Elddis 840?

well if it's a dealer near you then not far to travel to get warranty work done. You will be very lucky to get a fault free caravan.

Have you had a bad experience lornalou? 

Not with Elddis as never owned one but was just speaking generally of what members say about new caravans and being close to dealer in case anything goes wrong and don't have to travel to far to get sorted. had Lunar and Swift and both back to dealers to sort out problems.  

Eldiss have been consistently bottom of the Practical Caravan customer experience survey for the last five years. Personally I would not buy one until they show some improvement.

The dealer we bought our caravan from is also an agent for them and says they have improved under the new ownership, but they were looking to sell one as an alternative to what we bought.

I looked up the customer satisfaction surveys for the last few years, and they don't look great.

I don't know what to go for now. My husband really likes the 6 berth layout with the fixed bed and dinette. There is only the 3 of us but our friends have a small panel van camper so we frequently have 6 people in our caravan.

Adrias come out well in the survey I would happily have one but he is not keen on the layouts.

I frequently work 50 hrs a week with 2 or 3 on calls as well and I need a caravan to escape from stress not add to it with major faults :( 

Any further advice and suggestions gratefully received.

We bought a 2016 Elddis caravan, new,  at the NEC show. We saw the 10 leak warranty and were completely taken in by it, thinking that although it was a huge investment (for us) we could enjoy 10 years of carefree caravanning.  What a hugely expensive mistake!

Won't go into details but we got rid last year and glad to see the back of it. The Adrias do seem to have a good name, but we'd recommend either a Hobby or a Knaus. These caravans put the British makes to shame as they are so solidly built. There is no comparison. Hope this helps.

All makes have their issues and we see constant complaints here about Bailey, Elddis, Lunar, Coachman, Swift …

There’s a good case for sticking with what you’ve got if it’s trouble free. 

Btw, my advice if you do decide to change is to buy a van to suit you, not other people. Social situations can be fluid and what suits now might leave you with a large van full of wasted space in a couple of years time. 

We bought a new Knaus Starclass 695 just before Christmas, last year and have more problems with it in the first six months of ownership than ever we had with our Bailey in four years. That said, the problems have been with equipment rather than to do with the actual construction of the van which is in a different league from the British built vans we have seen.

We are really happy with the layout and the build quality but things such as the useless Dometic toilet badly let it down.

I think it wrong to assume that a particular marque will be fault-free - or for that matter, that another might be guaranteed to have problems.

You are quite right Tinwheeler about getting van to suit us, our boy is 13 next year and we want a van we can still use when he doesn't want to come with us anymore. Our friends are teachers and so are restricted to school holidays and when my son grows up we won't be so restricted anymore and we may go without them more often. I wouldn't want a massive van with just us in it.

I think we will have a trip out to the NEC show this year with a mind to looking rather than buying. 

There is a Hobby dealer at Driffield 22 miles away so might have a look there as well.

Nearest Adria dealer is a 3 hour round trip though :(