thoughts on Warranty

I need to make a decision over the winter on whether to continue visiting Danbury for servicing under warranty (6 hour round trip plus petrol) or take out the 3rd party warranty, or none at all -

What are others feelings about warranty and has anyone actually claimed for anything serious/minor?

I see that MJWarner offers Danbury sales & servicing ("An Official Danbury Dealer") although Danbury were vague about the subsequent validity of the warranty when I enquired bout using them for service in future....!!??

Steve

regarding greasing, i have an old manual from the original type 2 and in there it states that it should be greased every 1000 miles!! now thats a lot of greasing!! especially considering i work on buses and it can be 6 or 7000 miles between greasings for them and they get a lot more punishment than our vans do, fortunately i work in a garage so whenever i take the van for a run to work i stick it over a pit and grease away. not so easy at home especially on a lowered van!

I haven't bothered with the Danbury warranty.

For me it's a 5hr round trip, need to take a day off work plus the fuel cost and the cost of the service on top of that. Twice a year as well. Looking at nearly £800.

I only do about 5000 miles a year so I go locally, once a year for £150.

The way I see it is. The money I save not going to Danbury pays for any major problems I might encounter. Luckily Ginger has been as good as gold and I haven't had any problems. (Probably just cursed myself saying that now)

The warranty we understand cannot be passed on to the next owner.
As we were the second owner of Scooby it was good to see the service record from Danbury.
But if there had been a service record by A N Other it was, in our opinion, the fact that it had been regularly serviced that gave us comfort in the decision process.
This is obviously different when buying new.
The pros and cons of completing the round trip and the various implications outlined by Kiteman is down to individual choice.
Maybe it comes down to how risk adverse are you? (and the money)

stephenjedward said
"I need to make a decision over the winter on whether to continue visiting Danbury for servicing under warranty (6 hour round trip plus petrol) or take out the 3rd party warranty, or none at all"

If we had bought a European CAR then I would have had those thoughts.

But we bought a Camper from a company with the experience to import it from Brazil, a company which gives a warranty not available from VW Europe and hopefully, a company which will be around to offer support, spares and specific specialised knowledge well into the future.
So we have always seen the service visits needed to keep up the Danbury warranty as an opportunity to go camping. We have combined camping over the weekend near Slimbridge Wildlife and Wetlands Centre with leaving the van at Danbury during Monday then driving home in the evening. Yate station is a short walk away from Danbury so we have used the train and never their offered courtesy car. We have enjoyed exploring Bristol particularly the waterfront and SS Great Britain. We have spent time in Bath and Gloucester. We have walked parts of the Frome Walkway - found between Danbury and Yate rail station - to Chipping Sodbury.
The Danbury warranty has covered: Missing screw to door track, steering free-play adjustment, paint to one of the body seams, replaced ignition switch, heated front screen replacement, repair to spring blind of skylight window, passenger door adjustment, speedo calibration. Danbury have also attended to issues raised on this forum:- checks of exhaust for manifold type and need for extra bracket, gearstick problem. Everyone at Danbury has always been helpful and it has been good to share their enthusiasm for the Brazilian T2 and to see the latest developments of their business.
Hopefully we are contributing to ongoing support for all our BraziBays. We can also of course claim a full Danbury service history for our camper.
Although our warranty is now expired, we continue to camp and to visit Danbury for our MOT , service and repair work.
osg

osg - I'm impressed as your thougts echo mine to a certain extent. It's a long drive from Lancashire down to Yate and I've only had to do it once for the first sevirce but I reckon we can turn the 6 monthly event into a trip and see a part of the country I don't know neither of us have explored before.

We intend to see out at least the first 3 years with Danbury and have been very happy with the level of service from them thus far. I've had a couple of minor quibbles with them and they have met that with understanding and just sorted the problem there and then.

With our lad being at Uni in Bristol this has enabled us to tie in the journey to Yate by jumping on the train and catching up with him for the day. Very much like OSG we have given Bristol a few visits and do enjoy the city. We've also planned 2 of the service visits in whilst heading for London or ooop north and have stayed at Cirencester overnight.

thanks all for your comments -

Tilly wrote:

There seem to be very few problems with the "expensive bits" - engine/gearbox/axles etc. on this forum.

Our van (09 registered, water cooled) did suffer a failed gearbox in November last year. We weren't under warranty and the failure wouldn't have been Danbury's fault, but they were helpful in getting it fixed at a reasonable price.

As a more general point, Danbury's workshops are sadly too far away from us in North Wales, and time doesn't really allow us to organise getting there as often as we'd need a service.

Have fun,

CHRIS

we did the same as osg , we also had a few problems which were sorted straight away,glad we took the 3 years as it would have been expensive .Also we have found numerous places we would never have, had we not gone back to danbury ,so each to their own,we were happy and thats what counts.long time dead!!