How do you feel about paying a deposit on CL site

Just booked Overwater Marina CL for April and had to pay full cost!!

Totally in favour of non returnable deposits.

+1

We, and I'm guessing most other busy CL sites, welcome the support for deposits and understanding of why they are required which is evident on this thread.  Here at Cholsey Grange we take a deposit (50%).  As soon as we started doing it (about 4 years ago) our number of cancellations and no-shows fell dramatically.  Our policy is that we will refund a deposit if (a) we are given at least a week's notice and (b) we can re-fill the pitch.  It's a real faff when it happens - especially ahead of a busy weekend.  Thankfully we rarely have to consider this as most of our guests honour the system.  As has been pointed out though, a cancellation is a 20% (or at least 10% if a deposit has been taken and not refunded) reduction in income.  Not only that, but on a busy weekend or bank-holiday you may have 'turned away' other Members who wanted to stay with you.  BTW we accept cheques and Bank Transfers and an increasing number of members seem happy to do a bank transfer.  Again, thank you Members for your understanding on this topic. 

 ....  Our policy is that we will refund a deposit if (a) we are given at least a week's notice and  .... 

Much less than Tracy's 4 months & my similar notice 

CL owners now have the ability to check if a membership number is valid at the time of booking,  offenders should be reported to the club and dealt with under the same rules as club sites ?

I would gladly pay the full fee  for a CL when i book on condition that the cl does not have more than 5 vans on

Hi, I'm a new CL owner from the end of last summer and my first bookings were taken without a deposit - I trusted the people who booked - sadly all of them cancelled at short notice and with no deposits taken.  I started to ask for  a £10 deposit for a weekend or a £20 deposit for longer bookings and offered to receive them via BACS payment (which doesn't cost the sender or receiver) and it has worked very well - no problems (touch wood) encountered since then.  The booking I took yesterday for Easter weekend said he would pay in full and did it within the hour, happy days :-)

Hi, I'm a new CL owner from the end of last summer and my first bookings were taken without a deposit - I trusted the people who booked - sadly all of them cancelled at short notice and with no deposits taken.  I started to ask for  a £10 deposit for a weekend or a £20 deposit for longer bookings and offered to receive them via BACS payment (which doesn't cost the sender or receiver) and it has worked very well - no problems (touch wood) encountered since then.  The booking I took yesterday for Easter weekend said he would pay in full and did it within the hour, happy days :-)

Beverley, where is your CL? Perhaps you could put a link to your site on your postings to enable CT members to view it, and so you may get additional bookings.

I don’t mind how much I need to pay in advance. Just can’t be faffed with cheques and envelopes, though.

I don’t mind how much I need to pay in advance. Just can’t be faffed with cheques and envelopes, though.

That is understandable in this day and age with cheques and envelopes. But there are still many members without online bank accounts.

Then there is the younger generation where some do not even know how to write a cheque. I saw this for myself a few weeks ago in an insurance company.(It made me feel VERY old)

Cl's often get asked if they take credit/debit cards,but unless they have another business to run this with it would not be cost effective.

It is more time consuming for a CL to take deposits and there are no special colums in the CL booking diary to write down the deposit and say cheque /direct to bank/paypal/cash etc and the amount.