Package deal: Karrite Odyssey 325 box and bars

Aerobar box adapters will also be included; tick the Roof box adapters box at the bottom of this page if you intend to order aerobars. (Please note that we won't supply these adapters if you order steel bars.)

Karrite's Odyssey 325 is a decent quality rear opening box, made of "Duotek", with a single rear lock and a 5 year guarantee. One of the advantages of rear opening, i.e. hinged from the front, is that you can access the box from both sides, making it easier to fit to the roof bars, and easier to load.

We look around the European market regularly and are still confident that this is the best value box of this size below £100. These are the features which help it score so highly:

• it's a useful size
• rear opening, with one central lock
• decent quality - it's made of a composite plastic called 'Duotek' especially developed for Kar Rite
• spring struts (one to help the lid up, and one to make sure it closes easily)
• it looks good
• 5 year guarantee
• 80mm wide U bolts supplied as standard
• Weight 13kg
• Maximum permitted load 50kg

The fittings inside this box will accommodate bars between 52 and 76cm apart. If you have fixing points on your vehicle or existing bars that are cannot be moved please check these measurements before ordering. If your bars are further apart than 76cm we would recommend a longer box, if you would like to check before ordering please contact us and let us know how far apart your roof bars are positioned.

This season we are also offering a free roof box hoist to give you a superb deal. Boxes are bulky items so the ideal place to store them is above your car in the garage, or perhaps in a shed. Many people will leave the box attached to the bars, and also use the box for storage.

If you don't need a box hoist, our alternative gift is a set of 3 Fasty straps - 0.5m, 1.5m and 3.0m. Although of much less financial value they will be useful for 1,001 things, time and again. To order the 3 straps, 'untick' the Free box hoist "Order Item?" tick box by clicking in the box, and then tick the Free straps one instead. Please note that these free items are included on your invoice at 10p for our record keeping purposes only, and that only one box hoist or one set of straps will be included per roof box order.

Very few customers know much about the roof box market before they visit our site. We have a lot of information about the things to think about before buying, and the “real world usefulness" of various roof box features, but you’ll be buying sight unseen, and you probably won’t have used a roof box before, so there is inevitably some luck in getting a box which you’ll be happy with.

We want to remove the risks of buying these large and often expensive items, perhaps from brands which almost every other roof box retailer doesn’t stock, and so we have a unique “90 day Exchange Scheme” for roof boxes.

This allows you to use a roof box and, with the benefit of experience, to exchange it for a new one within 90 days of invoice date. Most exchanges are from a shorter box to a longer one, or from a wider box to a narrower one.

These are the rules of the Exchange Scheme:

• You are allowed one exchange only.
• The original box must be in "as new" condition, subject only to fair wear and tear.
• The replacement box must be a different model.
• The replacement box must not be part of a package deal or be from our Bargains section.
• Roof bars are never part of the Exchange Scheme.

This is how the exchange scheme works:

• We charge in full for the replacement box, including the appropriate carriage charge and a charge for any packaging needed for the return of the original.
• We arrange the collection and pay the return carriage costs.
• When the original box arrives back here we refund you for the invoice value of the original box, but you won't get back more than the invoice value of the replacement box. In other words, if the replacement is cheaper than the original we won't be giving you "extra cash back".

If you want to exchange a box that was purchased as part of a package deal, the scheme works in exactly the same way. Please note that the roof bars in package deals will be invoiced at the full “Our Price” that was advertised at the time of order, with the box representing the difference between the package deal price and the roof bars. Package deal roof boxes are often invoiced at a very substantial discount to the cost of buying that box on its own, so it’s likely that you’ll need to pay a bit extra if you want to exchange for a box that is normally the same price as the one you’re trading in.