High Fees Plus Deposit Plus Electric! Options

[abbygolden]

Starting tomorrow, I'll be using a park for about two months that changes what I consider to be a pretty high monthly rate ($525) plus it charges a $150 deposit and electric. I've never even been to a park that charged for electric much less a deposit. I'm used to $400-500$ monthly at excellent parks and that includes wifi, etc. I've paid as much as $600 but that was a ripoff near Mesa Verde.

Why am I going to pay that much? Because the area I'm staying in doesn't have any other parks that come to the standard that I'm used to. This place certainly doesn't look like anything over the top as it is all concrete but it's in the location I want to be so I have little choice. My main choices are this place or returning home to central Texas and the 100 temps.

I don't go east of the Mississippi so I don't know what it is back east, but this is a first for me out west (I'm in Oregon). I exclude CA because ... I exclude CA.

[dbnck]

My experience is the opposite of the OP's. I've been fulltiming for 8 years now, the great majority of it west of the Mississippi, and I've almost never seen an RV park that doesn't charge for electric on monthly stays. I know I've seen it, but I can't remember any specific parks--it's been that rare.

I was in Arrey, New Mexico, recently (near Truth or Consequences) and had metered electric on daily rates. In the two county RV parks in South Padre Island, Texas, electric is included in daily rates, but you pay metered electric on both weekly and monthly rates, plus a deposit that the charge for electricity gets deducted from.

At the Oak Forest RV Park in Austin, they have designated monthly sites for $330 plus electric plus $100 deposit, or you can get one of the open concrete transient sites in the front for $600 including electricity.

And jim crowl, look closely at the soft drink machines that charge 35 or 50 cents--I've seen them, too, but upon closer inspection noticed they're for store-brand drinks, not Coke. But central/south Texas does have HEB stores, which have everyday low prices (I recently did a direct comparison between HEB and Walmart in Round Rock on both food and non-food items and HEB was the same or sometimes a cent or two lower) AND they don't make you have one of those stupid store loyalty cards to get the good prices AND they have a store-brand root beer made with sugar instead of corn syrup, for $2.50 for a 12-pack, that is very good. I think they have a cola, too, but I haven't tried it, preferring to stick with sugar Dr Pepper, not available at HEB.

[abbygolden]

My experience is the opposite of the OP's. I've been fulltiming for 8 years now, the great majority of it west of the Mississippi, and I've almost never seen an RV park that doesn't charge for electric on monthly stays. I know I've seen it, but I can't remember any specific parks--it's been that rare.

I was in Arrey, New Mexico, recently (near Truth or Consequences) and had metered electric on daily rates. In the two county RV parks in South Padre Island, Texas, electric is included in daily rates, but you pay metered electric on both weekly and monthly rates, plus a deposit that the charge for electricity gets deducted from.

At the Oak Forest RV Park in Austin, they have designated monthly sites for $330 plus electric plus $100 deposit, or you can get one of the open concrete transient sites in the front for $600 including electricity.

And jim crowl, look closely at the soft drink machines that charge 35 or 50 cents--I've seen them, too, but upon closer inspection noticed they're for store-brand drinks, not Coke. But central/south Texas does have HEB stores, which have everyday low prices (I recently did a direct comparison between HEB and Walmart in Round Rock on both food and non-food items and HEB was the same or sometimes a cent or two lower) AND they don't make you have one of those stupid store loyalty cards to get the good prices AND they have a store-brand root beer made with sugar instead of corn syrup, for $2.50 for a 12-pack, that is very good. I think they have a cola, too, but I haven't tried it, preferring to stick with sugar Dr Pepper, not available at HEB.

HEB, my favorite grocery store, has a "loyalty" card that gives you a discount on gas and money back based on the amount you spend on the card. You aren't "required" to have the card but you're crazy not to. If one were to shop for groceries in WalMart and get the same at HEB, you would save money at WalMart by a long shot. This is particularly true for prepackaged items. I don't care for the quality of produce or meats at WM, hence the reason I shop at HEB.

As far as camping in Texas and their fees, I don't because I live there. ALL my RVing is west of the Mississippi and to me this is a coming trend (pay for electric, etc). I spoke with the owner where I'm currently staying and he told me that they had been burned six times in the past year with people literally leaving in the middle of the night without paying for electric and didn't want that to happen again, hence the deposit (which you receive back when you leave).

While I'm not wild about the deposit or paying for electric I guess I'll just have to live with it. It's too bad that it is caused by your fellow RVers who can't be trusted to pay their obligation.

[dbnck]

HEB, my favorite grocery store, has a "loyalty" card that gives you a discount on gas and money back based on the amount you spend on the card. You aren't "required" to have the card but you're crazy not to. If one were to shop for groceries in WalMart and get the same at HEB, you would save money at WalMart by a long shot. This is particularly true for prepackaged items. I don't care for the quality of produce or meats at WM, hence the reason I shop at HEB.

Not to go too far off topic, but I'd never heard of an HEB loyalty card so I looked it up. Apparently it's only for Waco stores. From the FAQ:

I don't live in Waco. Can I collect points at any H-E-B?
Points Club Rewards™ by H-E-B is currently only available at Waco H-E-B stores. ... Currently, point collection is available at H-E-B stores in Waco. Although we don't have plans to expand the program into other parts of Texas at this time, we will keep our customers informed of any changes to those plans.

At least that explains why I hadn't heard of it! It doesn't explain why they have it only in Waco. Is there competition up there?

As for saving money at Walmart over HEB, I took my shopping list to a Walmart and an HEB about a mile away from each other in Round Rock. HEB had the same or sometimes lower price (never a higher price) on every item I looked at. I don't have the list any more, but what I remember were Swiffer dusters, Ziploc bags, Spray & Wash, Pop-tarts, Macaroni Grill piccata chicken dinner thing in a box (not frozen), and organic milk.

I'm normally not such a close shopper but I happened to be right by the Walmart and had some time to kill, so I decided to check it out and write down the prices before I went to HEB to do the shopping. I was surprised by the results because I'd always thought Walmart would be cheaper than any place on household items. I was even surprised by the Pop-tarts because Walmart typically prices the stuff that's bad for you pretty aggressively.

As for paying for electricity, a bunch of people are switching to residential refrigerators because of the fire danger of the propane ones, and I've read a lot of discussion about how much power the two different types use. I was shocked to learn that the double-wide Norcold I have uses about 8 kwh/day. At 10 cents/kwh (the cheapest rate I've come across), that's $24 a month just for the refrigerator! I know it varies depending on ambient temperature and sun and all that, but it still sounds like a pig to me.

As a comparison, my 1,050 Watts of solar panels generate about 3.6 kwh on an average good day and we can usually live indefinitely on that--the refrigerator alone uses about twice that.