New Booking System

In this case, Rufs, it has changed and is much worse than remaining the same.

To those few people who asked for a deposit based system to be introduced I say be careful what you wish for in future.

Yes agree with most, but i suggested many weeks ago that the new system should have been on a new platform, expensive i know, and the old and new running in tandem until such time that all members had been migrated to the new system, this way relatively small batches of users could have been moved and faults/bugs/anomoiies identified and fixed without major disruption to service or users.

It would appear that the club have used the Overseas booking system and tried to tailor it to meet the needs of the domestic business.

not a problem for me in the short term, off to Spain for 3 months, no i did not use the clubs overseas booking system

Thank you for this heads up.

Done. 

Done with considerable sadness but done.

Only read some of the posts but have looked at the recent update/link by Rowena.  One FAQ there stood out for me -  Quote -   ”Why do I need to enter my Date of Birth for myself or guests (including children)? In order to provide the appropriate price for each stay we need to capture the date of birth for each guest. To select the date of birth, please use the drop down options, or if adding a guest simply press the year at the top of the date selection panel, and then select month and day. We are reviewing this process in order to simplify it for members."

Entering DOB’s of adults and children is not something I have come across when booking with other UK pitch providers that I can recall.   Would prefer to enter number of adults and number of children rather than personal details.  I have not yet needed to use the new system preferring to book with other pitch providers for now. Will keep checking back for info and Rowena’s updates.in the hope that all will be fixed soon.

Has anybody experienced how the deposit system is working?

Our Booking Confirmation states:  “You will lose the deposit paid for amendments and all cancellations made within 21 days of your booked arrival date”

Let's suppose we book 10 nights at £30 per night.  I believe we'd pay a 20% deposit of £60 upon booking.

If, a week before we travel, we have to cancel the last 5 nights, do we lose, (a) the whole £60, (b) half the £60, or (c) nothing?

(a)   would be pretty draconian,

(b)   would possibly seem fairest, but contradicts the booking confirmation statement above,

(c)   doesn’t penalise people for booking nights they aren’t going to take, which was the purpose behind taking deposits AND it contradicts the booking confirmation statement.    

 Anyone know which applies?  I presume the Club has a policy to cover this situation, but I have no idea what it is in practice.  

We booked a 3-night stay at a club site, paid a £25 deposit. A few days before our stay I got a last-minute hospital appointment, so we had to put back our booking by a day, which we did by calling the site direct. The warden was surprised to see that we had been penalised £8.34, with no explanation. I still don't understand this - was it a third of the deposit because we booked three days? If so, if we'd booked, say 14 days and had to put it back a day, would we have been charged one fourteenth of the deposit??

It all seems a bit haphazard, and I haven't seen any adequate explanation of the Club's policy on this. 

It’s only been running 32 days so far, so the likelihood of anyone having done it and able to provide an answer will be low. After all most of the bookings taken so far would have been made under the old system and T&C’s. Your best bet is to contact the club, you never know you might get a definitive answer.😀

edit based on S&P’s experience. It looks like B.

Thank you “takethedogalong” for pointing out that Trust Pilot gets a response, although rather bland. The club magazine letters page never publishes any criticism- which would make the mag more informative. It’s good to know where complaints are listened to!

Feeling a bit shocked and this might be the last year of our club membership (we have been members since late 1990's) :-

1. Neither of us remember the announcement that the booking system was changing. We have only just discovered it.

2.We are computer literate and trying to find site availability is a nightmare. Please bring back the facility to be able to see which sites had availability. As the search facility is less than good. In fact please bring back the old system.

3. The club has previously trialled pitch choosing and I seem to remember it being abandoned as like others, one of the things we liked about the club is choosing our pitch when we got there so it suited our needs (not whether it was grass or hard standing)

4. We will not be booking while you ask for full date of birth and haven't got a clue how long our car is and why either is relevant? Feels like a massive data grab by someone.

5. One of the advantages of the club was the flexibility to move bookings or change, which over the years has been really helpful to us when my mother in-law suddenly went to end of life (we were able to book another site closer) or when our car broke down or our daughter on holiday fell and had an accident. 

6. Late availability with people cancelling was actually a benefit to some of us that are now not able to plan a long way in advance as we could pick up cancelled pitches.

7. If you have to cancel for good reason within 21 days eg illness or car break down will deposits be refunded? and what happens if it's a multi stay trip which ours tend to be?

8. Its not surprising with covid there are a lot of late cancelations and given how full sites are when you stay on them why is this now a problem?

As a club of members, I think the club should be asking for a refund for this terrible and what seems untested, glitchy, difficult to navigate booking system, we have spotted so many errors in it including Northumberland being incorrectly spelt.