First, Frustration and Then Good Folks and Good Customer Service

Today was one of those very frustrating days. It didn't start out that way as we went into Spokane to the Group Health lab and had our blood and urine tests done. The techs were good and got both Forry and me with their first stick. That's always nice, especially since my veins often aren't very cooperative. Since we had to be fasting for the lab work, we stopped for breakfast and then for a few groceries on our way home.

Then we went to the office to try to make arrangements to stay here an additional two weeks. The lady in the office informed us that they could find no record of the upgrade we bought last fall and that we would need to pay the thirty plus dollars due for electricity for our first two week stay. She suggested we call the K/M office and talk to Adrian Barnes who had sold the two thousand dollar plus upgrade to us. So we went back to the RV and I called him. He answered and said he would call me right back.

I waited an hour, then called the K/M office again and asked for Adrian. The lady said he wasn't available. So I asked if he had a supervisor I could talk to. She said he did and she would connect us. After about a minute and a half, she came back and said neither one of them was available and could she be of assistance.

At that point, I was annoyed enough that I just about blew her off, but she was sort of insistent. So I told her the story about how we had bought this upgrade that Adrian told us would enable us to stay at any of the K/M Parks without paying extra for utilities. After all, we had already paid over two thousand dollars for the K/M, RPI and ROD+ memberships back in 2008. And how, in spite of calling several times, we had never gotten new cards reflecting our new status.

At that point, the lady (who turned out to be named Theresa) said she'd get to the bottom of this and said she'd call us back shortly. And she did! Theresa actually went to talk to Kevin McCloud, one of the K/M owners. He authorized a note be put on our record in their computer system saying that we were not to be charged at any of their RV resorts for electricity! And she said she had called Ponderosa Falls to personally let them know. Then, she apologized for all of the confusion and said that Mr. McCloud wanted to express his apologies as well!!!

We went back down to the office and they verified that the head office had been in contact with them and everything was taken care of -- and commented that we would only be charged $200 for the third and fourth week stay instead of the whole $400 monthly charge she had quoted us earlier!

An hour or so later, we did get a call back from Adrian saying we needed to get in contact with Neskowin Creek (our "home" resort) and ask them to send us new cards reflecting our "Legacy" status! I called them immediately and got nothing but recorded messages. I left a message on three different places on their system asking them to call me. We'll see if they do. I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe they'll surprise me and be as good at customer service as Theresa was!

Ponderosa Falls RV Park

We have stayed at Ponderosa Falls RV Park many times. It's part of K/M Resorts. Our "home" park, Neskowin Creek (where we are Charter Members) is part of this group. So it's an inexpensive place for us to stay for two weeks at a time. There used to no charge at all, but a couple of years ago all of the parks started charging $2 per day for electricity...

I did notice something when we drove in this time. There is a sign down the road where you make the turn to the road into the park. But, there is no sign where you actually turn into the park. This sign is just inside the lane...

This is the lane going along the hill to the park --

 

As you drive along a bit further, you can look down the hill into the park and see the buildings --

As you can see, there are lots and lots of pine trees in the park. I am amazed that we are able to get satellite TV coverage from our site!

We made an early trip into Spokane this morning to visit the lab at Group Health and got our lab work done for our appointment with our primary care physician next week. Since we had to be fasting for the blood work, I was looking forward to going over to Frank's Diner for a late breakfast. When we got there, we got the last parking place. It was 10:30 on a Friday, but the place was packed and the line was out the door. There were at least twenty people waiting outside.

Hungry and cranky, we decided we didn't want to wait another hour plus to eat, so decided to just go over to McDonalds. But, they stop serving breakfast at 10 AM! (I've never been able to figure that one out, but they claim they cannot do breakfasts and lunches at the same time.)

We checked out another place we knew over in Brown's Addition, but they were closed. I was getting pretty surly by that time, but Forry finally remembered Knight's Diner out on Sprague. It ended up being the best breakfast I've had in a long time. I had some French toast that was so good it didn't even need syrup. Forry had his usual biscuits and gravy and he said it was good too.

We were so full, we didn't even eat any samples later on our Costco run!

Making Reservations

Forry and I usually fly pretty much by the seat of our pants. We're not real in to making reservations, partially because we don't like to plan that far ahead. But, we realize we are in unfamiliar territory at a very busy time of year. So the last week or so, we've been looking through the various directories looking for where we might want to stay during December.

We have some friends in Tallahassee that we'd like to visit, so we were looking for a place near there. Through our home resort, Neskowin Creek in Oregon, we have memberships in both Resorts of Distinction and (ROD) Resort Parks International (RPI). ROD only has a couple of parks in Florida, but RPI has quite a few. We finally decided to try Pine Lake RV Park near Fountain. Unfortunately, while it is an RPI park, it is not an RPI Preferred park.  Which means we could only stay there one week using the $10 per night rate (plus their $5 per night electricity charge!) instead of the usual two weeks.

But, that will work. If we leave Styx River on December 6th, we would be at Pine Lake until the 13th. Then we want to be somewhere fairly close to our friends Bill and Leslie who are settled in at Mouse Mountain RV Park near Disney World. I spent some time on the Internet checking reviews on RV Parks in the Orlando area. A couple of the ones we looked at in the RPI directory had some very poor reviews. It seems that many of the membership RV Parks are old and in need of renovation! (We've run into that several times!)

We finally made reservations for two weeks at Bee's RV Park near Clermont. It had some pretty good reviews and the pictures on the Internet looked nice. We'll stay there until the 27th and then most likely start heading down the towards the Keys.