What happens when a motorhome doesn't sell with a broker? Jane's part-exchange into a Hobby Vantana

Her first campervan - bought a couple of years earlier from a dealer near Chester, off Auto Trader - was a little 2005 Auto-Sleepers Duetto: 21 years old, around five and a half metres, an automatic, and much loved. But it was getting on, and her son, who'd always looked after it for her, now had a young family and no time to spare. It was time for something a bit newer.

What makes Jane's story useful is that she is the buyer most people quietly worry about being: not a mechanic, not a know-it-all, just someone who wanted a van she could trust and people who'd be straight with her. How that buyer is treated - at the handover, and especially afterwards when something needs fixing - is the real test of a dealer. This is that test, told honestly.

Her answer was specific and sensible. Nothing big - her old van had been around 5.4 metres and she didn't want to go much over six. Something a bit newer, and ideally the automatic she was used to. So the team valued her Duetto for trade and went looking through the vans they had. “He said, ‘Well, I happen to have one,’” Jane remembers. “That's how I ended up with a Hobby.”

The beauty of the part-exchange, for a buyer like Jane, is that it collapses two stressful transactions into one. She didn't have to sell privately to a stranger and then go shopping with the cash; she handed over the old van and settled the difference, dealing with one team she already knew throughout.

That is exactly how a viewing should go, and how we want them to. The steering shake was looked at - the kind of thing a wheel balance sorts - and her questions were answered straight rather than waved away. She came back a second time, with a family member and to finalise the figures with Gary, the owner, before she committed a penny.

For a buyer who'll happily tell you she knew nothing about campervans, being able to come, look, drive, raise a concern and be answered honestly - twice, with no pressure - mattered more than any sales patter. By the end of the second visit she was ready to go ahead.

This is the part of Jane's story she returns to most warmly. “Andy even did a video, the handover,” she said. “I was there over an hour, because I'd never had a van with computerised stuff before - I'd always had that old van. And they went through everything with me. I mean, everything. Showed me everything working, showed me how to use everything, let me take a video, talked me through it.”

That filmed walkthrough matters more than it sounds. A nervous first-time owner can't possibly retain an hour of new information in one go - but with a video on her phone she can stand in the van a week later and remind herself how the heating, the panel or the awning works. It is the difference between handing someone a set of keys and actually setting them up to enjoy the thing.

We're telling this part straight, because glossing over it would miss the whole point. Within her first few weeks Jane noticed some odd jobs - a cruise control that wasn't behaving, a dash phone holder that wouldn't open, climate control that felt temperamental - and, conscientiously, she let us know “before my 30 days are up.” Then the electrics played up more seriously: the radio, screen and reversing camera cut out together. The cause turned out to be the leisure battery, which everything ran from; once it had drained, the lot stopped.

She brought the van in, and the team diagnosed and repaired it free of charge under the guarantee, driving it back to her afterwards. When the battery drained again a few weeks later - now afterthe 30 days - we didn't hide behind the calendar. Ben offered to either send her the money to fit a new battery locally or have her bring it in so the team could fit one themselves; in the end Andy fitted a bigger, better leisure battery and sorted a sticking awning at the same time, as a goodwill gesture rather than a bill.

Tellingly, the warmest thing she said about the company - that the after-sales had “been really good” - she said while one of those very fixes was still in hand. That is the honest measure of after-sales: not that nothing ever goes wrong, but that when it does, the customer still feels looked after.

After the sale, Adam from the Motorhome Pig media team rang Jane to ask, honestly, how the experience had been from the buyer's side. The conversation is reproduced below, lightly edited for length and clarity, and shared with Jane's explicit permission - “you can put this as part of your testimonial.”

Drawn together from that interview and her messages to the team, and shared with her consent, this is Jane's verdict in her own words.