HI I HAVE A 73 CAMPER , Over the last year i have been doing bits to get it ready for its mot , i have ordered around £800 of goods from online suppliers of spare parts to assist IS IT ME but am i right in thinking that just about everything i order is of exceptionally low quality with a high mark up and extortionate postage cost ? its been disheartening to order online from the very popular sites , to eagerly awaits the delivery , only yet again to be disappointing by the quality of the products for example i have just paid around four pounds for a crappy bit of foam that goes around the brake pedal FOUR QUID ?, if i hadn't ordered other things it would have cost me four pounds in postage on top, to add insult if i were to return it because of bad quality it would cost me money and i wouldn't get the original postage cost back i know its a moan , perhaps in the wrong area , and ive very little experience in the camper-van world but it does seem to me that we are being ripped of with price versus quality, i balance this against a BMW bike that i have , yes its expensive for parts but they are top notch high quality. There ive had a moan and as a tight fisted Yorkshire man i think ive got a right any thoughts on this ?
Yes. Ripping off and selling "VW" parts are bedfellows. There are original, as manufactured by VW, parts around but it will cost you more than the expensive pattern crap more commonly available.
Some of it is crap , most of why I've got is not bad but the body panels I've had needed more work to make them fit
'tis said you could paint the letters VW on a turd and sell it...... i know how you feel though, i ordered some bits the other day and the £4.50 delivery or should i say post and packing was 66 pence franked and a small jiffy bag..... i also paid £6 recently for 2 plastic clips to fasten my sun visors......
Everything shot up a few years ago as their popularity suddenly mushroomed. I remember paying JK £50 (buy one get one free) for a pair of genuine front wheel arches not so long ago - maybe 8 years - they obviously couldn't sell them. That now would cost you £500. Even if you had to pay the full £50 each, they've gone up 5 fold. B&P kits for £40 now £150, fully built up heads were £80. Then again you could buy a pretty good late bay for £3000. As the price of the finished article had shot up, the suppliers, not neccessarily the re-sellers have made a bundle. The quality of pattern parts has always been poor.
Excellent. I made my clips because I wanted them right that minute and they fit in with the rest of the bus.
Don't get me started. I paid well over $400 for a side tent. Great design, quality fabric, strong poles, etc,... but they put the cheapest zippers available on it (nylon coil), which of course split irreparably the first time out. It makes no sense. Good metal zippers are very inexpensive. My camping trip was a disaster, but at least they saved $4. I bought fog lights last year. About 10 months later the chrome housings are literally covered with rust. Probably 80% of the chrome finish is simply gone. Truly, they look 40 years old, as if they were scavenged from an old tractor. Even more impressive is the fact that I park in a garage and that those ten months were during the worst drought in Texas' recorded history. They never saw a drop of water. Although it's easy to see only the bad side of things. All my signal lenses and interior cranks, handles and knobbery were cheap as chips, to quote your vernacular, and they seem every bit as good as the original equipment. It just depends on what you're buying, I suppose.
totally agree re p&p mate (some are making profit from it) , ive cancelled goods on asking p&p costs, re the cost of anything , ?my take on it is always , how "involved" /costly do i think manuf. is? is it a "bling" part or an essential,? factor in storage, staff , business costs then profit mark up,oh and depending on vehicle , is it a "hen"s teeth"part? (sometimes you got to grin and bear it")2nd hand parts from several well established dealers (Megabug 2 name but one , if i"m allowed?)are usually fine, your tight?mate>>me? jock , tighter than 2 coats of paint , and then some!!!and ace advice sourced from this site has saved me a wedge !
crikey ZED that"s 4 real ??? whew! ive had my bus 7 years now and i am surprised at (some)seemingly massive cost increases , i am of opinion some are simply profiteering, usually , at least from many years on the bikes, companies "spring up" then dont last so... at least i can do 90%work myself ,which obviously saves me dosh, according to a fella i was in conversation with recently , there was a time you couldn"t get someone/anyone to buy a camper from you! (how weird is that?)
That's because if you stop and consider, apart from the fact they fit on the drive or in the garage without blocking the neighbours sun out, they are actually crap in all departments other than quirkyness.
Yeah suppose your right on that , my mate , ACE mechanic ,own business ,(on the tools) said to me in conversation "well you will keep buying weird vehicles "! here "s weird, >was talking to the "lead hand" in a local garage recently , and asked him if i required would he /his staff work on my bus ?" , told me "no chance" cos the lads dont understand them , i mean , once i was working for a haulage contractor in Dorset , repairing h.g.v."s , dude owned many co"s , one day a bleedin" dumper was wheeled in and i was told to get it going, so , i did (AFTER QUITE A WHILE!)my point is , yeah they are quirky but pretty straightforward with it ! what you think ?i really like "if it breaks , i can prob fix it!quirky yes , complicated ? nope.
If I can make any of the parts needed then I do as most are poor quality of steel to very thin . Have spent loads on parts some good others not worth the money
I suppose i really am not surprised at the poor quality of the parts I kinda expect it, but the P&P racket really peeves me. Dipstick boot for a type 4 costs about the same for postage (£4ish) as the product. This is one good thing that ebay have clamped down and you can find parts from the same company with reasonable postage on their bay site.
just returned from the vw festival at harewood house leeds , i took a list of things i needed , a pocket full of money , hoping to see the product before i bought it ,(and save a huge whack of postage charges) unfortunately , there were no real big stalls there selling new items such as steering damper real axle seals tailgate hinges etc , non of the big players were there bar a total gesture from heritage ...... THE SHOW WAS BRILLIANT with lots to see and do , i am not complaining about the show , my point is the big players wont travel to yorkshire , supose its cause there happy making a profit from our goods purchases online and the postage???? now i am against the clock to order on line , have items delivered and fit before my Thursday afternoon deadline or it will cost me another 49 pound to re test the van only thing i need before the test is a rear outer wheel bearing seal ? again the show was brilliant well run , great environment stunning grounds RE SKINT AGAIN COMMENT ABOVE i have sometimes ordered goods online (not for the van) and once i have filled in the form with name address , email address etc , once i see cost of postage is added i quite often cancel my order due to excessive postage , now quite often in a couple of days i seem to get an email from the company offering free postage ??? not happened often but it has happened a few times .
Unless they bring a few of every item in the wharehouse, chances are they wouldn't have what everybody wanted. JK just turn up with a computer and you get free post. lol
