To Pay or Not To Pay?
This story happened on: 15/07/2012
Hi
I would like your thoughts on this matter:
Last Thursday after having all this wet weather I e-mailed the site we were
due to arrive at the next day to see if they were still open and how the
ground was, as we had been told that some sites had closed due to the ground
being so wet.
I had a phone call back from the owner to say not to go onto the site
without checking it out first as he didn't want the ground churned up as we
have a motorhome, and that if it was too wet we could stay on his yard but
there were no toilet emptying facilities, but he had water and electric. We
agreed to this as it was only for 3 nights for us to explore Exeter.
On arrival on Friday the 13th we stopped in the entrance, took our tow car
off the motorhome and examined the field, which was very boggy, another
caravanner already on the site said it was bad and thought we shouldn't
attempt it. The site owner's Daughter had a Bistro next door and she came
out to look with us and told us where her father lived around the corner.
We arrived at his yard to find it full of vehicles (tractors, jeep, boat and
a tractor with a low level grass cuter on it. The owner moved one jeep out
of the yard and reversed a tractor for us to move onto the yard dodging the
vehicles left there, but the underneath of the motorhome went over the low
grass cutter and smashed the trim below the door, this on a brand new
motorhome of only 8 weeks old ! My husband has high blood pressure and this
on a new van made him feel quite ill. He had to lay down and I made a cup
of tea for him and after a couple of hours he felt better and said he wanted
to go home to get the motorhome repaired. The offending tractor and grass
cutter was then moved for us to reverse out of the yard and attach the car
back onto the motorhome, we said good- by to the site owner who in return
said "aren't you going to pay me"? I said but we haven't stayed a night, he
said "but you had booked in and now not staying" So he wanted £20 which my
husband paid him in utter disbelief !
We can't get this out of our heads that he charged us for staying on a
different site to which we had booked and we were doing him a favour for not
churning up his lawn. Was he in the right to charge us or not? We now have
the cost of repairing the motorhome too.
Griffo