RV Park Reviews Reliable or Not?

[haste_maker]

I am somewhat new to Rving so I thought that RV park reviews was a reliable site, but after my past experience, I now know that RV park reviews doesn't appear to have the true facts about a RV park. Last Dec. I had a bad experience with a park, and I posted a negative comment on my experience, I also posted many positive experiences that I had staying at other parks at the same time. RV park reviews posted all my comments positive & negative, plus I received an email from someone asking me to contract the park manager, at the park that I posted the negative comment about, and also told me what a wonderful person the manager was in the email...I don't how this person got my email address?

I recently checked the reviews about this park, and my negative review has been deleted, but all the positive reviews I made about other parks were still there. I have contracted RV park reviews about this problem, and a administrator emailed me that he would look into it for me. I am good forward to the answer.

[Chock_Full_o__N]

We rely on RV Park Reviews when choosing a campground in an unfamiliar place. I look for the general trend in posts--mostly 7s? As long as it's for "no cable, no sewer hookup, unpaved pad, satellite dish wouldn't work, Wi-Fi down, rained for 3 days" I'm not too concerned. OTOH, if there are significant low scores,3-5, I want to know why. Trash everywhere, located in the 'hood, drug dealing on site, dogs over-running the place--naw, I'm steering clear of that.

I used to us the big Woodall's book--meh. It doesn't really give you a good feel for the places. The worst place we ever stayed was a KOA in Montana. It had a good review in Woodall's. It looked like a run-down trailer park and had a LOT of residents. If we'd had any other option besides WalMart, we wouldn't have stayed there.

[westernrvparkow]

rockportrocket wrote:
Who pays for and supports the site? That should give you a general idea of wants it to work in their favor.

I believe the only revenue they receive is off their banner ads. I don't know of any user fees and they have never asked my parks for any money. Maybe it isn't a giant conspiracy.

[gotsmart]

I am baffled as to why this entire thread exists here. I would think it belongs here on rvparkreview's own user forum:
http://www.rvparkreviews.com/invboard/index.php?s=b4ed35a95c150fb33c44012e25296bb8&showforum=2

The OP would likely get replies from other users in that forum who have had similar experiences with their own reviews.

[rockportrocket]

Who pays for and supports the site? That should give you a general idea of wants it to work in their favor.

[mr__ed]

I've often found that reviews by anyone, including Good Sam or Woodall's don't always apply to my personal criteria of what constitutes an acceptable RV park. Don't get me wrong, I do get a general idea by reading these reviews and if a certain campground gets consistently bad reviews I'll probably pass but where there are mixed reviews I've often found that particular RV park to be quite acceptable. i.e., The reviewer may have been bothered by something that wouldn't trouble me.

[mlts22]

Oddly enough, I had a very glowing review for a RV park in Bastrop deleted. It wasn't a resort, but I scored them as high as I could because what they had was just downright pleasant and extremely well-kept, coupled with the fact that my expectations oftentimes tend to be low.

I guess they thought I was a shill or an employee, rather than just a happy customer.

[wbwood]

I still think it was someone from the website who has access to the ops email address info. How else would just someone email him at random and tell him the park manager is a nice guy and to contact him? Also, how else would it of gotten deleted? Only way should be through mediation and at agreement of the OP.

Sounds like someone is stacking the deck on some parks at the website there c

[Veebyes]

RVPR is as good as those who contribute. Ignore the nonsense posts. "It rained the whole time I was there". Ignore those who expect champagne facilities at beer prices.

[bradnailer]

I think they are like all the reviews on the internet, hated it, loved it, hated it, loved it. Like someone mentioned, just need to watch comments like noise, cleanliness, etc.

[dieharder]

There could be a couple of reasons why you got contacted and/or your negative review was deleted.

1) If your negative post had unresolved issues or questions that the RV park manager could not possibly repond to in the review, I can see where that is deleted and the admin of the page advises you that you should contact the manager.

2) If your negative review had specific information on the issues you had causing the negative review, you can be pretty certain that the manager of the park knows who you are... especially if you voiced it with them while you were there. If they know who you are, and you reserved online or even by email (I do this sometimes), then they have your contact info. They do read the reviews on hte site, even if there is no ability for them to reply.

3) Possibly the admin knows the owner/management of said park, and knows that, if you contact them, then they will try to make things right. The admin/owner of the page is a reviewer themselves, and probably knows a ton of park managers/owners out there. Possibly a good reply to the message asking you to contact the manager would be to ask exactly who is contacting you. Information like that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

4) Since you indicate your review was last DEC, go back ot the park listing and click on the "view older reviews" link to see if your review might be in there. They only show the most recent few reviews and there might be a few newer than yours.

[doxiemom11]

I read the reviews and pay attention to things like -- highway noise, trains all night, muddy, party place. Or if someone comments about the size and it not being suitable for big rigs. Other that that, we take our chances and check it out ourselves. The reviews are not that helpful as we like the "boring" little parks with nothing to do whereas many people don't. It's all personal opinion and that varies from person to person.

[Atlee]

I believe they are fairly reliable, assuming there is a reasonable sample size. One or two do not make a reliable sample size.

Also, it's always good to check the person doing the review, and what they might be expecting.

If I did a review, I'd be most concerned with 1) cleanliness of the shower/potties, 2) how good those facilities are, 3) if the park had a dog play area, 4) how easy is it to get around in the park, while pulling a trailer.

I probably wouldn't even notice if it had a play area for kids, and if it did, I'd have no opinion on it's usefulness because we don't travel with kids.

I'm not that concerned with the other amenities really. We're traveling and visiting sites in the area. We're not going to an RV park as the end destination and staying for a week. If that were the case, then amenities would be high on my list.

Homer wrote:
I have always found "RV Park Reviews" fairly reliable. Now we all know that a friendly park owner/manager can always find someone to write a good review for him at a small price. When it comes to the big campground bibles, forget about it. There is so much chicanery going on in those you can't trust any of the IMHO.

[Homer1]

I have always found "RV Park Reviews" fairly reliable. Now we all know that a friendly park owner/manager can always find someone to write a good review for him at a small price. When it comes to the big campground bibles, forget about it. There is so much chicanery going on in those you can't trust any of the IMHO.

[westernrvparkow]

wbwood wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:
If you were contacted by someone from an RV park you wrote a bad review about, why would you assume they got your information from RVparkreviews.com? Most likely they got it from their own database. Most of us are not stupid, we often know who writes a review, both positive and negative. Make a reservation via an online system? Presto, the park has your e-mail information. As for the reviews being accurate, I score it about 67%. You need to toss out the beyond glowing and the beyond bad. What is left is generally pretty close to the truth.

While I would somewhat agree, but if a park has 20 spaces filled every night, are they going to email everyone that was there during that time that did an online reservation and left an email address during the reservation? I think the site only lists the month the person was there.

And if I read the OP posting, he said someone else had sent him an email, said the park manager was nice and to contact the park manager. Therefore the park manager didn't send the email. To me, it sounds like someone that has access to approving the postings on the site.

Usually, if the review has some basis in reality, there is a tipoff as to who wrote it. First they tell you what their camping rig was. That will narrow it down from the one hundred sites to about 25. Then there will often be a clue as to whether or not they stayed for a period of time. This will eliminate a number of other rigs. If they were posting a negative review, and there was a problem guest that met the other criteria, bingo! we have a winner. If it was a positive review and they mentioned something where the park went out of the way, again, easy to figure.
Somehow I just doubt that RVparkreviews.com had any hand in sending you an e-mail. This forum has a large sample of people who have sent reviews, and you haven't seen another affirmation that rvparkreviews.com has ever done anything similar. If the review you submitted contained factual misrepresentations, and someone pointed that out to the review site's administrator, they may remove that review and they state that in their policies. And I suppose that since they have a staff that reviews all submittals, it is possible that one of the staff posted a review, and the head honcho found it offensive and removed it. (they do have a policy they follow that forbids personal attacks, slanderous comments and the like)

[Campfire_Time]

We've used rvparkreviews.com many times to validate information about campgrounds. Bottom line is that its a tool. Take reviews with a grain of salt. If you see 9 positive reviews and 1 negative, read between the lines and recognize that someone just had a bad experience or certain expectations that were never met. If you see a lot of negative, there is probably a very good reason for it. So far when we needed info for places that were far away from us, the reviews were a great help and usually spot on.

A couple of things many here may not even realize about the site. Its owned and maintained by a fulltimer. That said they aren't able to always post your reviews quickly. And read the FAQ, if they have to make a lot of corrections, they just drop the review. I get that, its a lot of work. So make sure your spelling is accurate and what you say actually makes sense when you read it back. Also, AFAIK, they're aren't really making much money on this, there is very little advertizing and campground owners aren't allowed to post. We've never had a review (negative or positive) deleted either so if you have, you can't be on rvparkreviews.com.

If an owner contacts someone about a negative review, very likely some very specific incident was mentioned in the review. Can't be too hard for an owner to put 2+2 together to know who wrote the review.

haste maker wrote:
The email I received didn't appear to be from anyone at the park in question, it appeared to be a friend of the park manager. The post wasn't moved to the archives, it has been deleted, I just checked the RV park site again, and the only post about this park are all positive.

What was the response when you contacted rvparkreviews.com?

http://www.rvparkreviews.com/contact.php