9th August 2019. Bye Bye Van Diesel.
It has been an ‘interesting‘ time selling Van Diesel. When we initially tried to sell in 2017 we had a huge number of time wasters so we decided that this time we should go with a company that specialised in selling motorhomes, Motorhome Depot. The local agent was called Mark Anderson and he was amazing! What a patient man he turned out to be! How he managed to keep his cool with some of the people who showed an interest in our van is beyond me. He certainly went above and beyond the call of duty.
We had one potential buyer who was very keen on our beautiful van. He and his sweet girlfriend sat at our kitchen table for 4 hours whilst Mark tried to chivvy the finance people along and I supplied a steady supply of coffee and biscuits. Their intention was to buy our van and travel to Europe straight from our house, in fact they’d already insured our van in anticipation, with our permission. There was a slight blip in their plans however, they still had another van which they were unhappy with, which they had intended to return to a local dealer that day.
As usual Sod’s Law put its boot in too and a glitch appeared with the finance deal! Mark worked extremely hard for hours to sort it all out but it was a race against the clock and the finance company closed for the day before it could be completed. Our buyer was extremely annoyed and with their plans awry an exhausted Mark drove them back to their van.
THAT, however, was not the end of the story, the buyers arrived back at our house in their HUGE motorhome a couple of hours later. Due to the unexpected turn of events with their finance deal they had asked if they could unload their belongings from their van into ours and put their bikes in our shed until the following day, so that is what they did (his poor girlfriend was very embarrassed and kept apologising) then they returned their motorhome to the dealer and booked into an hotel for the night.
We were quite positive, at that point, that we were finally about to sell our motorhome. If only we’d remembered the saying ‘Don’t count your chickens until they hatch!’ The following day our prospective buyer, against Mark’s advice, phoned the finance company and bent their ear about the length of time it was taking to arrange the finance, one thing led to another and subsequently they refused to finance him and the deal fell through! Our ‘buyers’ then had to rent a van, collect all their belongings from us and cancel their insurance policy…..rather an unexpected turn of events!
Luckily for us around the same time someone else was showing an interest in Van D. The interested couple were travelling and were in The Netherlands at that point however they arranged to come over and have a look once they knew it was back on the market.
After a few weeks of toing and froing they decided to buy Van D and on the 9th August we sadly waved goodbye to our beautiful motorhome. I can’t imagine ever being able to find another motorhome full of such wonderful features.
We have had some communication with the new owners since then. Unfortunately someone had vandalised my artwork on the back of the van and they wanted to know where they could get a replacement. I sent them a copy so they had it reprinted, they also sent some photos to show us the changes they’ve made to the inside of the van, it looks very snazzy. We wish them many happy adventures in Van Diesel and hope they have as much fun as we did travelling in him.
We would also like to thank Mark for the exceptional amount of hard work he put into selling our motorhome and his infinite patience, he was a true professional.
Mark Anderson. Motorhome Depot Hampshire and Surrey
https://www.motorhomedepot.com/broker/mark-anderson