Reserve America Sucks FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions
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"WHY R U SO MAD ASSHOLE."

I am mad because I paid a huge fee to a company whose employees are incredibly rude (and apparently can't use proper grammar or sign a guestbook without using foul language either), and I got less than zero value in return for my hard earned cash.  And also, because it is a monopoly, and if Bill Gates and Ma Bell and the Electric Company and Ameritech and all of those other companies are regulated and prevented from having monopolies, then why not Reserve America too? 

I still don't understand why you're mad?

Okay. What if you bought (insert something here) several times a year for decades and you paid $14.00 for it.  After many years, the contract is given to another company instead, that charges $25.50 for the same exact item. There is no other competitor who is allowed to sell the item, so you need to go to this company or go without the necessary item.  Now, imagine that you need to change your order, but the rude clerk warns you that they charge a 22.50 restocking fee for the $25.50 item (which they will then resell at full retail price). Imagine that the high fee made you change your mind, and you decide to keep the item because you paid that much for it and you might be able to get some limited use out of it after all, but either way you paid for it so you want to keep it. But what if instead of letting you walk out with the item again, no further transactions having taken place, they took the item from you forcibly, kept your money, and kicked you out of the store? Would you be a little mad maybe?  And not want to shop there again?  And then maybe you'd get mad that you HAD to shop there to get your item or go without it. And if you're like me (the kind of person who makes websites, doesn't have to pay anything extra for hosting, and can type 100 words a minute), then you'd probably make a website about it. And here you are, reading my website.

She was just doing her job

I realize that she was "just doing her job" as pointed out by the numerous RA employees who spam the guestbook, but, that's really a secondary issue.  The primary issue is customer service, or lack thereof.  Any company who charges such ridiculous fees, ought to give some kind of value in return, even if the value is simply well trained, helpful employees who know how to speak politely to the customers who pay those fees. 

The forest system sets the fees you are so mad about, not us. 

I know that they set the nightly fee, but your company sets the non-refundable reservation fee, the cancellation fee, the other fees, and the proceeds for these fees go to paying your salaries, benefits, etc, and to keeping your call centers open.  Do you think money grows on trees, or what?

The Government signed a contract to use RA of their own free will

And that's exactly why the government needs to hear that the taxpayers are NOT happy with that decision, so that they can consider their other options when it comes time to renegotiate that contract.

Someone has to take the reservations, do you have a better idea?

Yes, thanks for asking!  The Parks System could implement their own online reservations system. As someone who is fairly well versed in website design and a generally Internet savvy person, I know that it could cost much less to hire 5 programmers who are fluent in ASP, PHP, SQL, JAVA, and XML to work for the Parks to design and maintain a state forest reservations system. This would save a huge amount of money by not needing to hire 400+ RA employees, pay for benefits, which often doubles the cost of keeping on the rude employees on top of their regular salary, or engage the services of a call center and everything that entails (huge telephone systems to maintain for all that call volume, high speed internet services such as a T3 to the building, servers to host the software their agents use, individual workstations, headsets, desks, for every employee in the call center, the cost of all these things multiplied by multiple call centers, etc).  These costs could be minimized with a $8.95/year domain name to direct would-be campers to, web hosting through any number of more reliable web hosting companies to the tune of probably around $2000.00 a year or less for all of the bandwidth and server space they'd need to store the site and the databases, and a salary and benefits for a skilled team of 3-5 web designers (or even just a one time design that they could update as needed on a contract basis).  The customer, in turn, would use a fast, efficient, user friendly website to make reservations online, and if they needed to call in for something, they could call the campground itself, where the employees who already worked there could easily access the system then and there, with a basic dumb terminal and a VPN or WAN connection. Not very expensive if done right, compared to probably twice the cost of keeping another company to do this for us.  Then, the insane extra fees RA currently charges to keep their rude employees in a job, would all go straight to the state forests instead, and also for hiring more on-site employees who would be familiar with everything in the area (and undoubtedly more friendly as well), and the state parks could still make the same profit they're making now, if not more.  Then, we (the taxpayers) could have the same friendly, local service we used to enjoy before RA came along, the park systems would have more funding, and those RA employees who need it, could get some anger counseling with their spare time.