After 3 years of attempting to get reservations at recreation.gov, they piss me off. First let me say this is a .gov web page, but it's run by Booze Allen and their sub-contractors.
This year after getting a REALLY hard to get spot which I was shut out of 2 years ago and cancelled out last year due to the campground being closed entirely and this year shut out because they changed the advanced reservations from 6 months to 5 months w/out notice I finally got a spot that was available on 2 week notice.
As it happens the campground was closed again for the 1st day of our reservation. Rec.gov sent 1 generic, cryptic (word salad) email which required me to modify my 14 night reservation in order to maintain it with no deadline for that modification to happen. Of course they also sent me a reminder that my reservation was good 2 days prior to our first night.
(Does everyone travel w email access available 24/7?)
So all was apparently well until the night before our departure at 10:30pm I get an email notifying us the reservation was cancelled. The reservation was put back in the pool and resold in a heartbeat.
In the end we only live a 7 hour drive from the location, but it's a National Park that people travel to from all over the US and the world so I figured I'd do my part to make sure what happened to us doesn't happen to anyone else.
My 3 issues are:
1. Why is the default cancelling a reservation that was paid for in full?
2. Based on all their communications to me rec.gov had the information and software writing skills to write an appropriate, clearly written email stating exactly what I needed to do; why didn't they do that?
3. Why when I get a Customer Support case set up they ghost me TWICE?
PS A Park Service employee went out of his way to find us an administrative spot to use instead. He wasn't successful, but he did try.
Rant over.
I'd like to fix this. Anybody know anyone at Booze Allen?
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