I am the owner of the 4x4 with the vandalised van.(caused by children throwing a large thick piece of plastic piping that had been left behind a hedge adjacent to our van, causing £1000 worth of damage). I had to return to the site to collect my passport as I had left my teenage daughter in the police station who were filing a police report and the station was closing at 6pm. I was in total control of my vehicle at all times.... The site owner was not interested in what had occurred and told us to go away and claim on our insurance, she visited our pitch the following day and viewed the damage caused by peering through a hedge.( as we caught her in the act) We also had gangs of teenagers roaming the site at 4,30 in the morning shouting/laughing and I caught 2 of them under the rear of my 4x4. There was no security at all and in some cases people were still making noise well after 1am. Site facilities were poor by uk standards. As for the Electric hook up, we lost count how many times it tripped. Difficult to keep food cool in the fridge when you find the electric has been off for most of the day. We left 6 days early and will not be returning. When we asked for a refund we were told no you can't have one. When I explained I would be passing on our review to the CC. The site owner stated I don't care about you Brits we don't need your custom. PS. Small pitches, Lots of tree cover, some with no sun all day. Nothing for teenagers to do, they easily got bored and up to no good...
Response from the Caravan Club:
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience on line. We are disappointed that you encountered so many problems whilst staying at Raguenes Plage.
You mention that the sites facilities are poor by UK standards; many of our members expect the same standards that they have experienced at our UK sites when they stay on an overseas site. In some cases our overseas sites exceed our standards in the UK but occasionally our members find them to be inferior. What our overseas sites might lack in facilities they generally tend to make up with ambience and surroundings. As we don’t own our overseas sites – we just work with them we cannot control them in the same way as we can our UK sites. However all sites are inspected by experienced overseas site inspectors every year.
If you do encounter problems at one of our overseas sites and you have made your booking through us please contact us at the Caravan Club and we will do our best to resolve the situation whilst you are on site, as your club we are happy to act as an intermediary.
Response from Raguenes Plage:
We always welcome UK clients and we are very pleased to be a partner of the Caravan Club. We do need our UK customers. Our first customer on the opening of the campsite on July 14 1966 was English and remained a loyal customer for many years.
About "gangs" of young people, I am surprised because for my part, I have never met gangs on the campsite or even in the peaceful surrounding villages.
We make choices as to our clientele, we refuse groups, youths unaccompanied by their parents, we do not do advertise activities for teenagers, because we want to avoid precisely this kind of incident.
We are always saddened to read such comments as we strive to make a good holiday for our customers. We are very available to them. Fortunately reviews like this are exceptionally rare.
