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PostPosted: April 23rd, 2021, 11:59 am 
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Joined: August 28th, 2020, 12:08 pm
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A friend of mine received this notice this morning. Not sure if it is because of conservation authority's reservations or PP reservations. Anywho, no teeth in the notice, just a vague email update.

'Dear Reservation Holder,

The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks takes concerns raised by visitors to Ontario Parks very seriously. We’re committed to ensuring that as many Ontarians as possible can enjoy the benefits of provincial parks and greenspaces and that they are accessible to all. We’re currently looking at new ways to make more campsites available for reservation to help address the growing demand.

The ministry has become aware that there are instances where individuals are attempting to sell reservations with the intention to make a profit. The ministry does not condone transferring and re-selling Ontario Parks reservations for a profit (i.e. more than the original cost of the reservation).

Effective April 24, 2021, reservation holders are not permitted to resell any reservation for profit. If we become aware that anyone has attempted to sell a reservation for profit, for example, if they have listed a reservation on social media or buy-and-sell websites for re-sale for profit, the reservation may be cancelled and all applicable penalty fees will apply.

If you have any questions about this policy, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page. See here for full reservation rules, including how to transfer a reservation.

We continue to monitor feedback from our visitors to ensure a fair and transparent reservation system is provided for everyone.

Sincerely,

Ontario Parks'


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PostPosted: April 23rd, 2021, 3:52 pm 
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Joined: September 23rd, 2020, 6:44 pm
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Location: Vancouver, BC
Ha, what a joke! And just how will they determine if it's been sold "for profit"?

Ask at check-in if the person occupying the site bought it second-hand at above the standard rate? Who's going to say yes to that question and risk losing their site?

Or, deploy staff to constantly monitor social media, kijiji, craigslist, facebook marketplace, etc... and cross-reference listings to current reservations? Not likely.

One solution is to make reservations booked the first week (or two) sites become reservable non-transferable. If the reservation is cancelled the site goes back into the reservation pool and someone else can pick it up the fair way. Seems to make sense, no?


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PostPosted: April 25th, 2021, 8:10 pm 
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Location: Pickering, Ontario
First, require that reservations can only be cancelled, not transferred. Second, check names and addresses, if the person who shows up can't provide proof that they are the person who made the reservation, they go home.

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PostPosted: April 28th, 2021, 7:02 am 
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Joined: February 18th, 2021, 9:21 am
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I understand there's a problem with it, and agree something should be done, but I'm not sure that a blanket policy against transferring, etc, is the best solution.

There are many legitimate reasons you might have to transfer or cancel a site. People should be able to do those actions when they have legitimate needs. It's the worst form of bureaucracy when a citizen can come with a legitimate need to do a perfectly harmless action, only to have some desk-sitter sternly reply "no, that's against policy."

Every year we go car camping with my wife's sister's family at a Northern Ontario park half way between their house and ours. It's the only time per year we get to see them. We had a horrendous time trying to get camp sites this year. We were up every morning at 6:30 with multiple computers set up ready to click "reserve" on multiple sites, we weren't picky, but every morning we'd both fail. Then finally after 2 weeks I managed to snag a site. It wasn't a good one, it was right next to the out-house and far from the beach, but it was a site! My sister-in-law texted that she had failed again. The next morning I got up anyway, and lo and behold lightening strikes twice! I managed to secure another site! Quickly I texted my sister-in-law to say I had a site for them if they needed it.

Now, as it turns out they also struck gold that morning, so I was able to close my cart and release that site. But had they again failed, I would have had to book that site in my name then transfer it to her. And what would be wrong with me doing that? It's just two sisters hoping to go camping together, isn't that kind of family togetherness exactly what the parks are about? It would be a cold bureaucrat who would deny us that transfer.

It's bad enough the rules and policies they already have. They have a rule now that the same permit holder cannot hold more than one permit during the same time period. I'm sure there are some illegitimate situations which are prevented by such a rule. But in our case, I simply had a hope of upgrading the poor site we had by the outhouse for something nicer, closer to the beach. I get 2 weeks vacation a year, I didn't want to spend one of them next to an outhouse! So I think my need was perfectly legitimate, but the rule still stood in my way. I couldn't book a new site in my name so long as a still had the first one for the same week. So to work around that, I had to open a whole new Ontario parks account in my wife's name and use that to book the new site. After another week of trying I did manage to get a better site under her name, then I was able to cancel the first one under my name. Now, that cancellation there is another good example. It's perfectly legit for me to cancel the old site, and in fact given the demand for sites, the sooner I cancel it the better, right? But nope, there was another blanket rule to deal with. Next I found a rule that you could not cancel a reservation till 4 months before the arrival date - another 3 weeks at that point. Again, I'm sure when they thought up that rule they had a certain illegitimate situation their were well-intentionedly hoping to prevent, but that's the thing with blanket rules - they cover the legit and the illegit both together. So I was forced to sit on that extra camp site for almost a month while all the time I'm sure other people were getting up at 6:30 in the morning hoping to book it!

My point is, whenever we see a bad situation or some bad actors doing some bad action, it seems here in Canada our first reaction is always to cry out for some new rule or regulation that will target that action. But we focus on that bad action and miss all the perfectly fine actions that will also be affected by that rule. As more and more rules are added, eventually your average person is covered in such a net of rules that you start to struggle to do the most basic things in life - like go camping at the beach. There's a hidden cost to each rule we add.


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PostPosted: April 28th, 2021, 7:12 am 
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Another reason not to eliminate the transferring of campsites...if I’ve booked a site with friends, and for some unforeseen reason I can’t make it, I’d have to transfer the booking to someone in the group or everyone would be out of luck.

I agree that the scalping of sites should be dealt with, but not by eliminating transfers altogether.

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PostPosted: April 28th, 2021, 9:54 am 
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canoeguitar wrote:
Another reason not to eliminate the transferring of campsites...if I’ve booked a site with friends, and for some unforeseen reason I can’t make it, I’d have to transfer the booking to someone in the group or everyone would be out of luck.

I agree that the scalping of sites should be dealt with, but not by eliminating transfers altogether.


Ontario Parks does ask for the names of those in your group, when you reserve. It wouldn't be cumbersome to allow anyone on that list to check in, or to transfer the booking to anyone on that list, if transfers were to be prohibited, I would think.

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PostPosted: April 28th, 2021, 2:25 pm 
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PacketFiend wrote:
canoeguitar wrote:
Another reason not to eliminate the transferring of campsites...if I’ve booked a site with friends, and for some unforeseen reason I can’t make it, I’d have to transfer the booking to someone in the group or everyone would be out of luck.

I agree that the scalping of sites should be dealt with, but not by eliminating transfers altogether.


Ontario Parks does ask for the names of those in your group, when you reserve. It wouldn't be cumbersome to allow anyone on that list to check in, or to transfer the booking to anyone on that list, if transfers were to be prohibited, I would think.


Ay, but that's the problem when we try to regulate away any possible bad behaviour.

Take this scenario: I make my booking for me and 2 friends. A couple weeks later, another friend asks if they can join us. So I call up and add them to the booking. That's totally legit, and would have to be allowed, right? Of course it would. But then by the time of the booking, I've had something come up and I can't make it. So I have to cancel, and we just let someone else in the registered party check in - maybe that friend who joined last. So far that's still totally legit, and yet in process how would that be any different than a scalper making the booking, selling it for profit, adding the buyer to the party, then later cancelling themselves out?

When we rely on regulations, we will always have at least two results: innocent bystanders with legitimate needs who are unfairly targeted, and malicious bad actors who will always find a way to wriggle around the letter of the law.

At the end of the day, I think we just have to ask ourselves: is this problem big enough to justify the unintended consequences on innocent bystanders that would inevitably accompany any action we take against it?

For me, I think their efforts would be much better spent just opening more parks and increasing the number of available sites: increase the supply and the demand would be sated, and these types of behaviours would go away on their own.


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PostPosted: April 28th, 2021, 7:35 pm 
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Location: Brampton
Hey, I never said it was a good idea, only that it's less cumbersome than you initially argued.

Another solution would be prohibiting online transfers and allowing reservations to be transferred only by speaking with the parks. That would prevent folks like me from writing bots that can do the dirty work (for the record, I don't do that, although I easily could). Unfortunately, it's not possible, because the park staff see the exact same system we do. They have no power that we don't, and it was designed that way.

Opening more parks is the best solution - but it will take years, if not decades. In the interim, it's my opinion that preventing transfers of reservations booked in the first week or two after they become available would be the best option - similar to BC's system.

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