Reserve America transaction fee?

Big Katuna wrote:
I understand there have to be taxes and fees. I don't mind paying for services rendered.
We owned a small beachfront motel for ten years. I had a cancellation fee I charged for last minute cancellation WHEN I COULD NOT RENT THE ROOM.

I never charged anyone if I rented the room.

What irks me about RA is that if I reserve 11 months in advance at a park that is perpetually full, then cancel two months before the reserved date, they charge me $17 and the site will be rented out. Not fair and the rate is too high.

It certainly doesn't cost them $17 to rerent the site.

Reserve America isn't renting the site; the campground is. Reserve America is just providing the campground with the service of processing reservations. They're more or less the ticketmaster of campgrounds. I note that Ticketmaster and other similar concerns also charge a per-ticket fee for selling you tickets. (I've even seen some venues which charged a shipping and handling fee for tickets that were sent via email and printed at my house on my printer.)

Aren't the Reserve America fees (that you see as a consumer) set by the campground? They do vary from state to state. Presumably a state could simply charge more for a camp site and have no cancelation or reservation fees if they wanted to; maybe some here would prefer that. I suspect part of the goal is to discourage speculative reservations.