Caravan Parks & Email addresses

G'day PeteM,
Could be a couple of reasons behind it.
Maybe their spam filter picks it up as spam, therefore they don't even know the inquiry has been sent. Maybe they don't understand their own Email system.
Also they might not realize what an important part of their business online bookings & inquiries has become and don't devote enough time to it.
I know this technology has abeen around for awhile now, but some people still struggle with it.
Yeah, it would be frustrating not getting replies.
I don't believe they are doing it on purpose

Its not only Caravan Parks.
It has been my experience that a "lot" of businesses do not respond to E-mails.
Those that trade on-line do. Other types of businesses don't often. I think they just don't dedicate "someone" to check for incoming.

Kyle

The good ol' dog-an-bone is still a great way to make enquiries

Peter as a business owner I find emails for the first contact very annoying, in person or phone contact is a better way of building a relationship with a customer or in your case with a business.

What may take 4 or 5 emails back and fourth taking 15 minutes of both parties time can be handled within minutes over the phone and with better results.

As an example we get on average 30 to 40 emails a day with about half being junk, we run a very good spam filtering system on our server that filters out these emails but the down side is it will also filter out some Gmail and Hotmail email accounts.

There might be many reasons why they haven't replied... maybe their email service is down, the person looking after the office may of not checked them, new staff or there email address that you got out of a 3yr old book may be one of many that float around cyberspace and is out of date.

Texting from a mobile phone is another one ..."G'day how much to fix my 2001 Commodore.... end of text"...... pet hate.

I think we are fast becoming a society where personnel and verbal contact is starting to be forgotten.... maybe people don't want confrontation or in have better ideas offered to them, maybe they have lost the 40000 year old art of communications...... "this is what I want and when..... NOTHING ELSE"..... maybe it comes down to "I know best".

Like most things it's horses for courses. I make most initial enquiries by email unless the date is less than a week away, then I phone. Mostly I get a reply. If I don't and I want to stop at that park I phone. I find that when I phone most parks look at their email and find mine, unanswered.

The main reason is that they are busy and didn't get around to their emails. It mostly happens with parks in small or outback centres. in my experience. Things will change. Education can be a low process. Sometimes it doesn't kick in until the next generation.

Cheers,
.
Kevin

Hi Pete

Perhaps your heading could have been slightly better worded; you are talking about four parks only. I have communicated with a number of caravan parks by email successfully, so your experience is not all encompassing. As said, their Spam filter may have picked it up as it was sent to a group, or they may have computer problems. For small businesses not as tech savvy as most of us here, some can be off line for weeks. If i wanted to stay there, as much as i hate using phones, i would ring after the second non reply.

I also ask for a read receipt on my emails, although not all email programmes or systems allow this at the recipients end, and even if it does, they still have the choice of saying no. It does help as on most occasions you get a read receipt back when they have seen your email.

Does the one that replied get your custom for the weekend?


Motherhen

I am not good on the dog and bone. I detest the things.
However, I am computer literate. I use emails, where I can consider what I have said, can check the dates and requirements...and then send it. If i don't get a reply...well it's not my loss...I simply remove them from the equation. You have to remember its 2012 not 1990. If the recipients are managers..why don't they have sufficient skills.

interesting post .... i will say that YES, most parks probally dont need the business these days .....
But i will also comment that we as a remote business rely on e-mails as a VERY essential contact method, to be honest i think the days of phone and "voice" contact are dying very quickly, if i do almost anything these days i request it to be replied to via e-mail in the first instance and this has a few good strong points for it ....
1) that we then have it "in writing", a very useful tool in almost all events...
2) time zones and barriers dont affect e-mails, i have a "shadow" copy of all e-mails sent to my home address and if i get an e-mail after i get home (to work) i can read it, assess it and even reply or work on it before i get back to work the next day ...
3) it sorts out any position requirements that need computer skills, if they are reluctent to use e-mails or sloppy in the way they use it, saves me a heap of time..
4) time is money, some people dribble absolute cud on the phone yet when put into an e-mail it is short and to the point ...
5) For quotes for example for catering we do NOT bother even thinking about doing it until the request is in writing via e-mail, you would be suprised how many ring and ask for all sorts of things, when told to place all that in an e-mail it come in half of what they "asked" for via the phone ...
In short ..... i will reply an e-mail, if you ring and i am very busy it is very likly you will never get an answer ....
Sign of the times, we used to all sit around a big campfire and talk about this very subject, now we all "write" on this forum ...... little do we know we are just sending in an "e-mail"... like it or not !!!!!
Cheers