C
Carabiner
Lifetime VIP Member
We picked up our Cali in late August '23 from Eurovans Crawley. Hopefully, this post will be of some use to other folk considering a similar purchase process, we certainly discovered a lot during our experience.
We went through Drive the Deal, which I'd highly recommend. They saved us 8-9k of the list price, and made it possible for us to get a Cali, as we were really nervous about a private purchase, setting aside warranty benefits, etc. Eurovans Crawley were the dealer that picked us up, and I found them to be good, as far as it goes. Our van was delivered in almost exactly three months from order (£1k deposit), and during the order the only updates we got were when I cracked and called EV. Mike Wool was handling things, and I found him pleasant and helpful, but clearly too busy to be pro-active in keeping you in the loop. I found this disconcerting, on a 67k purchase!
A week or two before the pick up date, we got email details from EV on how to make payment. Alarm bells rang for me, is this a scam? I was very nervous about transferring funds to an emailed account number. Made a call to EV to confirm the details, and made a test small payment and waited for confirmation they'd got it. Of course, paranoia was rife and I was second-guessing myself that Mike wasn't actually employed by EV and was part of the scam. I don't know about you but it's rare for me to be transferring 10s of k. Anyway, all was fine in the end, although one thing we weren't aware of was the daily limit on moving 25k out of our bank.
All bills paid, we arranged to get a tracker fitted. We went for the Scorpion V5 Plus. Remote immobilisation if the van was nicked with the keys was important to us, and we plan to keep our van for a good few years so the ownership lifetime one off fee was also attractive to us too. The tracker was fitted at EV before we picked it up. The tracker has been good so far, van starts first time, and it's effectively invisible for us in daily use.
We live near Edinburgh so took the train down to pick up the van, which was actually a nice experience. The plan was to visit some family and have a relaxed trip back North. Given the saving we made, it was a no brainer, and we took our time and enjoyed the process. EV could have had the van delivered but I think it was nicer to make a trip of it.
Picking up the van, was good. The van was ready and prep'ed for when we arrived. Mike W gave us a walk though the van's features, then he left us and I (obsessively) took a load of pictures and ran through the purchase checklist from the forum. I think we were there for three hours!
We assumed the comfort mattress was something extra over the 'actual comfort mattress', so didn't order one. When we realised, and didn't have even that one, we picked one up secondhand. We find it comfortable to sleep on, but maybe we're just not very fussy about that.
EV had put around £20 fuel in, but there's garage right next door, and we expected no less.
Nervously driving off all was fine until maybe an hour later we had a tyre pressure warning come on. Stopped at a nearby garage and topped off and reset the values. Apparently, this if a known issue with new tyres when they first get warm. No problems since.
We arrived at our relatives in Winchester where we'd ordered a 907 gas bottle delivered from Chorley Bottled Gas. Didn't need anything else, the regulator was supplied with the van.
Had a nice relaxed drive back home with a couple of camps on the way.
After a week or so we phoned EV to take out the extended warranty covering for five years. Seemed a good deal to us.
Incidentally, we have the leaking bellows, we were informed it might be an issue on purchase. I'm confident that this will get resolved properly within our warranty period, so aside from the hassle, I'm not overly concerned about it.
Anyway, I hope this if of some use/interest to folk waiting for their van. I know I was pretty obsessively checking delivery times as the days past.
We went through Drive the Deal, which I'd highly recommend. They saved us 8-9k of the list price, and made it possible for us to get a Cali, as we were really nervous about a private purchase, setting aside warranty benefits, etc. Eurovans Crawley were the dealer that picked us up, and I found them to be good, as far as it goes. Our van was delivered in almost exactly three months from order (£1k deposit), and during the order the only updates we got were when I cracked and called EV. Mike Wool was handling things, and I found him pleasant and helpful, but clearly too busy to be pro-active in keeping you in the loop. I found this disconcerting, on a 67k purchase!
A week or two before the pick up date, we got email details from EV on how to make payment. Alarm bells rang for me, is this a scam? I was very nervous about transferring funds to an emailed account number. Made a call to EV to confirm the details, and made a test small payment and waited for confirmation they'd got it. Of course, paranoia was rife and I was second-guessing myself that Mike wasn't actually employed by EV and was part of the scam. I don't know about you but it's rare for me to be transferring 10s of k. Anyway, all was fine in the end, although one thing we weren't aware of was the daily limit on moving 25k out of our bank.
All bills paid, we arranged to get a tracker fitted. We went for the Scorpion V5 Plus. Remote immobilisation if the van was nicked with the keys was important to us, and we plan to keep our van for a good few years so the ownership lifetime one off fee was also attractive to us too. The tracker was fitted at EV before we picked it up. The tracker has been good so far, van starts first time, and it's effectively invisible for us in daily use.
We live near Edinburgh so took the train down to pick up the van, which was actually a nice experience. The plan was to visit some family and have a relaxed trip back North. Given the saving we made, it was a no brainer, and we took our time and enjoyed the process. EV could have had the van delivered but I think it was nicer to make a trip of it.
Picking up the van, was good. The van was ready and prep'ed for when we arrived. Mike W gave us a walk though the van's features, then he left us and I (obsessively) took a load of pictures and ran through the purchase checklist from the forum. I think we were there for three hours!
We assumed the comfort mattress was something extra over the 'actual comfort mattress', so didn't order one. When we realised, and didn't have even that one, we picked one up secondhand. We find it comfortable to sleep on, but maybe we're just not very fussy about that.
EV had put around £20 fuel in, but there's garage right next door, and we expected no less.
Nervously driving off all was fine until maybe an hour later we had a tyre pressure warning come on. Stopped at a nearby garage and topped off and reset the values. Apparently, this if a known issue with new tyres when they first get warm. No problems since.
We arrived at our relatives in Winchester where we'd ordered a 907 gas bottle delivered from Chorley Bottled Gas. Didn't need anything else, the regulator was supplied with the van.
Had a nice relaxed drive back home with a couple of camps on the way.
After a week or so we phoned EV to take out the extended warranty covering for five years. Seemed a good deal to us.
Incidentally, we have the leaking bellows, we were informed it might be an issue on purchase. I'm confident that this will get resolved properly within our warranty period, so aside from the hassle, I'm not overly concerned about it.
Anyway, I hope this if of some use/interest to folk waiting for their van. I know I was pretty obsessively checking delivery times as the days past.