House & Home Awnings - White Arches Caravans Abbey Spectrum 540 and Apache Azur awning poor product quality

Complaints.com received the following e-message on March 30, 2001:

From: Nigel Hendin

RE: Caravan & Awning - White Arches Caravans and C.G.I. Camping

30/03/2001 Caravaners I thought I would post this letter to let you know of our problems last year

with White Arches Caravans and C.G.I. Camping.

It all started when we received delivery of our new Abbey Spectrum 540 and

Apache Azur awning on the 17th April 2000. Before we took delivery of our

caravan we went to White Arches to inspect it, we found about 10 faults with

it and they said they would be fixed before it was delivered down to Dorset

(as we do not have a car heavy enough to tow it).

After it had been delivered we set up only to find that none of the faults had been rectified.

After numerous letters and phone calls White Arches and Swift Caravans

agreed that Autovan Services of Canford Bottom would carry out the repairs,

some they were able to do straight away the rest they would do when it went

in for its annual service. After 3 weeks use of the van we noticed the

carpet was wet by the sink and on inspection found that the sink drain had

been tightened so much that it had pulled the bottom out of it and waste

water had been running down the back of the fridge.

This I had to repair myself as nobody would come out from White Arches

because we were to far away. Now to the Awning, after 2 months the roof of the

awning started to go black and when it rained the seams leaked and water ran

down the inside of the poles staining the canvas with rust and because it was to big for the

van the poles at each end wore a hole in the roof. I telephoned White

Arches and they told me to return the awning to them for inspection as early

as I could, but because we were pitched for the season this would have been

impracticable because we were using the caravan every weekend.

Then the worse happened. We decided to move down to Dorset. My wife got a job and

we put our house in Hertfordshire on the market, unfortunately the house did

not sell as quickly as we had thought and we ended up living in our caravan

until February 2001. I wrote to both White Arches and C.G.I. and explained

the situation hoping that somebody would come and inspect my awning but no!

we were told to send it back to where you bought it from. I returned the

awning to White Arches on February 15th.

I then received a letter some 5

weeks later to say that my awning was not covered under warranty as I had

used it for so long and because of the adverse weather conditions, bearing

in mind that I had reported these faults before we were using it

permanently. A letter from C.G.I. stated ‘most Caravaners use their awning

for an average 2 to 3 weeks holiday in the summer months’ which implies that

they are not designed to be used for longer periods than that and not in

winter.

So now we are