Selling Neil's Hymer Free S 600: a 3-week sale, and the scam he nearly walked into

The Free S 600 sits at the desirable end of the campervan market: a Hymer build on an automatic Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, sleeping up to five across a rear fixed double, a convertible lounge and a pop-up roof bed, yet still under 3,500 kg so it can be driven on an ordinary car licence. Neil's had covered only around 5,480 miles. It had a full service history, a factory alarm and tracker, an awning, swivel cab seats, Truma heating and a reverse camera - and both the Hymer and Mercedes warranties were still valid, the Mercedes one running to August 2027.

In short, it was about as easy a motorhome to fall in love with as exists: practically new, beautifully specified, and barely run-in. The rear bed mattress was, quite literally, still in its factory wrapping. That is exactly the kind of vehicle a private buyer will pay a proper retail price for - and exactly the kind that also attracts the wrong sort of attention.

The genuine offers Neil had been quoted were around £68,000 - including one from a large, well-known dealership. Then a buyer he'd come across through social-media adverts offered £75,000, framed as a cash purchase. It was several thousand pounds more, and naturally tempting. Neil sent the details to Gary and asked: can you match it?

Rather than simply say yes or no, Gary did the homework. He looked the company up while Neil was on the phone, and what he found didn't add up: only a handful of reviews going back a few years, several of them complaining of bait-and-switch pricing; no proper trading address; a mobile number that returned nothing when searched; no findable directors; and no real social-media footprint. “There's just an element of shadow to it,” he told Neil - contrasting it with a dealer you can look up and trace back for years.

Crucially, Gary didn't overplay it. He told Neil plainly that he couldn't match £75,000, and that if the offer was genuine, Neil should take it - but to be extra vigilant, and never to hand over the keys until the money was sitting in his own bank account, paid from a legitimate UK bank. Neil weighed it up and decided to go ahead and accept the online buyer's offer.

Then it unravelled, exactly as Gary had feared. Having accepted, and having asked the sensible questions, Neil was phoned back: the buyer's “line manager,” he was told, would sell the van for him but couldn't buyit from him. In plain terms, the high “purchase” price had quietly become a sale-or-return arrangement - they wanted to take possession of a near-new, £78,000 motorhome without paying Neil a penny for it, and they kept calling and emailing to push it through. That is precisely the trap Gary had warned him about.

There was no waiting around. Neil uploaded the photos and a walkaround video he'd taken, the team prepared the advert, and it was live and syndicated the same day. He was an engaged, conscientious seller, too - he proactively booked his campervan in locally to have a minor kitchen-tap niggle fixed and the gas and appliances checked, “just so I can be absolutely certain I'm not passing on any difficulties.” The team kept the advert updated as he did.

Everything ran through Neil's seller dashboard, so he could watch interest arrive in real time rather than chasing for updates - every view, every enquiry, and the exact figure he'd walk away with at any price.

Neil never had to host a stream of unknown callers. The team vetted the interest, confirmed the appointment, and on the morning of the viewing cleaned and prepared the campervan before the buyers arrived. It was the only viewing the listing ever needed. The couple were, as the team reported back to Neil afterwards, “lovely people” who very much wanted the van - keen enough to put down a deposit straight away so nobody else could take it.

From there it moved fast. With the deposit paid on 29 April, collection was arranged, and the couple came to complete the purchase on 1 May. A near-new campervan that some sellers would have spent months trying to sell privately - and that Neil could have lost entirely to the online buyer - was sold cleanly, to a real, screened buyer, at £78,000.

Twenty-one days after going live, Neil's 2025 Hymer Free S 600 was sold for £78,000. After the £4,680 success fee, he received £73,320- about £5,300 more than the ~£68,000 trade price he'd otherwise have taken, and money that went straight towards the deposit and furnishing his new home. He never had to host an unscreened stranger, never had to haggle directly, and never released his keys until the funds were confirmed.

And he kept the one thing that mattered most: he didn't lose the van to the online buyer who had been circling it. The price was “a really good sale price,” he wrote afterwards - but it was the way the whole thing was handled, and the disaster that was quietly avoided, that he kept coming back to.

After the sale, Gary rang Neil to ask, honestly, how the service had felt from the seller's side. The conversation is reproduced below, lightly edited for length and clarity, and shared with Neil's explicit permission - “Yes, of course, I'd be delighted.”

Unprompted, Neil also left this five-star review on Google. We reproduce it in full, exactly as he wrote it.