TAKING MORE CARE
When we set out to add Customer Care to the judging criteria for our reviews in late 2019, we didn’t realise what a complicated issue it would be. This is an area readers have hounded us for advice on over the last few years, but it is also one of the hardest to assess as we do not get the chance to live with a van long term, nor do we buy the vans we review.
Therefore, our new Customer Care criteria focuses on the printed warranty and what services the seller or manufacturer offers to buyers after the purchase. For instance, do they have multiple agents nationally? Do they have dedicated warranty staff? What exclusions exist in their warranty? How does it compare to others?
BLA CZone’s Best Aussie Vans, the results of which you can find in 594 and 595, became the testbed for this long-awaited new criterion. However, as part of the process of examining the warranty documents of entrants we found that things are not as clear as they should be. Looking more widely, we also discovered the issues seem to run across much of the
