Why Don’t I Receive Campsite Alerts?

February 22, 2021

Let’s say you signed up for our campsite monitoring service—but haven’t received any alerts yet. In this Campnab FAQ video, I’ll explain why some scans don’t result in many (or any) alerts. I’ll also present ways that you can change your campsite notifications scan to increase the probability of receiving an alert.

Introduction

Hi!

It’s Eric from Campnab.

Today, I’m going to answer the question: Why Don’t I Receive Campsite Alerts?

If you’ve never used the system before, you might be kind of bewildered. Like you set up a scan and you don’t receive anything for a while. What’s going on?

I’m going to get into all of that, today. I have eight points that might be affecting what kind of alerts you’re receiving.

​Booking window isn’t open yet

Number one is that the booking window hasn’t opened up yet. Parks typically open up a certain window of dates that you can book for.

And if they haven’t yet opened that up, and you’re scanning for it, you obviously will not receive any alerts.

So, that’s not a big deal. Once those spots start becoming available you’ll be notified. But, again, check with the park you’re looking at, to see what their particular booking window is and when it’s open.

​Scanning too far ahead

The second is similar, but a little bit different. It might be that you’re scanning too far ahead.

So, let’s say Florida for example which opens quite a way in advance for booking. You could book a spot theoretically a year in advance.

Now if you’re scanning for those you’re probably not going to see a lot of alerts come up.

And the reason for this is that most people don’t cancel their camping reservations a whole year in advance. Most don’t do it eight or ten months in advance, for that matter.

So you’re just going to have to kind of hang tight and wait until closer to your arrival date. Around that last one, two, or three months before the arrival date. That’s when people typically start to change their plans, and you start seeing more availabilities open up.

​Minimum duration too long

Number Three: The minimum duration you set might be too long. If you look at when you’re setting up a scan, you have that area where you can say “one or more nights”, “two or more nights”, and so on and so forth.

If you go on the far end of that spectrum, and you say: “I need an opening of at least eight nights.” That’s going to limit the number of alerts you’re going to receive.

So if you’re not receiving the number of alerts you want, throttle that back a bit. Honestly, I think you should go for one or two nights, because this increases the probability that you will receive alerts.

And you can always disregard those if you don’t want them. If they don’t suit you, that’s fine, but personally I would rather have lots of options than no options. (And eight day alerts are typically harder to come by.)

​Overly specific criteria

Quatro! You might be too picky. I’m sorry. This does happen sometimes.

You set up filters) on a scan that are so granular, so picky, that there just aren’t a lot of spots that open up.

The easy solution: Go back into your scan and kind of open that up a bit. Typically, this is a matter of common sense. The more refined your search parameters are, the lower the number of alerts you’re going to receive—which kind of stands to reason.

​Campsite is closed

Number Five: The campsite might be closed. Now, this sounds improbable, but it does actually happen—especially amidst a pandemic. There are a number of places that you can’t camp, that you normally would have.

So, again, maybe check that park’s website and find out: Are they actually taking bookings right now? Or, have they got some kind of a provisional system in place, during these kind of extreme times?

​Scans are too infrequent

It could be that your scans are simply not running frequently enough. Now, in a lot of places up in B.C., that’s typically fine. (That’s where I am.)

But in certain parks… in certain areas… where it’s very, very busy… very, very competitive, if you’re not scanning frequently enough you might not receive an alert—because someone else received it before you. And they were able to grab that spot before the scan even ran.

So, consider bumping up to a higher tier membership, or pay-per-use scan, that might be able to alert you of more availabilities.

​Telco might be blocking texts

Next, we have telcos. Sometimes telcos will block incoming text messages. We don’t see this happen a lot, but it does happen from time to time.

If you’re really not sure why you’re not receiving alerts—and you think you really should—let us know. We can dig into it, and see if you’ve been sent alerts that perhaps your telco has blocked.

In the event that they have, you can contact them and ask them to allow these messages to go through. Again, this is pretty improbable, because if you’ve signed up for the service you’ve already got a message through—but it can happen.

​There’s a problem with the scan

And, finally, there could be a problem with the scan. This is not all that common, but it does happen from time to time.

So, if you’re unsure about whether a scan is running properly, just call us (we’re at 604-683-2250). We’ll check it out for you.

Don’t want to call? That’s fine too! You can email us, you can message us through chat;) (which is right on the website).

There are only two of us, so, we can only respond so quickly—but we really try to be as fast as we can—and as responsive as we can.

So if you think that something’s amiss, get in touch. We’ll figure it out and we’ll get you set up.

​Wrap-up

Umm…… that’s my whole list. I hope this was somewhat helpful.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I know I say that over and over again, but we really pride ourselves on being there for all of our members.

So, anything you need—you just let us know.

Happy camping!