Coast to Coast / Membership Camping

el.jefe wrote:
Who here uses a coast to coast membership? Can I even ask about that on a Good Sam forum....

Good Sam owns Coast to Coast. In fact, there is a segment of this forum dedicated to Coast to Coast under the "Dear Marcus" heading.

I'll try to keep this short... lol

Back in 2012 we just bought a new to us first time MH , so off to CW to get supplies, Water hoses, Sewer hose connections etc Yeah I know noobies...

As we walk in we are hit up from a sales guy about yep a C2C membership , he said just for listening we get a free night stay at the local resort which would be our home one..

We stated we were going to do a cross country road trip to DC and planed on staying at Cherry Hill RV Resort in Baltimore.
So he starts out with a booklet showing all the little dots on a small map and shows that yep Cherry Hill is part of C2C CG's list. And here comes the punch line I ask how much and he comes off with something in the line of $5K we laugh and say we are out of here.

He keeps the sales pitch talk up and finally says for $99.99 you can get a 1 year something something watchamacallit membership.

Were thinking that would cover the 8 nights we planed on staying at Cherry Hill and with the other C2C CG's listed along our route we'd save even more.

So we bought into it for the $99.99.
He said our brochure C2C CG list booklet etc will be mailed to us, he gave us the C2C booklet he had selling us the membership so we could start planning our trip.

He went on to say how it works you need to call a day before you arrive to set up your stay , I said we have no idea how far we'll drive each day and that it would be hard to set up a place for each night not knowing how far each day we would travel ?
He said he's traveled extensively using the C2C listed CG's and just called em when he hit the town they were located in and even pulled up to the gate of them and they let him stay.

Ok Back home a couple days later I call Cheery Park to set up our reservation and told them I belonged to C2C and ,,,, the person stopped me in mid sentence and said they no longer are part of C2C.. it went from $10. a night to approx $53.00 a night.
I told the person I'll be back in touch with them and ended the phone call.

Called the C2C customer service and was told oh yeah they dropped out this year, I said I have your booklet with them being listed.
She said she knew for sure the 2012 booklet didn't have them listed.
I flip back to the cover and the sales guy sold us the membership using the 2011 booklet.

I then told her he sold the membership using that booklet and that we only bought the membership because Cherry Park was listed.
She said she would up our membership info and asked if she could email me what she found out. I agreed because now we'd have a paper/email trail...

We bounced back a few emails and finally was told and assured go through with stay at Cherry Hill, pay the amount they charge us and when we got back from our trip to send them the receipt with the amount we paid and they would reimburse us the difference.

Sounded good to us! A business is taking care of a customer.

Ok we know the route , but since this was our first rodeo traveling in an RV and not knowing how far we would get the first night and looking at the booklet for places , we saw one in the Needles area , so by 3 PM we called no answer, 3:30 till 6 PM called at least 10 times.

Rolled into CG 6:30 PM and its gated so I pushed the button some guy wheeled around in a golf cart , I asked if we could get a site NOPE, I tried to explain what we were told and that we had been trying to call since 3 PM with no one answering or even a voicemail to leave a message .
He said I can't just sit on my ass by the phone all day, then he just took off and left us at the gate.(Another story for another day)
We looked in as far as we could see and there was maybe 5-6 rigs and at least 30 empty sites.

Left and went down the street and stayed somewhere else.

as we traveled on towards DC we called a couple places the day before we were going to be by one and both times even with open sites they put us in the "overflow" .They said the open sites were reserved and people will be coming in late.
No one showed up and those sites sat empty.

After that experience we din't use it anymore for the trip !!

Finish up here,,, after our trip we did send in a copy of our receipt from Cherry Hill and they did reimburse us the difference.

We never renewed and to this day will still get a renewal in the mail once in awhile along with an email for renewal or what's happening at the home resort.

Did it save us money yes , would I do it again NOPE. Well unless Cherry Park was back on the list and we could get a membership for the $99.99 .

I just looked at Cherry Hill's site they are up to $73. a night for a standard back in site now ...YIKES !!

I only went to the sales presentation so I could get a punch card for 21 free nights camping. We used to be a seasonal at a campground near home until this outfit bought it and turned it into a membership only campground, so we haven't been able to go there these last few years.
I think I would use the membership if I had one, but I certainly don't want to pay near what they are asking. Then there are the lifetime commitment of maintenance dues, I don't really want to be committed to all of that. But for the right price, I think k I'd use it and I'd check out the coast to coast offerings as well when we take our longer trips every summer.

“Can I even ask about that on a Good Sam forum?” No.

donn0128 wrote:
Your paying to rent a space for a certain number of nights a year. .

Not true. You can stay as many days you wish for $10.00 a night (14 days ? max at a campground) before you move to a different campground. You can stay at any of the campgrounds. On our last 6 week trip I think we stayed at about 5 differ C2C campgrounds. Good deal for full timers. No a good deal if you only want to stay at one campground for a few weeks in the summer.

I use our all the time. Buy as resell (on ebay) with a low annual maintenance cost with NO lifetime commitment.
Such as this one.

Go to the C2C web page and see if the campgrounds are at places you wish to camp.

Its nothing more than a time share. Your paying to rent a space for a certain number of nights a year. Once yous signed up your locked in for life. One reason so many sit for sale on reseller web sites. Not worth it for 75% of people.