My wife and I had three separate reservations at the KOA Salt Lake City that were cancelled by Emily, who identified herself as a manager, without our approval. These reservations were in July, August and September and totaled 35 days for a total of $2,400. We are full-time RV'ers and have lived in our motorhome for more than two years. On Thursday June 24, my wife phoned the KOA, inquiring if we would be able to extend our September reservation from ten days to twenty four days. Emily stated multiple times that "typically, we limit reservations to ten days". We are VIP tier members of KOA due to our numerous stays with their network of campgrounds and have never heard of a KOA or any other campground limiting the number of days that a campsite is able to be reserved. Listening to my wife speak with Emily on speakerphone, it appeared that Emily was a teen or young adult as she did not seem sure of their policies and her phone skills were dismissive and unprofessional. At my request, my wife passed the phone to me and I asked Emily to better explain the ten day reservation limit. Emily stated, "We are an overnight campground. If you are on the site, then someone else can't be here." KOA classifies their campgrounds as Journey, Holiday and Resort with Journey being "quick getaways, Holidays being "ideal for relax and play" and Resort being "the ultimate camping getaway". The Salt Lake City KOA is classified as Holiday and not focused towards the short stays as are their Journey campgrounds. I have re-visited this campgrounds' website and was able to see pricing for stays up to twenty seven nights, so I have no idea why Emily would state that reservations were "typically limited to ten nights". As I asked questions, Emily interrupted each one and did not allow me to finish a single sentence. After she did so three times, I told her that she was constantly interrupting me and I'd appreciate it if I could finish a sentence. I reminded her that we were KOA VIP tier members and said that I was disappointed in how she was handling herself on the phone. Her response was, "I'm cancelling all of your reservations", and she immediately hung up on me. I called the KOA back numerous times and the phone went to voice mail. A few minutes later as she indicated, we received emails confirming that all three of our prior reservations were cancelled. Through an online search, I found that this KOA is owned by the Menlove family, and they also own the Beaver, Utah KOA. I called the Beaver campground, explained the situation and asked to speak to someone in ownership. The agent took my information and said that she'd pass it along to the Menloves. A few minutes later, the clerk called me back and explained that my message was passed on to ownership and that I'd receive a call on Friday. After not receiving a call mid afternoon Friday, I called KOA's corporate headquarters and spoke with a Customer Care agent. They explained that Emily was not listed as a manager and that they would contact ownership, explain my comments and request that they call me. I have not received any call back. As we had a family event in August, on Friday we rebooked one of the stays that Emily cancelled. We did this as Summer campground reservations are scarce and figured that once we spoke with the owners, they'd clearly reinstate our reservations. A few hours after booking this online reservation, we received an emailed cancellation from the campground. After a few hours of effort, we have made new reservations outside of the Salt Lake City area. We had hoped to visit Salt Lake City and support local restaurants, breweries and retail businesses. Instead, we will spend our time and money in Wyoming and Idaho. If I had to guess, I suspect Emily might be one of the owners' kids, otherwise I think that any business owner would be alarmed that an employee cancelled $2,400 of reservations without the customers' consent. In two-plus years of living in campgrounds, I've never experienced anything close to this level of rudeness and incompetence by an agent, nor the utter disregard for customer service by ownership.
3 years ago