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  • Day 13

    The Darwin dilemma

    October 24, 2019 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Thursday - We’ve searched gumtree, google and Facebook for vans. Bun has found a website showing beautiful motorhomes, lower mileage than most we have seen and a good bit cheaper, but based in Darwin. I have tried phoning them and they have not responded ...
    https://www.em-caravans.com.au/

    The price difference will make flying to Darwin an economic option, stay a night in a hotel and pick up the van the next day. As we have no definitive “plan”, it doesn’t matter if our journey starts in Brisbane or Darwin. Starting in Darwin may actually be better, we’d see a bit of Australia that we hadn’t planned to see. The downside is 2,500km drive from Darwin to Cairns. We are told that not all of the roads are sealed and may be dirt rather than tarmac. Some of them are single track. It is also coming up to the rainy season in Darwin.

    From what we have seen and read, it makes sense for someone to want to offload their motorhome stock before the end of their season, but nothing accounts for the lack of communication.

    Friday - we keep trying to contact the company, we have been on automated hold for 15 minutes just to find that we are then transferred to an answer machine.

    A response to an email looked rather automated, poor spelling and not greatly welcoming or apologetic for not responding to telephone calls etc. They wanted to know which motorhome we were interested in as they had recently “sold many”. Again I asked to be telephoned. I gave details of the van we were interested in. Their email response was “Vehicle is located at our showroom in East Arm NT but we offer delivery anywhere in Australia for a very good shipping rate. For all the vehicles delivered we offer a 7 days inspection period from the moment you get it at your home and if for any reason you don't want to keep the vehicle you will be fully refunded.”

    Responding that we would like to see it first the response was.”The vehicle is in NT sitting at the shipping company ready to be delivered.
    They are a shipping company so it's impossible to test the vehicle there. As alternative we can offer a better solution for everybody.”

    I think this is the time to bale out. All looks too much of a scam for me.
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