8th march 2006, my daughter puts £3000 down on a second hand caravan as a deposit, we have viewed the van and Julia of the sales team have promised to do all the bits and pieces that need doing.

We all saved our pennies to have a caravan holiday home at Hastings, this was to be a relaxing time getting away from the rigors of London life, and give my wife a chance relax & get some fresh air by the coast.

If we had known what entailed in getting Haven Holidays to honor their agreement with us, we would have pulled out before the finance was settled.

The van in question is a Villa Roma 8 berth, good condition. Thats a joke for a start, hinges missing & broken on doors, trim missing on the table, fireplace, tv cabinet, kitchen work surface this was also blown round by the cookers oven. The kitchen& Toilet windows were also buckled and would not shut properly, the kitchen sink was heavily burnt and very dented these also was promised in the repairs.

The upholstery was dirty and they said that they would get it steam cleaned, not so. We arrived one weekend to measure up for some curtains, we had been informed that the seats in the living area had been cleaned, again not so, i have been a carpet and upholstery cleaner for about ten years now and I could see nothing had been done, I just wiped a wet wipe over the seats for it to come up dirty.

Eventually the seating area had to be re-upholstered because of the filth that had accumulated on & under the fabric.

The saga goes on, Haven sent a representative from one of their repair people saying that they could not match the trim that was missing, this trim is the same as you put on chip board as an edging
so it matches the face of the board.

In the end they said it would have to made especially to match the Atlas colour (Atlas being the make of the caravan) this went on for weeks to no avail.

finally after weeks of phoning we would get a new kitchen & toilet window and would be done the weekend we were down.

Two windows arrived, would you believe it the toilet window was a foot to big, Bugger not again I thought, this is getting to be a bloody marathon, it seems as soon as they had our deposit they were not interested in us.

We kept on relentless, Phone call after phone call, Promises of work being carried out and nothing being done. By this time we had found other problems that needed to be sorted, all were promised to be made good.

We finally got the trim done and and new work surfaces in the kitchen , with the new window it looked pucker. 4 months after the purchase had passed.

The little pieces of snagging like hinges were put on almost straight away, getting a door handle and toilet lock in brass was a different matter.

The kitchen sink came but it was not green like the former one and it did not match the work surfaces, but hey who cares its new and it don't leak, it is beige in colour.

I decide to dump all the brass handles in the van and match up the kitchen handles with beige plastic ones, the difference was great, it looked like we were getting somewhere at last.

Again the saga continues:
The cooker stated to play up, we lit the back rings and after about 30 seconds they would go out, not turned off, just out, with the gas escaping, we were down to two rings to cook for eight people, this had to be replaced.

The site repair people came down and had a look at the cooker, as far as they could see there was nothing wrong with the cooker, my daughter went ballistic, again they checked the cooker then found the problem, the gas valves had to be replaced, a week went by and we were informed that they could not get a replacement parts so we needed a new cooker, this was agreed by the sales staff rep and the park manager sanctioned it.

The park was near to closing down for its six weeks over the winter period. we were assured that the problems would be all sorted when the park opened again in march this year.

We hear the rep we were dealing with got married in that six weeks and was moved to another site, when we inquired about the cooker, they said they did not know anything about it.

The saga goes On: