Yellowstone River Campground — Hotel in Billings

UPDATE: I wrote an email to the Management of this park that night, thinking that possibly the lady who answered the phone wasn’t management, and that there might be a different response from their manager. I did receive an email back the next day: “Thank you for reaching out. I’m so sorry for the confusion. We will refund you in full since we did not send you a confirmation email. (I researched it and we sent one to the wrong email address, which again, is completely our fault.) Please accept our apologies for our handling of your reservation. Please keep an eye out for your refund to go through today.”

I waited to edit this post because I wanted to make sure that we received the refund, and we DID. Thank you to Kelsey. I’m glad you saw our point in this, and I hope mistakes like this don’t happen again.

ORIGINAL POST: If only there were a ZERO STARS choice!

My husband John tried to book a reservation online (on 5 July) for 7 July with this campground and we subsequently got only an email saying this: “ Thank you for your reservation request. Your request has been received and will be processed within 72 hours. We will e-mail you a confirmation number once your request has been booked.”

We never received that email with a confirmation number yesterday or today, so we assumed they might be full or were waiting until 7 July to see how full they were before emailing us.

Late this afternoon, we looked at the mileage we covered today, and we realized that we wouldn’t be able to get to the campground by the 7th, and, thinking we would be FAIR TO THEM in calling the campground to cancel our REQUEST (remember, it was NEVER A RESERVATION), we phoned there. My husband explained it to the lady who answered, and she admitted that they had probably made an email mistake and didn’t send one. Then she said they were going to charge us anyway, since we were calling within 24 hours of the reservation.

My question is, WHAT RESERVATION? We never received an email telling us that or giving us a confirmation number! We certainly don’t want to pay for something we didn’t even know about!

So, in accordance with what we told them in our subsequent call to the campground tonight, we are absolutely disputing this charge with USAA. My husband is a 32-year Veteran, and it’s sad that this campground is treating a Veteran so poorly.

To be fair to others who may encounter this same situation with the campground, we are submitting a review on the site and will also be submitting one to Yelp. They are trying to charge us $97 for a campsite that doubtless they will book again with someone else. We’ll reflect that view with both USAA and in...

Short version... save yourself heartburn and go next door to the KOA. Or keep driving down the highway and find ANYWHERE else to stay. I wish we had just went to Walmart and stayed in the parking lot.

Longer version... We have been to 50+ campgrounds in 15 states over the past 18 months. This campground OWNERS are the absolutely worst "customer service" experience we've ever had at any campground ever.

It's so unreal that I hesitated to even spend the emotional time or energy to write this review but decided if it helps just ONE family avoid the situation we were in... then it's time well spent.

The owners are a family (which we typically LOVE supporting) but the mother drives in her golf cart yelling at kids. For anything. For everything. For climbing trees. For running. For being kids. She was so incredibly rude to my kids and a few others that were playing on a tree IN THE PLAYGROUND that I thought it must have been a mistake. Nope. She's just that rude and nasty.

Follow that up by later that same evening w/ her adult son (probably 40ish) cussing me out for trimming a branch off the tree so my big rig would fit in the space they were charging me $90 per night for the inconvenience of parking in. Literally came over yelling, cussing at me and telling me he was going to "gouge my truck" because I'm a ^*(^% as()&^%^ and since I damaged his tree he is going to damage my truck.

Believe it or not, it got much worse and I told the guy to leave and not come back over there or I would call the police and file a complaint for his threats to both myself and my property.

I thought it was just this guy hated me but apparently he yelled at our neighbors the next night for having their personal fire pit out as the rules stated you could have a fire in a fire pit. Apparently not.

Now I completely understand why there is a HUGE sign when you checkin at the office that says: NO REFUND. FOR ANY REASON. DON'T EVEN ASK.

At the time of check-in I thought it was kinda funny. Now......

‼️SHOULD BE CHANGED TO 55+ ONLY RETIREMENT COMMUNITY, NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY ONE BIT‼️ If I could give 0 stars I would!

We had lived here from mid February to the end of October. And have paid them damn near $10k since living there. You wouldn’t even tell that they make that much off anyone because they don’t invest back into the park one bit…

Owner is very rude and plays favorites when it comes to rules. Picks and chooses what she wants to enforce and makes up rules along the way…

‼️IF YOU HAVE A FAMILY WITH CHILDREN DO NOT EVEN COME HERE‼️ owner loves to make up rules when it comes to children or family gathering. We did a gathering for Easter, told us we couldn’t do an Easter egg hunt… then woke up a few days later to a note on our doors about “you can not BBQ outside of your own lot” (so pretty much saying we can’t use the amenities that we pay monthly for)

Ive had to call office due to homeless camping out behind our camper and showering in water spickets (he was there for a few days so they don’t even check if you have even paid for a spot, but yet wants us to pay over $1k/m)

Dirty pool and hot tub during the summer, shitty playground (that they could invest more into from the money they suck from you) During the winter you are only allowed to skirt and if you even attempt to put a heater they will just rip that shit from under your camper without a warning, when this is Montana and the high gets to -20°, then your stuff freezes. You’re also SOL when your stuff freezes because they shut down bathrooms and laundry during the winter (so no bathrooms when your stuff freezes from not having a heater under your camper)

Gross, smelly, small, and sorry excuse for dog parks…

All around just a bad place to go! Do not give them your money. Do not go here unless you are 55+ retirement community… if you want an owner that plays favorites go for it. If you want your pipes to freeze and bust in winter, by all means stay here, if you want to throw money away then...