Wendekreisen Review

This was the first time we travelled with our 2 big dogs. The company was great when I explained how big are guys are. The camper was clean and tidy and the dogs fitted in perfectly.
We travelled for 9 days through the top of the South Island and had a wonderful time. Everything we needed was in the camper (even down to a cheese grater. The heater kept us toasty on the colder nights. We had a great time.

We have recently collected our 3rd Wendekreisen Campervan. We love camping and since we hired our first Wendekreisen campervan we have not gone back to any of the others we previously hired. The team is really lovely, we are always welcomed with warmth and a big smile. Starting our journey on a high note.

Weve booked with other companies but it is annoying at the end of the holiday having to pay for the mileage. At Wendekriesen we drop off and are driven to the airport to go home. We certainly will be back again next year, hopefully we can start in Auckland next time. Although the south island is magnificent!!!

Thanks again Wendekreisen Team. You are all awesome.

We have booked a campervan traveler in March for 21 days and due to COVID all flight was cancel. For us it was impossible to visit New Zealand. When we ask for a refund Wenderkreisen reject any request and when we asked for the general sales conditions. they refund only 70% of the total amount. It is unbelievable and unacceptable in such word wide extreme situation that wenderkreisen refused to refund our money, all other company refund 100%.
Okay Wenderkreisen you stall us 800$ and for this I will give you the worst note I can give for this...
Take care of Wenderkreisen, they ask to pay everything in advance and when you have paid you does not interest them anymore if a problem occur you will never see you money anymore.

A group of 6 of us paid in full for 3 motorhomes to be picked up on 18/3/20...we were advised by our airlines and Oz Govt Travel apps on the 15/3/20 that NZ & Oz boarders were closing and with that a group discision we proceeded to ask Wendekreisen Co. about the alerts, replying back that they are still open and what a wonderful way to self isolate in one of their motorhomes travelling thru out NZ...The alerts we had received was that we were to isolate for 14days. We as the group we decided not to travel and emailed our decision to Wendekreisen to cancel 3 days prior to our departure. In our group we have a couple that was over 70years of age and in that Virus Risk Agegroup. We requested our refund, as we could not put our trip to another time frame due to military and family commitments due in 2021/22 in our cancellation email. To date, 4 months later and a mountain of emails to Wendekreisen Co. and several New Zealand Govt Departments, no luck.....NO REFUND.....We had offered Wendekreisen Co. 25% of our total monies to keep for their administration etc costs, still they say NO REFUND, but a 50% credit (as a gesture) to be used by Oct 2021, even knowing we cannot use it. So we say to all that read this review, it has left a very sour taste in our mouths, even our Kiwis friends here in Oz can not believe this of their countrymen...SHAME...and what a lovely BONUS $12,000 for this Company that has ruined our overseas holiday.

In 2008 we hired a 6 berth for 29 days. It was a second tier price and the van and service were excellent. As a result we hired the same from 19/3-30/4 What a different experience this time. We booked in March 2018 and were quoted a price which was acceptable and agreed. The final invoice was for $3000 more, we payed this. Numerous emails since getting back have been exchanged but no satisfactory explanation or refund has been forthcoming.
The state of the vehicle had a lot to be desired as follows
The hand free key locking the vehicle did not work
The oil light came on 60 miles after collecting the vehicle. We phoned the depot and were told to carry on. I later discovered there was an overfill of oil. The light continued to come on for the whole time we had the van. At the same time as reporting the oil situation I asked to speak to the manager/owner because I wanted to point out some extensive damage we had discovered on the inside of the roof above the rear seats. He never returned my call.
We had to go on lock down 6 days after starting During the whole time of the hire the boiler did not work. This caused a problem as we were on lockdown for a further two weeks and were only allowed on the site if we were self sufficient , the only service we could use was the electric hook up. After 8 days the van would not start. We phoned technical service and they sent a ‘road start’ technician out who in the end fitted a new battery. He also tried to deal with the boiler getting it to ignite but it again failed just after he left.
We managed to get flights home early returning the van on 7/4/20.

Wir haben von Wendekreisen den Koru 2 ST Freedom für 2,5 Monate gemietet. Das Fahrzeug war excellent ausgestattet und vor allem die Einrichtungen für Freedom Camping haben hervorragend funktioniert. (Wir haben einige Camper getroffen die hatten die gleiche Ausstattung von anderen Anbietern aber diese funktionierten nicht reibungslos - Heizung, Strom usw). Auch während des Lockdowns war Wendekreisen immer erreichbar und wir konnten unserer Probleme des Lockdowns immer in Deutsch besprechen. Wir würden jederzeit dort wieder buchen.

Very old vans and awful costumer service. We rented an spoiled van a and they didnt refund us. We demanded at least to speak with the manager and he didnt even show his face...

Stay away from this company!

Our experience was way below par with our rental. The orientation was fast and not very helpful. The toilet cassette leaked the first night putting waste water into the floor of shower and ruining a backpack on that floor. The next day, the toilet flush button stuck and ran until all the water was gone and the motor finally stopped. We had to hand flush with water from the sink from then on. The power connection on the outside of the van was corroded and we had to purchase wd-40 in order to make it work. We were double charged, sent them proof of previous payment, and heard nothing for more than 9 days when they apologized for their mistake. We had a flat tire which we had to change ourselves - they have no contract with a roadside assistance company. Then we had to purchase a new tire as we didn't purchase tire insurance. Only one of the two burners on the stove worked. The van had more than 170,000 km on it and needed some TLC!

Das Positive: Camper ist sehr sauber. Übernahme gut. Ausstattung gut. Übergab problemlos.


Das Negative: Die schlechte Bewertung kommt aufgrund des Umgangs in "Pannensituationen". Wir hatten eine Panne mit unserem Camper. Die Mitarbeiter wollten uns am Telefon nicht sagen wie es weiter geht. Mit dem Satz "Wir melden uns wieder bei Ihnen und dann sehen wir weiter" wurden wir vertröstet. Selbstverständlich habe ich das nicht akzeptiert, da wir mitten in der Pampa standen. Ich wollte zumindest wissen wann ich wieder bescheid bekomme. Hier wurde uns tatsächlich gesagt :" Das können wir Ihnen nicht sagen...heute, morgen oder an einem späteren Tag." Wir haben bestimmt 35 Mal mit verschiedenen Stationen von Wendekreisen telefoniert. Sowohl in Auckland, Christchurch (wo wir das Fahrzeug abgeholt haben), als auch mit der Notfall Hotline. Niemand wollte uns helfen. Als wir dann abgeschleppt wurden war weiter nichts mehr organisiert. Der Abschleppdienst stand dann mit uns an der Straße in der nächsten Stadt und meinte :" Gut und wie machen wir jetzt weiter? Ich weiß von nichts..."Da es sich bei dem Schaden um ein Garantiefall handelte wurden wir dann auf die Firma LDV verwiesen. Wendekreisen hat sich ab diesem Zeitpunkt ausgeklingt und wollte nicht mehr helfen. Wir bekamen sogar Sätze wie :" I don't want to talk to you anymore" oder "You should keep god damn calm" stets abgewürgt. Wendekreisen ging dann irgendwann auch einfach nicht mehr ans Telefon. Service und Kundensupport sieht definitiv anderst aus. Wir hatten übrigens eines der relativ neuen Autos. Dies war gerade 1 Jahr alt. Wir durften dann direkt mit LDV alles selbst klären. Zusätzliche Kosten für einen Leihwagenversicherung kamen bei uns ebenfalls oben drauf. Wendekreisen hat uns zwar einen minimalen Teil des Betrags erstattet - jedoch 3 Tage unseres Urlaubs vollkommen ruiniert. Völlig allein gelassen mit einem kaputtenen Auto. Kein Wille zu helfen, kein Interesse sich um irgendwas zu kümmern.

Beware Rip Off! Whatever Insurance you choose, they'll will charge you anyways when you return your camper for scratches you've never made! We were very disappointed!

We had a well used campervan. It was the Koru 2ST XL, a 2005 model with over 400,000Km's on it. We were well aware that Wendekreisen also offer brand new units and we did ask for more detail. They supplied us with loads of information regarding their servicing and we booked the much cheaper XL vehicle for 5 weeks. When we collected the vehicle it was presented in an immaculate condition. It drove well, the heating did a great job keeping us warm and the fuel consumption was much less than what we had budgeted for. In fact, Wendekreisen does not charge extra for RUC or Road User Charges which is great. Diesel is significantly cheaper than Petrol in New Zealand. Highly recommended company. We would not hesitate to hire a well serviced and looked after 'older' vehicle for the price we paid ... which was peanuts really !!!! Go and do it...they are great !

Just to be clear, Wendekreisen has loads of new vehicles. We hired a budget 4 and were super impressed. The interior was just refurbished and in a near new condition. The vehicle itself had high mileage but we could tell it was looked after and it ran like a dream. Had a pretty big storm and not a single leak. We loved our van and Wendekreisen was excellent !

Here below our experience, we will let you have your own opinion after this review. We decided to write reviews on Internet several months after handling it back to make sure things settled down and waiting for more information in case any would come from Wanderkreisen. We booked a campervan immatriculation HNJ118 for 25 nights at the end of the high season april 2018 until begining of the low season early may.
- In case you don’t have any serious issues with the campervan, i would say there is not much to complain about the company. We had one extra sheet and one towel missing in our package when we left. They offered us to buy a towel right away and we go our money back afterwards.
- However, you have to know that the campervan we had is very old, more than 450,000 km (all their fleet is not that old apparently but check in advance to avoid bad surprises). Old means as well : we had to stop once to check the orange warning on the dash board at a garage, they said it was an electronic issue and fixed it. It came back on the next day and Wanderkreisen told us to drive without paying attention to it as it happens all the time, (it could have been something serious, we will never know). Their emergency line didn’t work during business hours and the people in charge of issues we tried to call didn’t answer as well. Old means : Under heavy rain, the water leak inside the doors and the van become very humide. They checked this internally afterwards and found nothing but i would be very curious to know how they reproduced more than 10 hours of heavy rains in a garage ? Nothing needed to be fixed according to them, so keep in mind it hapenned to us. Moreover, the curtain hooks made out of fabric inside were hand put with screws, make sure to take them off in case of heavy rains otherwise it might leak inside because the curtain’s hook is too close from the door and gets trapped inside the door . Last but not least, the battery gauge inside the van might not work properly and can’t be fully charged but don’t worry the battery should work fine still, at least that’s what we thought as we couldn’t know and there was no way to check.
Make sure to check the validity date of your gas bottle before leaving as ours expired during our trip and it took us at least 10 emails back and forth to have a solution and know what to do (internet access was crucial but there is no wifi in the van so it means several wifi stops during our trip). Those are just facts you have to be prepared to face.

- Now, let’s talk about the main issue we had. After a few days driving, some friends following us in a van as well told us that we were loosing some water going up on the road. We contacted Wandekreisen for assistance and were sent to another company RVonroad that is dealing with all the issues happenning to the camper on behalf of Wandekreisen. From then, the communication with Wandekreisen stopped and we could only deal with this other company. After several email exchanges i twas decided to go to a garage to have the van checked. They have a booklet on board which says that we can stop to any recommended garage. RvOnroad suggested one on our way, but as we couldn’t loose two days just to wait for an appointement in that one we mutually agreed to stop at another recommended one. For the record we were accused afterwards, not to have followed the recomendation because the first garage was « specialised in campervans », (not all of them are then). Great to know several weeks after we left NZ that we mutually agreed to go to a garage mentionned in their booklet « not as good » and this was our fault.
The garage spent the morning checking the van and found nothing in the van that could cause a leakeage (they said we just had to empty to greywater tank) and then issued a written report to Wandekreisen to say so. Wanderkreisen or Rvonroad notified us via our booking agency and for them the problem was solved. We knew the problem was not coming from the water tank. We decided to stay the whole afternoon to the garage, emptying the water tank, filling it up again, driving up to simulate the leakage and it works proving that we were right, this had nothing to do with the grey water tank being full. The garage participated with us during all the tests and completly agreed with us that the van was leaking water and there was nothing we could do about that. We even found, doing some testing with buckets inside the garage that the theoritical water tank capacity written on the booklet wasn’t matching the actual water we put inside the van. We did the tests twice with the garage to confirm that information. The garage reported everything back to RvOnroad/Wandekreisen and we got the confirmation that there was nothing they could do on the van right now, we should get going and empty the grey water tank every day to avoid leaking water (not being self contained). As we had not choice we agreed to do so, hoping for a gesture when we would return the van almost two weeks later as this will become very irritating to find a free dump station every day…

The story ended when we returned the van, and we received no proposal at all from the company. We lost one full day in the garage to prove all the malfunctions of the van and we had to pay for lunch outside. They told us they never received any calls or written reports from the garage for the afternoon spent. We never heard from RvOnroad since then despite all the emails asking why they didn’t confirmed the phone call from the garage confirming the issues, and we were shutted down by Wandekreisen saying that they would no longer reply to our emails as the garage never issued a report for the afternoon work. They blamed us for not following their instructions to go to the first garage while the second garage where we went was mutually agreed in front before taking the appointement. All the issues we faced and that the independant garage confirmed were double checked by Wandekreisen own team after we left the country and of course they found nothing...

To conclude, as long as the van is recent and you don’t have any serious issues, it’s like all the comments we have seen so far about the company, you can come back anytime. But keep in mind that if you are about to rent an old van, you can face a lot of issues and lose some days which won’t be compensated. You may need to have a local internet connection and cell phone if you don’t want to be charged extra by your service provider back home as you have to be ready to spend hours on the phone and sending emails, waiting sometimes for days for the appropriate reply. Most importantly make sure you get everything confirmed in writting because phone calls and promises are easily forgotten when money is a stake.

The only thing we regret is not to have read all the other comments matching ours before booking the van about the company, and we are glad to know that we are not the only people who had this kind of issues. Before booking, make sure your understand what you can face and maybe it would worth spending a little more to avoid people ignoring you and lying to you.

This site is saying that they have old vehicles only. We hired a brand new one and did see many of them. The staff were great and so was our campervan. Had a nosy around their yard and even their oldest look very tidy and looked after. There are only a few reviews on this site and I wouldnt give too much about it. Their vehicles and service are great and so is their pricing and the terms.

Wir haben am 19.02.2018 für 4 Wochen einen Koru 6 Berth zum Preis von 7.058 NZD gemietet. Leider gab es bei diesem "deutschen Familienunternehmen" keine Einweisung auf deutsch. Da Fahrzeug sah in keiner Weise so aus, wie im Video auf der Website gezeigt. Es hatte knappe 440000 km auf dem Buckel und überall Unfallspuren. Der Manager in Auckland hatte als Kommentar zu dem Fahrzeugzustand nur die Antwort: "Was wollen Sie, Sie sind hier in Neuseeland - nehmen Sie das Fahrzeug oder lassen Sie es."
Nun - positiv war, dass es durchgehalten hat und bei Regen dicht war. Für alles andere haben wir uns mehr als einmal geschämt. Wir würden kein zweites mal bei Wendekreisen buchen.
Wenn Sie mal sehen wollen, wie so ein Fahrzeug im Original aussieht, dann schauen Sie sich folgende Seite an:
https://c.gmx.net/@328078907230132852/8z0nBhenSPOD68QS1ba93A

It all was good until I got a quotation for 4.400 dollars to fix a scratch in the side of the van. Fixing that shouldn't have costed more than 300 to 400 dollars. The quotation included several items not related to the damage and the rates were outrageous. I can guess the quotation was provided by a friendly company and the works will not really be performed, since the van already had some bumps from previous trips. They will most likely fix all the bumps and scratches together at some point with a cost several times smaller than the sum of the quotations provided to all the clients... If I had lived in New Zealand I would have gone to court about that issue, but they take advantage of the fact that the last thing most customers do before leaving the country is returning the van. With those kind of costs for small scratches it is crazy not to hire the "full insurance" and they should inform the people properly in advance. Too bad to end the trip that way because otherwise things worked pretty good.

We had a wonderful time. The terms and conditions were very much more favourable compared to other operators. The vehicle age was disclosed and for its age, our vehicle was in perfect condition. The staff were ultra friendly and our camper never missed a beat.

They make you sign lots of clauses and conditions that guarantee you will be responsible if something were to go wrong. Our van broke down soon after took off and had to be towed back for repair. We were offered a courtesy car to continue our trip but the promise to deliver the van to Dunedin wasn't uphold (so we drove back). They claimed that the damage was beyond repair and our rental fee forfeited due to driver error (double check what you sign). Most of their staffs were friendly though.

Make sure of your plans before you book. We reserved through one of the consolidators and ended up with a Wendekreisen booking. Any change, even one month before your pick up is considered a cancellation and they charge a lot for cancellations. They say it is 30% but once you read the fine print it costs much more (you forfeit your deposit PLUS 30% of total cost!!)
We wanted to change route to start and end in Auckland (i.e. nothing remote!) They had vehicles available but wouldn't change our existing reservation so we had to cancel and book with someone else. They would rather have our fee and then rerent our vehicle.

We had brand new camper from Wendekreisen. Absolutely happy with the interior which had a lot of unexpected bonuses. Very good company