Thank you very much for the useful information regarding Dometic Fridge Problems. I am disgusted with Swift if they valued customers then they would improve on quality control. More importantly those responsible for their haphazard couldn’t care less attitude in the factory should be severely reprimanded or sacked. Not enforcing accountability causes the problems we the consumers are now having to deal with. Enough is enough Swift are relying on customers silence because they know we have to sell our caravans at some point. We consumers need to make our voices heard. One Example : An employee within the factory decided not to seal behind the fancy facia in the 2018 shower unit’s. (His excuse nobody will see it! )This idiot cost Swift £2,000,000 what happened to that irresponsible employee? NOTHING! That speaks volumes to me and is not the way to run any business. The list of faults we have found in our bought new 2018 Caravan is disgraceful.
We’ve just gone away in our caravan for the first time since the summer.
We had the same thing happening with our fridge. I went through with the helpful tips people have put on here but with no luck. I took the front display panel out really just to look inside, as I did this 2 flys flew out of the gap. Not seeing anything else I put it back together and waited. It worked all night without a problem but as it got light the problem came back. I decided to take another look inside the panel again. This time 1 fly came out. I decided to touch the connections in the PCB attached to the display (these are low voltage) and it started moving through the menus in the display on the front. I know it’s a long shot but I think that the fly was bumping into the connections on the back trying to get out and changing the settings until it just went into alarm.
So far this has sorted the problem. Fingers crossed this is it because like most of you, we purchased this van a long way from where we live so it’s a long trip to get it sorted.
I think it's a bit unfair to blame Swift for the Dometic fridge problems, it's Dometic that make them that should take the blame,the same goes for other appliances in a caravan, but when the same problems have happened in vans 2-3 old and still happen on new vans, then the caravan manufacturers have to take some of the blame for still using the products.
Hi,
Interesting about the fridge problem; we collected our brand new swift Sport very recently and went away for a week. (October 2019)
We had the fridge turning itself off, the awning light turning itself on and off and the hot water turning itself on (even whist turned off in every mode).
The Truma combi was giving off a horrible acrid burning electrical smell that was physically eye watering and throat burning along with bringing asthma attacks on, when the hot water and heating were on.
We stopped using the hot water as we were worried there was a fire risk.
The LED lights over the cupboards flashed really brightly every time the pump switched off. And the pump! We have never heard a noise like it. It sounded like someone firing a Gatling gun every time we turned a tap on. Do Swift owners really put up with this?
Sargent blamed the dealer for not fitted a suppressor to the pump, but really, there should be some kind of surge protection on the command unit. How often are people getting these replaced?
Dealer says they can smell something, all electrics are fine and there is nothing wrong! Well he would, wouldn't he!
The dealer, Swift and Truma have all tried to convince us that the burning smell is "because the combi is new". However, we are both technical people in technical jobs (electronics and mechanics) so there is no BS'ing us. We know burning electrics or plastic when we smell it. No other new caravan we have had has any smells or induced an asthma attack.
The Command system garbage is old mobile phone technology that will need constant updating and patching to rid it of glitches.
We have dropped the 'van back to the dealer and rejected it.
We are not setting ourselves up for being constantly stressed in a caravan that we bought to go away and relax in. There is nothing relaxing about it, therefore it is not fit for purpose.
As a lady said in an earlier thread; there was food in the fridge. We threw some away as we didn't know how long the fridge had holiday!
In over 30 years of caravanning and owning 5 2nd hand caravans and 6 new caravans, we have not experienced any problems. Either we have been lucky or swift are just the pits.
Oh, and when I called swift to discuss this, the lady said she was not interested as we had rejected it already. No customer service or interest in feedback on their mass produced crap whatsoever.
I guess the Command system will sink the company before long anyway.
Thanks for reading. opinions/feedback welcome
Yours
Peed off, broke, fed-up, caravan-less and not looking forward to going to court for a refund as the dealer refuses to act in accordance with the Consumer rights act 2015.
Wow, hope you get the result you want.
Personally I think all caravans have their Achilles heel none of them are without problems.
Given the cost of new units now I think the build quality is shocking, as are some dealers when problems occur and in my book it’s just not good enough.
We’ll stick with our current van as it seems to meet all our needs. Six years old now but does everything we want it to and is dry.
We got a used 2018 Swift last year and had issues with the fridge and the lights flickering when the water pump was operating.
Fortunately there is plenty of advice on here and disconnected the fridge from the command system and fitted a suppressor to the water pump, surprised that the previous owner put up with both faults for 5 years though
Wow, this is a blast from the past. I wrote the post that started this back in 2018!
Kevin Gibbins, welcome! I can’t help with your problem but it might be best to start a new post rather than tag onto this one as I think your question has been missed with people responding to my 5 year old one.
Im intrigued by 'command unit'. And once disconnected, use the buttons on the fridge. What does this command unit do, apart from cause problems? I'd never heard of one till this post. And only ever operated our fridges with said buttons on the fascia. Obviously another layer of 'things to go wrong' in newer caravans.
Mick, the command until is the main control panel in Swift caravans. It controls the 12v systems, switches the pump on, controls the lights and heat etc and most annoyingly, for 2018 models, controls the fridge. However, it was a complete nuisance as the fridge control was very temperamental! There are also buttons on the fridge itself which control the fridge when the command unit is disconnected so why they needed to control it from the command unit is beyond me! Interestingly, for 2019 models, this feature was not available - I think it caused too many problems. The heating control was also temperamental so I set it to manual and then used the separate Alde panel to control the heat as well.
You are absolutely correct that it is just another gimmick that can go wrong.
5 years after I started this topic, we still have the same caravan but control as much as possible manually rather than through the command unit.
I recently bought a 2018 Swift Celeste (Challenger) 480 se and had a problem with the fridge. It would not run on gas or when connected to the car, I kept getting the error message.
After reading your particular solution to your problem, I thought I would give it a go. I removed said cable and hey presto! it all works fine now, so thank you for posting your tip.
I will see about new software when it next goes into the Swift dealer for its service, however, I'm quite happy to leave it as it is.
Sometimes they add too much unnecessary technology to caravans, and more to go wrong.
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Topic: Swift Challenger Dometic Fridge Problem
via mobile 19/9/2019 at 5:20pm
