What Google reviews say

The clearest pattern is that outcomes vary when a mechanical or electrical fault does happen — most are resolved within hours to the renter's satisfaction, but not all.

• Two separate breakdowns across a 54-day trip. The renter was left to arrange and pay for roadside assistance without the premium cover, was stranded overnight twice and missed a ferry connection, before the company refunded the remaining bookings after the fact.
• Two breakdowns in the first ten days of a 15-day hire, in a separate and more recent account, on a vehicle the renter called visibly worn — a replacement was offered but the renter chose repairs instead.
• A pre-booking price that rose sharply within days, in a different, unrelated thread, before the renter could complete the booking. Worth knowing about the sales process, though the renter never actually rented a vehicle.

• Friction at pickup — no staff member physically present, or a mix-up over which van was ready. This is the clearest pattern, and the company's own replies to reviews acknowledge it directly at more than one depot.
• Part of the fleet described as dated next to newer competitors, by a smaller number of reviewers independently at two depots; the company's replies acknowledge this too rather than disputing it.

The single worst account we found anywhere in this company's reviews is at Queenstown, its smallest and newest depot: a renter described a chaotic pickup with no employee actually on site, and a sink pump that failed within half a day and was never fixed for the rest of the trip despite repeated messages, forcing paid campsites instead of the freedom camping the trip had been planned around.

This is the most substantial complaint list on this page, and some of it is serious rather than merely inconvenient.

• Safety-system faults, described by independent reviewers at Auckland and Christchurch — electronic stability and anti-lock braking systems cutting out while driving at one depot, and a passenger airbag that stayed deactivated for five days after a sensor fault went unaddressed at another, a condition serious enough to fail a routine safety inspection.
• Billing disputes at more than one depot, over full-day charges and damage costs, where reviewers felt underserved during the dispute itself.
• Long waits — hours to days — for roadside help or repairs once something did go wrong, including one account of a hotline going unanswered for days while a drainage and electrical fault recurred overnight.
• Poor cleanliness or missing fixtures at handover, in a smaller number of reviews, including one account of a spilled-oil mess and a broken level indicator that let a toilet cassette overflow.

None of this is the majority experience — the weighted 4.5 across 3,569 reviews says as much — but at this volume, the worst outcomes are real and specific rather than statistical noise.

The clearest pattern is mechanical faults appearing at or soon after pickup, though the company's response is usually described as fast and fair: a leaking skylight fixed at a workshop the next day with the lost time reimbursed, a heater failure at the very start of a honeymoon trip resolved with a full vehicle replacement.

• One more serious account. A vehicle that reportedly lost power three times at highway speed over a multi-week hire, where the renter says early support suggested filming the fault rather than sending help, before a senior staff member intervened directly to arrange a replacement partway through the South Island.
• Last-minute cancellations, in a smaller number of older Christchurch reviews — two years old and older, none recent — with a refund offered too late to rebook elsewhere. Nothing similar turned up in the recent reviews we read, which matters when weighing how current a warning still is.

• Slow or automated first-line support over messaging before a human replies. This is the most consistent complaint — one renter said a query about broken sliding doors got an AI response with a human following up roughly twelve hours later, which the company's own reply confirmed is the normal first-line process.
• A minority of vans arriving with mechanical wear — sticking sliding doors and a noisy fridge recur independently at Christchurch.
• Christchurch's fully self-service pickup and drop-off, described by more than one renter as feeling understaffed, with one account of no staff present at a scheduled weekday pickup despite an email promising otherwise.

The more serious accounts we read — a leaking water container and unreliable heater on one rental, three separate breakdowns from a dead battery on another — both still credited the company for a quick fix once reached, and both were the exception rather than the pattern in what we read.

Christchurch produced by far the most readable individual reviews of the three depots, and its complaints are the most concrete:

• A three-week motorhome hire affected by repeated leaks, several repair attempts and what the renter called poor communication throughout.
• A return process the renter called unacceptable, in a separate account, undoing an otherwise good trip.

• An ageing, high-mileage fleet. The most consistent complaint, raised independently at all three depots — several reviewers cite figures at or near 400,000 kilometres on the odometer, including one account of a four-week rental where the vehicle was swapped mid-trip and both replacements carried comparable mileage and mechanical issues.
• Cleanliness and cosmetic disrepair — mould, stains, makeshift repairs — recurring mainly at Auckland and Christchurch.
• Wait time, which is Christchurch's own top topic tag, corroborated by an account of a three-and-a-half-hour pickup delay blamed on a system error.
• A rushed pickup, described independently in a smaller number of reviews at two different depots, that pushed the renter toward scanning a QR code for a review before being properly shown how the vehicle worked.

• A split between well-liked branch staff and corporate customer care. The clearest pattern: renters call the escalation process slow or unhelpful once a problem needs to go beyond the depot — one renter's own phrase for it was that customer care was "shockingly unhelpful" despite friendly branch staff.
• A shared check-in counter at Christchurch specifically. More than one renter describes Apollo sharing a single counter and limited staff with its sister thl brands, making pickup markedly slower — the company's own reply to one such review confirmed the inconvenience and said compensation had been offered.
• Vehicle-condition complaints, scattered across all three depots but mostly framed as inconveniences rather than trip-ruining, and usually followed by an explanation or fix from the company.

Queenstown stands apart in the sample we read: a far more consistently positive tone and close to no negative reviews found, on a much smaller base.

The only company here where Trustpilot rates higher than Google — 4.1 from 252, against 3.7 here. That is partly explained by the Trustpilot listing being an Australia and New Zealand combined page where only about a quarter of reviews trace to New Zealand depots. The harsher number is the more local one.

Auckland's Google topic tags say most of what needs saying on a listing twelve reviews deep: "scam" appears in four reviews, "deposit" in four, "mattress", "credit card" and "bond" in two each.

• Bond refund delays. The most consistent complaint, and the one that crosses platforms. Reviewers describe waiting months for the return of deposits of NZD 5,000 or EUR 3,000, with one account still unresolved nearly three months after drop-off.
• Vehicle condition at handover. Vans described as dirty, not matching advertised photos, and in one case missing curtains entirely — making the vehicle, in the renter's account, impossible to sleep in. A separate renter described an interior so dirty they spent an hour cleaning it with supplies they bought themselves.
• A safety-related complaint. One reviewer described needing brake pad and rotor replacement shortly into a trip. The owner's reply acknowledged that a vehicle had slipped through unchecked during peak season — a single account, not a confirmed pattern, but one the company's own response did not dispute.
• Contactless depots with no physical office. The owner's replies confirm this is the operating model: keys via lockbox, 24/7 roadside assist by phone. Reviewers describe it as a problem when the lockbox code was not sent, callbacks took 45 minutes, or no communication explained the self-service setup before arrival.

Campervan Village is a sister company to Wicked Campers, sharing ownership and depot addresses. Wicked Campers' own Auckland listing sits at 3.1 from 98 reviews — a higher rating on a larger base, under the same operation.

Trustpilot is larger and less extreme — 2.9 from 135 reviews on a combined Australia and New Zealand page — but bond refund delays are the dominant complaint there too, and the distribution is similarly polarised: 37% five-star, 34% one-star.