. It’s going to take us in reality 12, 18 months to get ourselves back up to having a really nice strong stock holding.
And this is where the buying process has changed. I think customers have generally become more educated – ‘I know what I want, where can I get it from?’ But I think we’re going to have to take a step backwards and start saying, ‘Well, you’re going to have to almost buy your dealer.’ And you say, ‘Well, actually, I live in the southwest of England. These guys have been doing it a long time, or whoever. They’re local to me.’ Go in and engage with the sales teams.
No one wants to talk to the salesman. Not even I want to talk to the salesman sometimes. Go and talk to people and say, ‘This is what I want. This is what I think I need.’ Because a lot of the part exchanges we’ve seen, specifically from the NEC show in February, is people who’ve bought something, jumped in, and it’s not working for them.
We’ve all been doing this a long time. And we’ve seen the pitfalls that people make, and you’ve got to buy the motorhome that fits your lifestyle. ‘We’re going to go and do trips in the southwest of England. And we’re going to use it 5, 6, 7 times a year, long weekends, whatever.’ So don’t go and buy the great grand tourer for going off to France or Spain for 6 weeks in the summer. Because you will come unstuck when you start coming down to our neck of the woods, as we all know with the roads.
Buy for now. And motorhomes typically don’t depreciate like cars, so it’s not going to be the financial armageddon that it is with handing back in a nearly new car. But talk to a salesman and say, ‘Well, this is what I think I want.’ Because we’ve got multiple brands, we’ve got inbound part exchanges, we know what’s coming that isn’t available on the website. And we could say, ‘You think you want an Auto-Trail V-Line. Have you considered a Swift Select or a Bürstner Lyseo or an Andrea Twin?’
So there are lots of options to go and say, ‘Well, we can get you one of these here and one of these here. We’ve actually got one of that over there.’ We’re all collaborating together to say, ‘Well, this is what you want. Here are some options. Does that work for you?’
Matt Sims
If customers do that, that’s compounding your stocking problem further, isn’t it? If you’re saying to them, ‘We’ve got this coming in in part exchange in 3 weeks’ time. Be here Thursday at 3 o’clock, it’ll be ready for you to view,’ your tarmac is going to remain tarmac, presumably.
Wayne Kavanagh
As a dealer, as long as sales are happening. We’ve got used to now only having 25, 30 vans on the yard. My soul is prepared for that to be the case for the rest of the year. The salesmen are a bit nervous about it, but we know we’ve got the part exchanges coming through. And we are proactive if we know we’ve got stuff that’s about to land. We are getting it out there.
But the sales boys have all got their lists of people they’ve spoken to, to say, ‘This customer wants something like this. What’s coming in?’ We’re in unprecedented times, and whether this is an after-sales issue or a sales issue, we’re all having to work together to actually achieve the aim.
Matt Sims
And I know at Chelston Motorhomes, you are very established at tracking customer interest. When people walk in and have that engaged conversation, you will keep hold of their name, and phone number, and you will ring them. I suppose if someone’s listening to this with a motorhome that they want to change, now is a good time to come and talk to you as a dealer about selling it to you or part-exchanging it as well. Because your appetite for the stock is strong.
Wayne Kavanagh
When it comes to someone wanting to give up motorhoming or to take a break or whatever, then we will always look at whether it is a straight cash purchase? Is it that you turn up, we give it a quick once over, we send you a bank transfer, job done? Or is it a, ‘I’d like to work with you. And I’d like to put it under a sale return,’ because we’re not using our money, we’ll give you a little bit more when we sell the vehicle.
If you come in and say, ‘I want the shiny new motorhome or the used motorhome,’ if it’s something that is a distance out, the question is always asked, ‘When can we have your vehicle?’ Because if we can have it now against a vehicle that’s going to arrive in 6, 7 months, the value of your vehicle today is worth more than it is in 6, 7 months purely because of the time of the year. We’re coming into the season now. So we will pay more in a part exchange valuation for a vehicle that we get early than we will for one down the line.
So it’s very much a case of, again, collaboration – ‘What have you got? Have you got one? If you haven’t got one, fine. If you have, great. When can we have it? What’s it got? And how’s it working?’
Matt Sims
And that’s really interesting and not something I think most listeners would consider would be the experience of working with a dealer. You made a joke about talking to salespeople. You walk into a dealership and you think, ‘I’m just going to get hard sold to.’ That really isn’t the case. I know it’s not the case with Chelston, and in some dealerships, you struggle to get hold of a salesman anywhere, either because they’re busy on their phone or whatever they’re doing.
Chelston Motorhomes’ online presence
Matt Sims
Yes, that’s a really, really interesting insight. It’s been really great to talk to you. Thank you so much for your honesty, being so candid and open. Tell us – how can people get in touch with Chelston and with you to look at the motorhomes that are for sale?
Wayne Kavanagh
Our website is www.chelstononline.co.uk. Everything that’s physical or we know is coming we tend to put on to there. The main telephone number is 01823 662075. If you press Option 1, you come through to sales. We promise not to bite.
Keith Gooden
Wayne Kavanagh from Chelston Motorhomes. One thing about that interview that struck me, Matt, was actually he’s talking about peace of mind, isn’t he? He’s encouraging us, yes to buy from a dealer, but not because it’s necessarily putting profit in his pocket. He doesn’t want you buying privately and then turning up on his doorstep with something which is a bit of a pig in a poke.
Matt Sims
Well, they do have a big workshop, so I’m sure they’d welcome you with open arms. And Wayne’s service team would happily then put the motorhome that you’ve bought through the workshop, and rectify everything. But when you’re a dealer, and I’ve been one, you’re selling into a relationship with the customer. You hope they come back in a year for a service. You may have even offered them a service pack, so you’re expecting them back every year for a service.
And my view was always that the relationship with the customer starts at the minute they drive away. It doesn’t end at that point, that’s just the start of it. And if they’ve got a problem, I would always want them to ring up and ask for our help to fix the problem. And things do go wrong. Things break, whether it’s your own fault, or something’s just broken, it’s a house on wheels. Think of your own bricks and mortar home, how many things break in there all the time? You’re going to drive this one down the road. Something’s going to come off.
So buying from a dealer does give you that safety net and that backup plan. When the time comes that you want to sell it and the dealer has been servicing it for you, it’s a much easier conversation to have with a dealer. They know what they’re going to be buying back if you’re going to part exchange it down the line.
Keith Gooden
Well, just to wrap this up then, for my benefit, because I ask the stupid questions on this podcast. If I’ve got £30,000 or £40,000 in my pocket, it’s a lot of money to me, and I want to spend it wisely. With the state of the market the way it is, there are not a lot of new motorhomes. You can’t go in on the forecourt and point at one and say, ‘I want that one,’ and drive it away. Because of the pandemic, because of the war in Ukraine, because of inflation supply issues, whatever is causing it, those new motorhomes aren’t there on the peg.
So as you’ve said in the past, buying secondhand can actually be just as expensive as buying a brand new one. But the difficulty for me is peace of mind. You said it just now yourself, didn’t you. You could drive it away and a piece could fall off. Ultimately, you’re buying a driving machine. So to me, buying from a dealer does seem the best option. But would I be right in thinking it’s going to cost me a little bit more than buying privately?
Matt Sims
Generally, that’s a rule of thumb. It would normally cost you quite a bit more because the dealer’s got an overhead to cover, the bricks and mortar of the showroom, they’ve got the service team and so on. The way the market is at the moment, the demand is so high that private prices are pretty much the same as prices in a dealership.
The great benefit of buying from a dealer is choice. If you think you know what you want to buy, you could spend half a day walking around all of the models, and you can go from one to another and you can get some real help. Buying privately, of course, you drive hours to go and look at that one. And there’s always that sense, isn’t there – ‘I’ve driven five hours to get here, you’ve got it cleaned for me to look at.’ You feel compelled to buy it. That shouldn’t be the case.
You’re not going to get that in the dealership. They’re going to let you take your time and choose and hopefully, that dealer will work with you to help you make the right choice. I’ve seen so many people go and buy a motorhome and then 6 months later or even sooner, they’re back changing it for something else because they bought the wrong one. Which is why I always say go and try one before you buy one. That’s a really sensible idea.
Keith Gooden
Well, my Latin has never been the greatest, but caveat emptor, buyer beware – always, whoever you’re buying from, whether you’re buying privately or from a dealer. And you might get the bargain of the century from an auction site, or the person you met down the pub. But really, do beware and do consider buying from a dealer.
And don’t paint dealers necessarily as just people who are there to make a profit at any cost. Because one thing I’ve discovered about this industry, is they’re not like that. Word travels quickly.
Matt Sims
Yes, not at all. There are some hard selling characters in the marketplace. Of course, there are. And on the buyer beware thing, if you are buying privately – I was talking to a customer this morning. In fact, they’re going to come on the podcast. They’ve sold the house, they’re off for 3 years having retired. And we’re going to have a great conversation with them. It’s a fantastic story.
But they bought their motorhome at a significant cost privately. He’s been very fortunate – a genuine seller. But my advice to him was, ‘Get the motorhome inspected independently before you purchase it.’ As Wayne said, be all over the service history. It’s down to you to know what you’re buying. And your recourse with that seller will be much harder to pursue if you’ve bought a lemon.
Keith Gooden
And you can actually ask the dealer difficult questions pre-purchase and post-purchase if you have to.
Matt Sims
Absolutely. The dealer will generally be very keen on a long term relationship with you. They want to see you in 6 months or 6 years when you want to change the motorhome because they would like to do a deal with you again.
Keith Gooden
Well, okay, Matt, this has been very enlightening. As we’re recording this today in early spring, the sun is shining. We are down near Weston-super-Mare. I want to get behind the wheel and I want to get driving. People should resist it. Use your head, not your heart.
Matt Sims
Absolutely. Take your time, be considered and listen to the other episode on this podcast about choosing the right motorhome for you. There is a lot to consider. I think there’s some great advice in there. The rule generally is don’t buy the first one you see. Actually, the first one you see might be the perfect one and the right one for you. But don’t rush into it. Take your time, it’s a lot of money and be considered about what you’re purchasing.
Keith Gooden
Well, Matt Sims, our motorhome expert, thanks very much again. Another Motorhome Matt Podcast in the bag. Same time, same place. And don’t forget, there’s a great library of podcasts if this is the first time you’ve listened. It’s good to have you here. And we’ll see you soon.
Keith Gooden
Thanks for listening to the Motorhome Matt Podcast. Remember to check back here for more episodes full of hints and tips and helpful advice. We’ll see you soon for another Motorhome Matt podcast brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com.
