Sylvan Lake RV Park — Attraction in Town of Sylvan Lake

I can't talk about the quality of the campground. However, I can say that their credit charging system is messed up and a huge hassle. I booked a camping reservation for July 23-25 on their website on April 22nd. I received confirmation from them that my credit card was charged $133.78. I did notice the charge on my card that day. I canceled the reservation on May 27th, and received confirmation by email that they issued a refund on my credit card for $113.78. I do not recall whether I saw this refund or not at the time. There was a $20 cancellation fee so this refund made sense.

On July 17, the campground charged my credit card for $133.78. I noticed the charge on August 2 and called the campground. I was told to email them as the person who handles it needs to be contacted by email. I emailed that day explaining and got a reply "...apologies as we've had some issues with our credit card processor. On April 22 you had originally booked and paid for your site, about a week later the credit card processor inadvertently refunded everyone who had booked the previous week. The last charge was to undo that refund..."

I immediately replied back to explain that they did not understand that the reservation was cancelled and that they only thing I ever should have been charged was $20.

I received no reply and called the campground a few days later to ask if they could get the appropriate person to read my emails and refund me. I was told that they would take care of it and that the person who takes care of this was away and dealing with some emergency stuff. I was asked to wait a week.

In the meantime, I called my credit card company and they could see no charge from April 22, and no refund in May or later. They could only see the July 17th charge and advised me to try to get the campground to refund me appropriately.

On Aug 14, I finally received this reply from the campground: "...I have been pursuing this issue with the credit card processor as well and here is what I got from them. As we did not authorize this charge to your credit card you will need to speak to your credit card company to reverse the charge as I am unable to do so on my end. If your credit card company needs anything from us we will gladly provide it..."

I immediately wrote them back saying that this makes no sense and asked them both why I was not credited in May as per their credit memo and to clarify if they were saying that it was not them who made the July 17 charge to my credit card? I sent a second email showing them the charge and refund memos they sent me on April 22 and May 27.

I had been patiently waiting for a reply since Aug 2 and then I receive a reply on Aug 14th that is offhanded and unclear. I waited a day and then contacted my credit card company. I asked if it was possible that the campground did not authorized the charge and they said "no". As such, I had no choice but to file a dispute. This took over an hour and a half of my time. I do not know what's going on with the way this campground is charging credit cards, but something is not right. It's also highly rude to put customers through these time consuming hassles.

Reply to Merchant's response:

I included that comment in my review. It's your credit card processor. Consumers only deal with the merchant. Also, I have an email from May 27 where you sent me a credit card refund memo that you never processed. That's something you can fix. If you processed that refund, we would be squared away. Not replying back to me, not getting on the phone to try to fix things is not being helpful as you claim in your response. My credit card company says that you have the power to correct this through your credit...

Right off the hop we pulled in to the main drive and there's absolutely no where to park....went to the office...locked....called the number on the door and they said we're not there???.....middle of the day on Saturday....not there....found out site n set up n immediately noticed some train tracks about 10 feet from the back of our camper....fenced of course but wasn't sure if they were active until 1:55am Monday morning...when a train went by and woke the whole trailer up including my 2 small kids....not to mention the super busy main road 30 feet from the site....about the site itself its super tight....if u have any kind of camper or rv anywhere passed 26 to 30 feet then u won't fit....mine is 26 n it just fits comfortably......zero places to park ur vehicle I had to actually angle park my truck into the next site and very close to the camper next door....which I'm sure wasn't very comfortable for them......so I had no choice but to block the whole front of our campsite.....didn't mind this to much because I'm introvert lol.....but for someone who is more social then me this would be a huge pain....||Customer service was to be desired....very unprofessional and disorganized....couldn't find my site number....had nothing ready....they weren't even in the office on a busy Saturday afternoon in a very dinner sylvan lake......???......if u have small kids like me then don't bother coming cuz there's no park no store no grass area to play...not even big enough to accommodate any type of park.....its very small||Only thing I like is it's walking distance to everything....right in thr middle if the action which is kinda kool for a...

We discovered this wonderful campground 1.5 blocks from the beach and got very lucky booking a spot for Canada Day weekend. Tammy the manager had been surveying the damage done to the huge trees from the massive wind storm a few days earlier when we met her - I never imagined she would have the park back in shape for the Canada 150 weekend but she did. This gal is amazing - on the go every minute of the day and really does a great job of getting everyone booked in and then situated in your spot and even delivers firewood to your campsite. But for us she was a lifesaver. We have a huge orange cat that we travel with and the first night there he got a wild hair up his .... and broke out of our 5th wheel. He didn't come home and we couldn't find him. Tammy printed up some posters for me and gave me lots of good advice on where to call to get the word out and kept checking with me over the next two days. I thought that was the end of poor Bernie but amazingly Tammy arrived early in the morning two days later with a hissing, screaming, scratching cat in her arms. She managed to catch him and bring him back. Who knows what had happened to him but he was frightened out of his mind. Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty to get our pet back to us and that is exactly how she treats her campers - she really cares. It's really a pretty campground but Tammy makes is...