Campers

DVLArsehole

I am a law abiding citizen, I have never had any penalty points on my driving licence, I have never had a visit from the ‘plod’, I have always paid my taxes and kept my nose clean.

I recently bought a motorhome, a beautiful 2014 Hymer B544. It’s worth a pretty penny. Being a sensible person wanted to protect my investment so I took out comprehensive insurance on it to ensure it was insured prior to me getting my hands on the keys.

We used the van for outings to the New Forest, Somerset, a few times to France and more recently in Wiltshire knowing full well that for any fire, theft or road accident involving our van our costs would be covered by insurance.

The DVLA had other ideas. They use a register called the Motor Insurance Database (MID) which is a record of all insured vehicles in the UK. When you take out insurance on a vehicle, your insurer advises their underwriter to update the database with the details of your insurance, vehicle etc.

The letters start coming:

I received a letter from the DVLA advising me that my motorhome registration details were not in the MID. This spurred me into action; I called my insurance company who stated that I was insured and that they would prompt the underwriter to get the details entered.

and another letter

I subsequently received another letter from the DVLA and responded to them with a copy of my insurance cover sheet and contact information for them to contact my insurer so that they could resolve their data issue. My assumption was that’s what they would do and the matter would be closed: How wrong I was.

This time its a threatening letter

I received yet another letter from DVLA stating:

This I found infuriating. The implications of it are that the correct data is now in the MID, however, they are imposing a fine on me for something that was outside of my control. I wrote back to the DVLA asking why they are imposing this fine when I have provided proof that I had insurance on the ‘van since March. I had no intention of paying the reduced fine nor the full fine.

The threat continues…

Their next response was equally infuriating.

I have included my response below: they were clearly lying. I contacted my insurer who confirmed that there was no record of DVLA inquiring about my vehicle. I phoned the DVLA to try and clear up this mess, but they were completely unresponsive.

Despite me including my phone number on each and every letter, no phone call came from the DVLA. I awaited their response with bated breath.

Ah, a different response this time

I received a further letter.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. My persistence looks like it might pay off, they are going to have to get off their backsides and do their job.

Finally..

I was right all along, and now they have admitted it. They have withdrawn their threat of a fine and of court action.

I thought about how they had treated me and after a few days I penned the following reply:

I am left with the feeling that the DVLA had only one purpose in writing to me and that purpose was to impose a fine. They didn’t care about the rights or wrongs, they just wanted to collect revenue. They were unprepared to listen or discuss the situation, none of their letters was signed nor had a phone number that I could use to call to discuss. The only phone number given on their correspondence was to an automated payments system.

Each letter I received from the DVLA was titled ‘Failure to Insure’. At no time did I own the van and not have fully comprehensive insurance for it.

I am left with the conclusion that the DVLA is overstaffed with underperformers, inconsiderate people who cannot be bothered to do their job properly and who lie when it suits them.

My lesson learned from this episode is that if you are not guilty of, nor reponsible for the charge they are putting forward, then under no circumstances pay anthing to the DVLA until all alternative avenues have been explored and exhausted. Persist in stating your innocence if you believe it and let them take it to court if you reasonably believe that you are right. Keep copies of all correspondence between them and you; these will be needed in court.

Off to VanBitz

At last the time has come for us to get the ‘van fitted with a real scumbag-deterring alarm system. We’d been on the VanBitz installation waiting list for 2 and a bit months and at the beginning of May we drove the ‘van up to Cornish Farm outside Taunton so that the alarm could be installed.

We had made our preparations as this was the first time we had used the van overnight; we loaded up with sufficient food for dinner and next day’s breakfast, milk for tea and coffee, and took a decent bottle of wine to consume with our dinner. The weather was superb, warm and sunny. The 2 ½ hour drive was uneventful, no kerbs were clipped, no traffic was held up too badly and we kept to a decent speed all the way there and back.

After dropping the ‘van off at VanBitz the next morning we were taxied into Taunton, courtesy of VanBitz, and spent a good few hours looking around Taunton, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. We lunched in a small cafe before retreating to a large park and enjoyed the sunshine as we whiled away the day. We took a bus and walked the remaining half mile or so in the glorious sunshine back to Vanbitz which was out by the M5 motorway. Although we was close to both the town and motorway, there were plenty of Buzzards showing off their aerial prowess to us, I think we counted 7 in all as we crossed the motorway bridge.

Going out for a curry

Sunday evening saw the two of us parked up in the sunshine at Hill Head/Meon Shore where we picnicked on chicken curry. We had prepared the curry at home earlier and heated it up on the van’s gas hob, cooked the rice and heated the chapatis once we had parked up.

This gives ‘going out for a curry’ a whole new meaning even though having a curry on a Sunday is probably heresy.

We attracted a few good stares from passers-by, I’m not sure whether it was for our pic-nicking or for parking across three parking spaces.

Cooking on Gas

The Hymer is now fitted with a refillable gas system comprising a removable nozzle, high pressure fill hose and lightweight Alugas 11kg refillable gas bottle. The whole job took us around about an hour excluding the drive to Wickes to buy the hole saw, and the time taken to view the ‘how-to’ videos on Youtube and to read the installation instructions on the Gaslow site.

We now have gas powered heating, hot water, gas driven fridge/freezer as well as gas for the cooking hob.

Filling with LPG after the installation was a bit stressful but we managed it without any mishaps and now have a half tank of LPG to play with, and I really do like the price. At 56pence per litre its less than half the price of a Calor refill, and there’s no ‘hard to get back’ deposit either.

The next step is to fit a second refillable gas bottle which would give us a capacity of 42 litres of propane so we should never run out of the stuff.

Camping with cutlery

Finally , we have started to use our motorhome for its intended purpose which is to see the world and go ‘camping’. Our limited first attempt is to see Lee-on-the-Solent and have a picnic on the sea front.

Saturday started off as a lovely dry and bright day, ideal for a sea front picnic, however, as evening came so did the rain. We didn’t allow the rain to deter us so as soon as Fiona came home from work we put our pre-heated plates in the cooler box and headed off in the van towards Lee on the Solent where we ordered a takeaway from the Mandarin Chinese restaurant, and then headed down to the seafront to enjoy it. Here we are enjoying our picnic complete with tablecloth, crockery and cutlery.

Camper update

We received the vehicle’s V5 from DVLA then went to Halfords to get the number plates made up. Sadly we had to get the ‘EU’ style plates which was a disappointment – never mind though, we can probably change them for real British plates later this year….

With the new plates fitted we were free to take the camper for a spin around some local roads and lanes. This was our first time driving a big left hand drive vehicle in the UK and I’d have to say it was stressful. The van is much wider than either of our cars, and it is a whole lot longer so we took it easy and very carefully. I’m glad to say that we didn’t clip any kerbs nor have any heart stopping moments.

On our second outing we parked up at Meon shore and enjoyed the sea views, the photos of our parking are below. Thankfully the car park was quiet, I guess I’m going to have to get down there early in the day to park in the summer.

Parked in 3 spaces at Meon, overlooking the sea

Well, we dillied and dallied around for a long time as we thought about which camper to go for. We went to the big motorhome exhibition at the NEC in 2015, we visited numerous dealers and crawled over countless motorhomes, we did heaps of analysis on what we liked, what we disliked, what we could compromise on and then finally made up our minds to go for a Hymer B544 after seeing one at Premier in Sussex.

We liked the ample living accommodation, the spacious kitchen and washroom and the large double bed all within a length of 6.5 metres from nose to tail. We compromised on not being able to store bikes within the van, instead they will be secured on the tail mounted bike rack but be protected by the alarm system.

We have yet to drive it on the road as we are waiting for final DVLA approval and registration as we had it imported for us by Bundesvan.co.uk, and we are both really excited.

Here is a selection of my photos of the van, click on any of the photos for a bigger version: