Weekenders spoil it yet again

Its not the weekenders that spoil it for everyone else (some of us have to work for a living) its the selfish members that book prime weekends and then cancel at the last minute.

Accepted that sometimes for personal reasons it cant be avoided, but its the members that book 'just in case' that cause the problem

Recently we booked a long weekend and our daughter and husband wanted to join us for the weekend in their caravan but couldn't get in as the site was fully booked.

When on the Saturday I noticed there were several empty pitches I enquired with the wardens only to be told 'they didn't turn up' therefore we missed out on a family weekend and the club missed out having empty pitches.

Come on club its about time you started taking deposits! 

But nobody knows until the day if everybody that's booked will turn up 😉

Who knows!, but I am sure they could have phoned! and let the site know they wouldn't be coming.

My point being is why does the club not charge a deposit when taking bookings I'm sure this could be refunded in genuine cases.

Define 'genuine'.

It would inevitably lead to more arguments and incur admin costs for the club/us.

Sorry but no ,I can remember when deposits were taken and it seems was not any different than now,  

And as I said previosly a call to the site can get results

And 2 months notice to obtain refund if cancelling? 

It depends when they realised they wouldn't be coming. 

We left in plenty of time to arrive at a local site by 8pm one Friday. Unfortunately there was an accident and the motorway was blocked solid. I tried ringing the site at 7.30 but went straight to answerphone. Luckily we got there at 7.55 but if we'd been any later we'd have turned round and gone home as there's no LNA and we wouldn't get through the double barrier. 

I may or may not have bothered calling the following morning. 

Or a week to give those looking for pitches a bigger window of opportunity?  

All requests for deposits will be genuine or 'made' to be genuine by the member. Even if the excuse is fabricated how on earth could the 'justification', spurious or otherwise, be challenged? Folk will just know exactly what to say in pursuit of the deposit. All that will have changed then is the cost to the club in the time and processing the deposit and then returning it.

That's why the present system works. I'd also bet the instances of multiple speculative bookings being made and then cancelled are very low in the grand scheme of things and probably would be less frequent than the bogus request for refunds.  For these reasons the implementation of a system involving deposits is a non starter in my opinion. 

When I had a break down in Scotland I did not cancel the next site as I was unsure whether I would be recovered in one hit as we were 8 hours from home not including a stop. By the time I thought about it again and we were able to be recovered in one hit I was in the cab of the recovery vehicle and phone number in the car on the low loader. We stopped in services at 6pm. I was not going to climb up and phone by then. We had paid a deposit as it was a commercial site for a one night stop.

Unnecessary work for the warden. Members can check the website. It is more than likely that somebody on site will be looking for a cancellation in order to extend their stay in any case

All these posts claiming deposit booking systems don’t work... hasn’t stopped the membership of the C&CC growing at an exponential rate over the last couple of years has it? A point which they rightly like to boast about... positively shouting from the rooftops 

Well, it’s hardly putting the masses off, but your right, there are likely other reasons the C&CC are currently in favour.