A Common Dilemma? Speak up, Put up or Shut up?
This story happened on: 01/01/2013
We've just returned from a short CL stay in our small motorhome over the New Year in Devon. For reasons that'll become obvious as you read on I'd rather not say precisely where. The site was really lovely, the owner very welcoming but the facilities were dire. However, it just didn't seem right to accost the owner and complain and there was so much to complain about. Who wants to start or end a stay on a really sour note? So we just made the best of it. Apart from the CL facilities the break was otherwise wonderful.
The signs at the entrance were either non-existent or so faded as to amount to the same thing. That continued into the farmyard where there was no indication for where to register on arrival and the faded, often unreadable, signs continued throughout the site. From the, finally discovered, reception a fair to good drive lead gently up across a small bridge to the site of 5 hardstanding pitches, beautifully spaced and arranged, all with electric hook-ups and nearby water. The bridge, however, was unlit by any means at all at night and a walk back to the facitlities shower block became a perilous expedition into the unknown; miss the bridge and you were into the gently flowing stream; a place where a torch of any sort was an absolute essential. Within the shower block the water was turned off in the ladies shower and toliet and had to be turned on each time from another room, the chemical waste disposal section. Apparently they were "waiting on the arrival of the plumber". The small electric hot water heaters over the basins in both the ladies and gents were "out of order" and looked like they had both been like this for in excess of 6 months. There was an unlit small step up into both the ladies and gents that was so easy to trip over if, in haste or any other time, you forgot it was there in the dark, which at this time of year is 14 of the 24 hours. The showers, which did work quite well on a coin operated meter, had a master switch in the wash room section with a notice by the switch which read, very helpfully, "Do not touch with wet hands"! And to crown it all there was no provision of toilet tissue.
That's about the sum total of it, and I can hear you all saying, "You should have complained and got yor fees back"! Well, it may be just me but I'm not made like that. So my solution suggestion is to request the club urgently to send round their regional assessor as it is, after all, a Club Listed site. If I write a review, and there are none so far for this CL it will forever damn this owner's credibility and possibly their livelihood. So I think they should have the benefit of a chance to put things right. A single member direct complaint would have been unlikely to have had much effect.
Has anyone else got any brighter ideas?
NatashaM