Incremental cancellation penalty

CarnationSailor wrote:
Washington state went to this system a couple of years ago and I have been burned by it twice already. If you want to get a site at a popular state park on a holiday weekend, you have to reserve it at 7:00 AM, 9 months before the date you want to arrive. Twice I made reservations 9 months in advance, and then 6 months later, I had to cancel due to circumstances beyond my control. It really PO'ed me to pay a 40 or 50% cancellation fee. Clearly, I wasn't trying to "game" the system. I guess it was just a situation where a rule meant to punish the guilty also punished the innocent. But I still don't like it.

There just isn't a definition of "beyond my control". Anyone with a wife and kid would agree that if they decided to go to Disneyland instead of Yosemite, that would indeed be a circumstance beyond their control. But most of us would argue that really doesn't justify getting refunded a non-refundable deposit. I don't know how many grandparents you have, but I can point you to a few people who have had a baker's dozen of them pass away, each time right before they were going on vacation, or so they say.