Who reviews Good Sam rated campgrounds

2gypsies wrote:

bigdogger wrote:

2gypsies wrote:
For many years I've tried to contact Good Sam to notify them of obvious flaws in their rating of certain campgrounds. I've never received a reply from Good Sam and in future years the rating has stayed the same. Sometimes I think the reviewers become buddies with the campgrounds over the years. I hold more faith in multiple various reviewers of RVParksReviews. However, for both of them, I know they're not 100%. It's just a general idea. I don't even try to contact Good Sam anymore. I do post reviews on RVParkReviews. Good luck!

It seems to me they use the system they do precisely to avoid the conflicts you mention. Pretty hard to give a park a point if it doesn't have the requisite amenity. A subjective scoring, where condition and other judgmental attributes were an issue would lead to a situation where relationships could greatly influence scores. I am curious what you would have them add or remove from the scoring system if you were in charge?

The last RV park I tried to notify Good Sam about was Klamath, CA Camper Corral. It has a 8.5/10*/10 rating. The bathrooms were covered with those little shower plastic squares, including the toilet areas. They were full of toilet paper, hair and mud (I hope it was mud) They were not cleaned in the 3 days we were there. The laundry was equally dirty, including inside the washers. Trash cans were overflowing with fish guts. Worker's dog were tied up outside and barking. It was one of the most awful parks we've been. Public campgrounds are better.

While that is surely a reason for a park to not have the bathroom rating it did (10*) the rating would be a failure of the rater, not the rating system. Some of those problems, however, could not be determined by a rater. They have no idea whose dogs are tethered outside. The dogs (and the workers attached to them)might very well have not been there the year before when those ratings were done. It is also possible that when the raters were there, the bathrooms were clean. Do to publication lead times, the books are published in January with reviews done the previous year. It is not a perfect system, but I can't think of one that would be. You said in another post you had suggestions to make their rating system better. I am still curious what change in the systems and ratings procedures you would suggest that would eliminate the problems you encountered? BTW, I checked that park's reviews on rvparkreviews.com and they have around 50 reviews and only one (apparently yours) mentioned barking dogs and/or unclean facilities. Many actually raved about how clean the park was.