Grant. Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 Hi guys Any one by any chance dealt with the safari centre chain in South Africa? I’m out here with my father who has a house here in Hillcrest near Durban and he has a 110 Over the past few years we have used the safari centre due to the convenience and the thought that having a chain of shops will show reliability and decent service, obviously not........ A few years ago, when my dad bought a 110, we went to them to prepare his landy for expedition use. A few years ago they kitted the land rover. A few months later, when we returned to South Africa, the front bull bar had rusted through in many places, only in a few months! The excuse was that it was a bad batch that they had received. We went back and they replaced the bull bar eventually... Recently now we have bought an off road caravan/trailer as were going up on safari through up to the borders of Botswana and Zimbabwe ( and there’s a lot of us!). They agreed to a discount on the purchase of the caravan, which we thought was great, they then responded close to the time when my father was closing this deal, that they said that the discount had been revoked, because the employee who organised the price, had left, and therefore they did not carry out the previous price agreed... The caravan was meant to be ‘new’. Now, when we saw it at first, the caravan has rusty hubs(sounds petty I know...), scabby paint and was missing several of the extras we ordered. Including a blower to keep positive pressure in the caravan to keep dust out... We were missing alloy wheels off the caravan which costs 7200r,(At current around 527 pounds!!! ) which they said were fitted, I pointed out the lack of them (as they were the same 16 inch wheels you can get for 30 quid each off of paddocks!), and there excuse was that since the wheels were painted silver not sand coloured, they assumed they were alloys!(even though they had started to form surface rust...) The layout was also different between our model and the model advertised. As I previously mentioned, they stated that it was a new caravan, this was for March 2009, it turns out the caravan is actually half a year old, and the bits that we paid for as extras on it, including the alloys, the blower, and a 1000W inverter, were not included, however by what the contract said they were all fitted! And as you can imagine, when you are spending that much money, you want to buy something that’s actually ‘new’ with all the bits and not that is being stated as new, and makes you overpay about £1000! Today we went to fit a roof top tent to our 110 for the same reason (as i said, there is loads of us!! )and we went to take part of the roof rack off to fit the tent, and all of the bolts on the roof rack had rusted, badly! Im sure that a roof rack of that price shouldn’t have rusty bolts after 3 years! And it’s not a wet climate here either! My friend here also commented on how they cheated him with tread plate, when he asked for the 5mm tread plate on his wings and bonnet, and they fitted 3mm (Small I admit, however its mainly based on principal!!) Has any one else had similar issues with the safari centre? The centre I am referring to is at the Gateway shopping centre, near Durban... Thanks guys Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 I have only dealt with the Bryanston branch, which used to be the head office too and have always had good service from them, both in the shop and their workshops. The products have been good too and are all still in use after many years. Whilst they were probably the first in the business, having worked very closely with Land Rover Special Vehicles in building prototype specials around 30 years ago, they have had a lot of competition in the last 15 years. Despite that they still have a few useful products, exclusive to themselves. Based on your experience with the Umhlanga operation, I owuld suggest phoning their head office in Pretoria, 012-348-3253 and talking to the Managing Director, Andre de Villiers, (who is also MD of the Umhlanga operation) Brian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grant. Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 I have only dealt with the Bryanston branch, which used to be the head office too and have always had good service from them, both in the shop and their workshops. The products have been good too and are all still in use after many years. Whilst they were probably the first in the business, having worked very closely with Land Rover Special Vehicles in building prototype specials around 30 years ago, they have had a lot of competition in the last 15 years. Despite that they still have a few useful products, exclusive to themselves.Based on your experience with the Umhlanga operation, I owuld suggest phoning their head office in Pretoria, 012-348-3253 and talking to the Managing Director, Andre de Villiers, (who is also MD of the Umhlanga operation) Brian Hi Brian Thanks very much for the advice! Will get onto it tomorrow! Regards Grant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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