While we were working out what to do (and waiting for Monday to arrive) Liz started searching other peoples experiences with the Pioneer Silhouettes. While she had done this back when we were looking at purchasing (and waiting on delivery) her affinity with related sites had improved markedly while we have been travelling, resulting in much more information coming to light. The hinges not being strong enough for the terrain the van is supposed to be designed for came up as an issue for others, although this wasn’t a surprise. It seems to me that plastic hinges on an off-road van is always likely to be unsuccessful. There were also several comments about the manufacturers being reasonably unhelpful and difficult to deal with.
This surprised me as Mike form the manufacturing end of things had bent over backwards to try and come up with solutions until it became apparent that what we were dealing with was an issue that (apparently) hasn’t occurred before. At this point the attitude appeared to very much change to a matter of ‘how do we get out of warranty responsibilities and pass it back to either the dealer or owner’, although I am unsure whether this was Mike’s thought process or directions form the company itself – I am guessing more the company’s direction from the way Mike dealt with us.
The key to all comments however seemed that people who had had problems still had a similar view to us – while problems happen the van design is by and large very good and most would still buy the same one again in hindsight. We are in the same position (as long as the issue that had arisen with the cables and pulleys didn’t occur) as all the issues have been small and resolvable. I am taking the current major issue out of the equation on the basis that if it has never occurred before, hopefully it wouldn’t occur to us again!
From the manufacturers perspective I am also of the opinion that any other manufacturer is likely to act in the same way Coromal has. Most companies across all product ranges that I have come into contact with try to find ways out of warranty provisions if they can, especially when the problems that have been encountered are significant and unusual.
Anyway Monday morning dawned and when I next spoke to Justin from Coromal Cannington he advised that a truck had been organised to pick the van up from Darwin and take it to their yard in Perth as as they weren’t confident that anyone in Darwin was able to do anything with it. I floated the idea we had had about selling it back to them at a mutually beneficial price however after a few hours consideration this didn’t suit them(they did offer to take it on consignment however I pointed out that we didn’t actually want to sell it, just thought we may have been able to come up with a solution that enabled us to finish our trip while also taking some of the pressure of them).
This tack put us n a bit of a spin and initially we thought we would just end up flying home from Perth and having to redo this leg in the future. This suited Liz and Harry as they were now ready to go home as they were over everything after the last week, however Max really wanted to finish exploring through the Northern Territory and Western Australia. I think part of this was due to me having talked up places like the Ningaloo and Karijini from before we actually left.
Anyway, things changed when Cannington’s original offer (from the week before) to transport both the van and car down suddenly changed to us being charged for the car costs. This gave us the impetus to have a family discussion about what each of us really wanted to do, with the final decision being that Max and I would continue on while Liz and Harry would fly home. This then led to an expedition into Darwin to pick up a couple of swags (Max was very excited as he had been talking about doing a trip without the van, Mum or Harry in the next couple of years and it was suddenly coming true – and much earlier than anticipated). Harry was also very excited as he thought the idea of going back to school and seeing all his friends fantastic, in addition he and Liz had been talking about how much they would like to spend a night in a really flash hotel where they could eat room service in bed while watching TV etc. so we had also organised for them to this on arriving back in Perth as a way to finish their part of the trip on a high.
The real pressure however was on on Monday afternoon, with about three hours being available to pack everything up that we didn’t want to take in the car and pack it into the van, while working through all the stuff in the van and taking anything useful for the drive home. The time involved in this would have been ample if we didn’t have to spend a significant amount of it crawling around in the van trying to get to things that couldn’t be seen or easily reached. Luckily, for all that I insisted nothing that didn’t have an obvious and regular use was to be taken, I had packed the gas stove, gas light and duel stem into the caravan boot. As it stands this was probably the most useless decision at the time and the a most important one now – as Max and I now have a way of cooking and light at night!
As far as the van goes, it is now on it’s way back to Perth (although Liz and Harry should beat it) and I only hope that problems are sorted (including an understanding of what caused it as I certainly don’t want to be in the same situation in the future) without too much argy-bargy. After all the discussions that have gone on I can only guess that the fixings have slowly come loose over the journey until the point at which they finally tore loose when we went to set up at Normanton. Once the first corner went it probably makes sense that the other corner on the same side would give out as well as it would be carrying a significant amount of the strain from the other one not going up (maybe???).
At this point in time however, while we have had a few moments, I am reasonably happy with the response we have got between the manufacturers and dealer (as one seems to have picked up at the point that the other became difficult) and from what they have told us it appears they are both involved in trying to source and resolve the issues at this point. I just hope this continues and we can continue to talk up our choice of van into the future, as we have in the past.
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