Earlier this year I discovered that Steve Phillips, the Hobby UK manager, has left the company. I had been dealing with him ever since buying our van 2 years ago.
A few months back I spoke to Paul Lowery, the Service Manager at E S Hartley, who assured me that I need not worry about the two year warranty about to run out with no solution yet to the warping window problem. He emailed Hobby Germany and they confirmed that when a solution had been found, I would still be able to benefit from it under the warranty, as the problem arose within the two year period. Paul Lowery did say he would be happy to order me new windows straight away, but that he would merely be swapping “bad” windows for “bad”.
Having said all that, I have a strong suspicion that Hobby are not pursuing the problem with any great vigour – if at all. I suspect that they are just hoping that owners of the affected vans will simply give up and go away. Later models have different windows and I am told (by Paul Lowery) that they cannot be retro-fitted to the earlier models. So far, our own windows, warped though they are, do not leak. I hope they continue like that as I am far from certain that anything will ever be done by Hobby.
Rick Faulkner
