myredracer
Jul 05, 2015Explorer II
No more free wifi at our CG. What the heck?
I suppose this is a bit of a rant. Apologies for being wordy.
We paid thousands of $$ to get a membership in KM Resorts in Wa. Home park is Beachwood in Blaine, Wa. and out of a total season's worth of camping, spend over half our time there (so far anyway). It's one of 12 or so CGs they have in Wa. and Or. and is the busiest one by far (300+ sites). Almost impossible to get into during the summer because they have oversold it so much ('nuther story tho.) Wifi was one of the features that they had when we bought in several years ago. They can't be suffering from income at Beachwood so why cut wifi service? They could have upgraded it but no, they just cut it off instead.
Like many other CGs, the wifi service was pretty bad. Once people logged on in the morning, esp. kids in the summer, the wifi was slower than snail snot and dropped out frequently. We eventually upgraded to Verizon mifi and that has been great plus we can use it anywhere we go.
So we got here a few days ago and some friends are here with us. They wanted to use the CG wifi. I called the CG office to find out how to use the wifi (has been so long have forgotten how). It turns out they no longer provide free wifi and you have to subscribe to a wifi service called Echo Wifi. Never heard of it and google seems to show it as an Amazon.com thing. No idea how much it costs to get set up with it or how much the on-going costs are. There are many casual internet users here that just want to occasionally check their email or look up something and don't want to bother or pay for an outside wifi service, especially if they don't come here a lot.
Is this the way of the future for other CGs out there too? Is KM Resorts so cheap or suffering financially enough to no longer offer free wifi? I'd have to go look at the fine print in our contract to see if wifi was listed. Heck, you can get free wifi and just about any coffee shop these days as well as lots of other places. Can't cost that much to set up wifi for customers??
KM Resorts actually came to our house about a year ago and tried to get around $8K from us to upgrade our membership to some super-deluxe platinum plus level package. It really didn't include anything that was of real value compared to what we're already getting and were just trying to suck more $$ from us. For all the $$ they've already gotten from us and all the $$ they're getting from everyone else here, they never do any upgrading here and the whole park is pretty tired looking and some things are in need of repair and it's like they are doing subsistence level maintenance. Some pedestals have not been working for months for ex. Thousand Trails CGs are in better shape in comparison and their CGs are relatively old and all you have to pay is their annual dues of $545 and they have free wifi.
We paid thousands of $$ to get a membership in KM Resorts in Wa. Home park is Beachwood in Blaine, Wa. and out of a total season's worth of camping, spend over half our time there (so far anyway). It's one of 12 or so CGs they have in Wa. and Or. and is the busiest one by far (300+ sites). Almost impossible to get into during the summer because they have oversold it so much ('nuther story tho.) Wifi was one of the features that they had when we bought in several years ago. They can't be suffering from income at Beachwood so why cut wifi service? They could have upgraded it but no, they just cut it off instead.
Like many other CGs, the wifi service was pretty bad. Once people logged on in the morning, esp. kids in the summer, the wifi was slower than snail snot and dropped out frequently. We eventually upgraded to Verizon mifi and that has been great plus we can use it anywhere we go.
So we got here a few days ago and some friends are here with us. They wanted to use the CG wifi. I called the CG office to find out how to use the wifi (has been so long have forgotten how). It turns out they no longer provide free wifi and you have to subscribe to a wifi service called Echo Wifi. Never heard of it and google seems to show it as an Amazon.com thing. No idea how much it costs to get set up with it or how much the on-going costs are. There are many casual internet users here that just want to occasionally check their email or look up something and don't want to bother or pay for an outside wifi service, especially if they don't come here a lot.
Is this the way of the future for other CGs out there too? Is KM Resorts so cheap or suffering financially enough to no longer offer free wifi? I'd have to go look at the fine print in our contract to see if wifi was listed. Heck, you can get free wifi and just about any coffee shop these days as well as lots of other places. Can't cost that much to set up wifi for customers??
KM Resorts actually came to our house about a year ago and tried to get around $8K from us to upgrade our membership to some super-deluxe platinum plus level package. It really didn't include anything that was of real value compared to what we're already getting and were just trying to suck more $$ from us. For all the $$ they've already gotten from us and all the $$ they're getting from everyone else here, they never do any upgrading here and the whole park is pretty tired looking and some things are in need of repair and it's like they are doing subsistence level maintenance. Some pedestals have not been working for months for ex. Thousand Trails CGs are in better shape in comparison and their CGs are relatively old and all you have to pay is their annual dues of $545 and they have free wifi.