My initial Solis Air booking was made on April 13th 2025.  It's very important to note the model of the vehicle.  The Solis AIR model was booked very explicitly because it has an Air Conditioner that you can run while plugged into shore power.  This was crucial as our trip would be in 90+ degree Fahrenheit weather.

On May 14th approximately one week prior to the trip, I went through the entire check-in process through the indiecampers.com website as prompted by an email from them.  I immediately became concerned after checking in because I noticed my vehicle was suddenly showing a regular Solis model and no longer a Solis Air.   There was NO notice to this happening during the check-in process.  There was no agreement from me to switch to this vehicle.  There was also no change to reflect the difference in price for these models.  They simply changed my vehicle with absolutely no notification and hoped I wouldn't catch it. 

Here is the exact message I sent to support, note that the original messages I sent through live chat were totally ignored, nobody was responding to me and I was starting to get nervous as my trip was less than a week away and I wanted time to potentially have a new plan:

Hi, I'm not getting any help from the live chat on the website, I tried yesterday and this morning and they are just straight up ignoring me now. I reserved with the following information and this is an urgent matter:

Name: Ryan 

Reservation Number: XXXXXX

 

I originally booked a Solis air as you can see from my attachment, yesterday after checking in and WITH 0 NOTICE FROM THE COMPANY, my reservation was seemingly just swapped to a standard Solis.

This is a big issue as we are camping in a location with temperatures up to 95 degrees and need air conditioning.  Obviously I wouldn't have agreed to have my reservation swapped

 

What happened here? 

 

I need this matter addressed ASAP because if I need to change reservations to a different company I now have less than a week when I originally booked this back in April!!!

Three days after I initially reached out to support and with 0 follow-up from anyone at the company regarding my issue, I get a single message from support claiming the van is "now a Solis Air".  After logging in to the site, the van does seem to once again be showing the vehicle I originally booked.   I gave the company the benefit of the doubt and trusted that they would put me in the vehicle I booked and paid a significant amount of money for.

5 full days after support assured me that I was "In a Solis Air" I arrived at the Indie Campers depot the morning of my trip.  Upon arrival I immediately noticed that the only vehicles parked outside were TWO Solis (standard non-air) editions as well as two RV's.  I was greeted by the depot team who started my check-in process.

I was highly suspicious of the fact that there were no Solis Air models visible at the depot, again, having an air conditioner was a non-negotiable for the trip as I very explicitly booked one knowing we would be in 90+ degree weather in the summer and the heat inside of the van would be intolerable.   

I proceeded to confirm with the depot team that I would be in a "SOLIS AIR" model, to which they simply said "no, we don't have any of those".   Again, up until the exact moment I went to pick up the vehicle, I had every reason to believe I would be receiving a SOLIS AIR model as:

• I paid an extra premium to book this exact vehicle
• I had issues during check-in where the vehicle mysteriously swapped
• Support assured me afterwords that I would indeed be getting a Solis Air
• Nobody from the company made any effort whatsoever to tell me that the Solis Air model was simply not available.

I was dumbfounded at this point and left in a state of disbelief because so much of my trip and plans were dependent on me having a vehicle that we could actually exist in for a period of 4 full nights in dangerously hot weather.  I expected the company to follow-through on their contract with me by giving me the vehicle I BOOKED over a month in advance and paid a premium cost for.

The only remediation options offered to me were the following:

• Cancel my trip and receive no vehicle
• Swap to an RV that had "just been returned" by a different customer

Given that I had literally thousands of dollars at stake on a trip I had booked to a music festival for ticket prices and for RV power and parking and other people depending on me, I had no viable option but to accept the alternative vehicle that they suggested (the ONLY other one available that day) or to lose out on the entirety of this trip I had planned for months.

The depot assured me the vehicle was in good working order and they would do a quick and thorough cleaning of the vehicle before it was handed over to me.  I reluctantly agreed to their offering as I felt pressured and otherwise hopeless as securing an entirely new RV rental at a reasonable price last minute sounded highly improbable. 

I was given a very expedited walk-through of the vehicle and was unfamiliar with the model so I was unsure of whether or not I was being shown everything actually functioning or not.  Additionally there is NO MECHANISM for testing whether shore power functions at the depot and it is NOT A PROCESS including in the "walk-through" of the vehicle to prove that things work as expected.  

Unbeknownst to me, this would turn out to be the most problematic aspect of the vehicle for the duration of our trip.

Additionally, whilst in the walk-through process (and recorded on video), the depot team was telling me that a SECOND CUSTOMER had a Solis Air model booked for that day and that they also would not be getting the model that they booked.  So that makes at least two of us that were bait-and-switched this day into a model with NO AIR CONDITIONER with no notification from the company beforehand.

I drive the Four Winds model out of the depot and back home to start loading the RV.  I noticed upon parking the RV at home that within a few minutes a blaring alarm was coming from the fridge, however, being unfamiliar with the RV model I presumed it was just a configuration option within the fridge that was perhaps set incorrectly,  I toggle the switch in the fridge to swap to propane and the alarm stopped.  

Additionally I noticed that the lights in the cabin would flicker and dim when switched on, yet again being unfamiliar with the battery system I thought perhaps because the fridge was powered on and utilizing the cabin battery initially during my drive that perhaps the cabin battery wasn't yet fully charged after being parked at the depot and utilized for the fridge etc. 

Further, because I knew that when I arrived at my destination after ~4.5hrs drive that I would have shore power I wasn't super concerned with the state of the cabin battery charge level thinking that once it was plugged into 30 AMP power that the cabin battery would be bypassed anyways. 

Throughout the course of the drive, during every stop where the RV was powered down for longer than 10 minutes, I noticed any system that relied on the cabin battery would start to act as though the cabin battery was completely drained, including the carbon monoxide detector, the lights in the cabin and anything else running off cabin battery.   Again, whilst this was somewhat concerning I still presumed perhaps some system in the vehicle like the fridge was still draining a lot of power and was optimistic that the problems would subside once the vehicle was hooked to shore power.

After a mostly uneventful drive save for a few electrical systems in the vehicle making sound or turning off during gas and food stops, we arrived at our destination. 

I proceeded to retrieve the cable to hook up the RV to the shore power system.  I plugged-in the RV and saw the blue-light on the external power port turn on as expected.   Upon reentering the RV and checking the cabin battery system panel, I immediately noticed the "shore power fault" light was lit up red.  Additionally I noticed that no systems in the cabin that relied on 110v power were functioning.  No outlets were working, the air conditioner would not turn on, even attempting to start the generator wouldn't work.  All of the battery systems seemed completely offline.

My first thought was perhaps there was an issue with the shore power plug outside.  We asked a neighbor if they would temporarily swap with us so we can troubleshoot if that was the problem.  We fully swapped cable and ports.  The same result was achieved.  Our neighbors systems worked totally fine off our port and cable, whereas ours were still totally broken on their port and cable.  This ruled out any external issue with the RV.  

I immediately reached out to their support team as instructed via the WhatsApp channel.  It took approximately 35 minutes (6:10pm to 6:46pm) to receive a human response with additional troubleshooting suggestions.  It's important to note that we were also in an area of very limited cell phone coverage and support was requesting I send them long-form videos to describe the issue.  Additionally there is NO PHONE SUPPORT as an option meaning I cannot talk live with somebody and describe my troubleshooting in real-time. They expect a very slow back and forth via recorded videos and text sent. The troubleshooting process was very annoying to deal with.  I was extremely frustrated and just wanted to speak with someone at the company to get some help.

I will stress again, THEY WILL NOT PROVIDE YOU WITH AN OPTION TO COMMUNICATE WITH TECH OVER THE PHONE IN REAL TIME.   It seems like they outsource every bit of their support to India including the "on-trip" support.  This is unsustainable for users who are camping in areas that may be remote with limited cellphone data and that have access to call but not upload long videos describing what the issues are and waiting 30+ minutes to get a reply that is totally unhelpful.   

Below I will post the logs of my chat with support so you can see how slow the process is and how they just sent what seem to be ChatGPT based prompts over to me. 

As you can probably see, my experience with their support team was incredibly lackluster.  They eventually just decided the only course of action was for me to "go to a repair shop" for them and have their RV diagnosed and fixed.  

Given that I had just entered a music festival for a 4-day trip and have ALL OF MY BELONGINGS inside of the RV with no way to simply "drop off the RV" and return to our "camping" trip without it, this obviously wasn't a solution that was tenable for us. 

Additionally I sent them images of the price comparison to show that I originally paid for the Solis Air nearly double the price per night for the vehicle I was given instead.  They offered NO COMPENSATION for this price differential and didn't even acknowledge that this was a problem.  

Support Again insisted that I "Kindly pay for a diagnostic in advance" and bring the RV to a repair shop.  They promised to "reimburse me" for this.  This was simply not viable as we had no means for leaving the festival, dropping the RV and returning to the festival with all the belongings in the RV and having no place to sleep.  It makes no sense whatsoever.   

I also stress that Indie Campers markets themselves as the "FESTIVAL FRIENDLY" RV service.  They are very commonly seen across festivals because they allow the customers to bring them there and encourage them to be used for that purpose.  My situation is in no-way an outlier here.   

Initially it appeared that the generator was simply not functioning based on the issues with the cabin power not actually getting power to the ignition for the generator.   

After troubleshooting on our own for some period of time, we figured out that if turned on the ignition of the RV for a somewhat extended period of time (10+ mintues) and while the RV was running we start the generator running, and additionally let the generator run for at least 5 minutes while still keeping the RV itself running, that the generator would finally remain running and we could power down the RV.

This series of steps of course is not the normal course of action for getting the generator started.  In a functioning RV we could simply prime and start the generator via the in-cabin switch because the cabin battery would ensure that this functionality is possible.   In our RV the cabin battery was completely malfunctioning the entirety of the time.  

This was a last-resort for us for multiple reasons: 

• one, the additional noise and pollution caused by running the generator non-stop. 
• Two, Indie Campers charges ADDITIONAL FEE'S for every hour of usage for the generator to run,  I was hopeful that Indie Campers would wave these feeds because of the electrical issues inside of the cabin, this was of course NOT THE CASE as I was billed for every hour and charged immediately upon return. 
• Three,  the generator running non-stop in very hot weather would cause the generator to shut-off randomly and have to redo the entire start-up procedure documented above each time.  

In summary,  we eventually got the generator to run which gave us access to AC, yet the generator was unreliable in the hot weather and we had to deal with the additional noise and COST associated with running the generator with a broken cabin battery system.  

During the final 30+ hours of our trip, the generator simply would no longer turn on, probably due to the excessive heat we were facing and we had no mitigation and the temperature in the cabin reached beyond the maximum of the in-cabin thermometer.  During this time the remainder of our food spoiled in the fridge. 

On Monday May 26 we returned the RV to the Indie Campers depot.  I thoroughly explained every issue I had with the depot team and walked them through each problem.   

While I was at the depot another customer was dealing with the depot team as they had the RV breakdown at the end of their trip and had to have it towed.   Apparently someone at the depot team was arguing with them and saying that the RV didn't actually get towed by was driven back by a member of the depot team.  The customers were shocked by these statements as they themselves watched the RV get towed away. 

I've been email communicating with support since the day I dropped the vehicle off.  As of Monday, June 9th 2025, I've still yet to receive any agreement from the company in terms of remediation to my situation.   They insist that the RV I received was actually "an upgrade" to what I booked (despite the price being 50% lower than what I booked), they have given me no commitment to resolving my issue.  They claim the RV is "in good working order" and that they are "investigating the electrical claims" that I have made. 

So in short, I have absolutely no reason to believe Indie Campers will act in good faith and try to remediate my situation as well as any other customers who face similar issues with the company. 

I've decided to pursue legal action against the company and am currently investigating my available options to go that route.