Fond du Lac County, Planning and Development Department

Our camping reservations go through a commercial reservation site. Near the front end of the reservation process, we have some basic policies posted. Here is what our customers see:As you can see above, there is a non-refundable reservation fee per site and it is $5. This is how the private vendor...

is paid to run the online reservation system for us. Further, toward the bottom of the same screen there is a link to our reservation and cancellation policy. Here is the link to that policy: [redacted] Cancellations within less than 3 days or less of the first night of the reservation results in the forfeiture of all fees paid, camping fee and reservation fee. The customer then checks the box accepting our policies and then moves to the payment step of the reservation process. There is no room for varying interpretations of the written policy. The complainants went through our reservation process and reserved a site or sites for Memorial Day weekend. It was a week of wet weather as I recall and it rained in Waupun on Memorial Day weekend, conditions not enjoyed by some campers. The complainants arrived at our park and went to their reserved campsite. The site was erroneously occupied by another party. The complainants visited with our campground hosts. The hosts were going to visit the site and require the occupants to vacate ASAP. At that point the complainants declined the hosts and asked for a refund. The hosts reminded the complainants of our policies and explained they had no authority to hand out a refund. Additionally, the reservation fee is non-negotiable and the hosts reminded the complainant of the policies. Numerous times since Memorial Day weekend the complainants called and requested a full refund. The complainants were offered a promotion code for the value of the unused camping fee that I recall is $44. ($49 less the $5 non-refundable reservation fee. In fact, the $44 promo code was put on the complainants account with us the day after the cancelled camping. The complainants as do anyone with a promo code have 2 camping seasons to redeem the code for camping at any of our 3 camping parks. The complainants have so far declined to take the promo code. The promo code offer still stands although it is outside of our stated policy when cancelling within 3 days of the first day of a camping reservation. Our reservation system is pretty clear, self-explanatory and user friendly. We set up an online reservation at the request of many customers. Most customers like the system and have no issues using the system. We accommodate customers with no PC experience and in some instances customers with no PC accessibility. Those customers call here to the office and our front desk person walks them through the reservation process. We value our camping customers and many of them make annual camping trips to our parks and on their favorite campsites.

The account in your correspondence of 2/7/17 is not accurate. You and I discussed the county’s side of the story by telephone a few weeks back. Our refund policy is clearly stated on our camping reservation web page. I have nothing to add to the record.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.
The response still does not satisfy the desired outcome. It is also typical of what I have come to expect in terms of effort put forth by the county representative to resolve the issue (dismissive, rude, lacking detail and no actual attempt to understand or resolve the issue). Also, the county keeps referencing their refund policy, and previously stated “There is no room for varying interpretations of the written policy” yet somehow fails to realize the refund policy being referenced is for campers who canceled their reservation. They are clearly using “varying interpretations” of their own policy, since it has nothing to do with the situation. We did not cancel our reservation, if fact we drove an hour to the campground only to arrive and find that our reserved site had been occupied by other campers. The continued reference to the cancelation policy has no relevance to the situation. To summarize, we did not cancel our reservation, we arrived and our reserved site was occupied, the host offered no resolution other than a coupon that was not an acceptable solution. The county violated their own policy. The only acceptable resolution to this situation is a full $49 refund.  There was no county side of the story discussed when we spoke 12/06 because the county representative was clearly uninformed on the issue, as evidenced by his own statements.  The county representative stated he thought my situation had “been taken care of”, yet this was the first time we spoke (regardless of my many attempts to contact him prior), so there is no reason he should have thought the situation was resolved. The county representative was not able to state any of the details of the case or what was done to resolve my issue.  On the call, because the county representative had no information, he stated he would have to talk with another member of the county, and the Camp Hosts to “recreate the situation” (note: this is seven months after the issue occurred). He stated he would discuss the situation with them and give me a call back by the end of the week (12/09) with what he found.  As of 1/10 when this claim was submitted, I had not received a call back so I can only assume he still has not spoken with those necessary to understand the situation. This lack of response is consistent with the many unreturned calls and voicemails in my initial attempts to contact him over the course of seven months leading up to this. Equally disappointing and frustrating was the fact that when I finally got a hold of him by chance, he continuously cut me off, talked over me, was dismissive of my statements, claimed he would call me back with a resolution and then never responded. To date, he has never responded to any of my calls or voicemails or made any attempt to contact me. Our only conversation on 12/06 was because he happened to pick up the phone that day.  Everything I have stated throughout this claim process is accurate, and in contrast to the replies by the county, I have supported my claims with a detailed account of the situation. I was there, unfortunately, to experience everything stated. I was there to experience showing up to my reserved site to find it occupied after the camping policy permitted period.  I was there to talk with the Camp Hosts and have no reasonable solution offered. I was there scrambling to find another camp ground and site on a holiday weekend. I was also there to experience the ignored calls and voicemails for seven months as I tried to have this issue understood and resolved. There is no explanation as to why someone was occupying the site I reserved at 3p on 05/29/16, the camping permit expiration time, violating the Fond du Lac County Park’s own camping policies of either one or both of the following:#3. No camping party shall move from its assigned campsite to another campsite without prior approval.#5. All camping permits expire at 3:00 pm on the last day of the permit period.[redacted] It is the county’s responsibility to be accountable for the policy that they hold campers to.   I will still consider the issue resolved when I have received a refund in full ($49) or when I have received a coherent explanation as to why they violated their own stated policy, and gave my reserved site away. 
Regards,
Jessica [redacted]