Manager threatened to terminate our Thousand Trails Membership; 2/2023 (Out of order)

7/8/24 UPDATE

WE WON! See unofficial ruling below! We won our Court case against Thousand Trails Management Services and Equity Lifestyles the Parent company for falsely terminating our membership!  

On 6/27/24 We had our Court case where the judge read all the evidence submitted. The VP representative for Equity Lifestyle tried to evade the judges questions as to who owns the Soledad Canyon 

RV park in Acton, CA. He kept trying to say that the name "Thousand Trails Soledad Canyon" does not exist. The judge asked- I am confused- who owns "The Soledad Canyon RV park", to which he responded "MHC Thousand Trails". Judge asked who own "MHC Thousand Trails" to which the VP responded very quietly "Equity Lifestyle Management"!

The judge asked about if there was an offer to settle and the VP said yes we believe we offered $2000 but they declined.

The judge then asked if we attempted to contact to settle to which I responded yes Judge multiple times asking that someone read our letters and give us back our membership. 

He then asked the VP if he would be willing to reinstate our membership. The VP responded yes.

Neil then said but at the same annual fee that we had. 

Judge asked the VP if he would reinstate our membership at the original annual rate.

The VP said something to the fact I am not able to do that. The rate would be around $900 +/-/year.

The judge asked if we would accept that and Neil and I both said No judge.

The judge then asked if we had anything to add to which Neil said Judge we asked that they also pay for the costs of all the parks we had to stay at when they cancelled all of our reservations.

The VP said I want to make it clear we don't tolerate abuse of our employees.

The Judge said ok then I will make my ruling and you will receive it in the mail.

Because it takes a few days longer using a traveling mailbox, I learned that some courthouses have some online information available. When I searched last week, it was not there. When I searched this morning the ruling was there.

6/26/23 UPDATE

In March as we were making our way to Alaska, I started to receive notification after notificaton of cancellatons. When I attempted to login to TT, it said I no longer had access. I immediately called but was told there is nothing I can do because we were terminated. I said how can you terminate us without notifying us. She said the letter is being drafted. It was another 10 days when we received the letter of termination with no contact number, person who terminated us, an appeals process, nothing except we are terminated.

I have been at my witts end with frustration on what to do.  When we were in Washington, a neighbor and I were talking and she said they were on their way to a tt park. I explained what happened and she said they can't do that and gave me the number of a TT specialist. She said that she could not do anything on her end, but told me to write a letter to Equity property's in Chicago.  I wrote the letter and had it certified delivery. It has now been more than 1 month and we still have not heard back.

We are in the process of the next step.

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I wanted to share what happened to us when we returned to our Thousand Trails Home park- Soledad Canyon RV park in Acton, CA   

We have both been traumatized by the actions that have taken place. Below is the email that we sent into Thousand Trails after speaking with a TT representative. All yellow inserts were added after we sent email to TT.

Please comment if you have had anything like this happen to you.  We both have so much anxiety, expecting a knock on the door to evict us from the park. When we are being accused of speaking rudley to the maintenance manager, but in fact we were speaking to each other via walkies. 

I/we would greatly appreciate any comments or feedback 

2/19/2023 As of today, we have not heard from any person(s) from TT. We left the park on 2/17/23, not expected to return until Fall 2023.

Today is February 5, 2023. We received an email informing us that our email "This has been shared with our Regional Leadership Team.". 

The email did not address any issues or did it say someone would be contacting us, so I replied with a picture I took of the photo today with tree trimming equipment in the site and inquired about what CA code we violated by being parked next to a transformer.

This is no longer an issue of having to move when the park was full; it has to do with being lied to over and over again, by 2 managers who DO NOT care if Thousand Trail members are inconvenienced, but most of all threatening to cancel a membership when called out for their wrong doing!

Email to TT

1/28/23  The story of how parking in the wrong RV site may get us kicked from Thousand Trails.

 

We arrived at the TT Soledad Canyon park in Acton, CA. This park is our home park.  We have been to this park so often I have lost count.

We were informed upon check in, that the park is full, and recommended that we may need to use the section "C Tent Sites".  We have never seen an RV in the tent section in all the times we have visited this park.

As this is a first-come first-served park, and from past visits knew people often check out of the park long after checkout time, we proceeded to drive around looking for an opening.  About 100 feet past the 'C Tent Sites’', we found a back site next to a cabin (photo below).  This site has a standard 50 amp power pedestal and a water spigot, but no sewer. We backed into the site and unhitched. Just as I pulled away from the site with the truck, a man pulled up to my husband, and said that we can’t be here and that we need to move. Neil tried to explain that we were told that the park is full and this is an empty site. The man just said “I'm the manager, this is not an rv site (Reason #1) and you need to move!”. I was too far away to hear what was happening so I asked my husband over our walkie talkies what was going on.  My husband tells me what "the manager" said; confused, I asked "how is that not an RV site"?  Neil tells me over the walkie that 'the manager' is "not answering questions as to why this is not a site when it looks like every other RV site at the park, why it has no signage, etc, and acting like a stubborn ass by just repeating the same sentence over and over that “this is not a site and we have to move".

We got in the truck to go search out another site and learned why the park is FULL! The Q section was mostly blocked off with signs for tree removal and many others with no working power, taped to the pedestals. (yet there are rver's connected to those pedastals)

We continued up to section "N" to find the same issue with so many non working pedestals.

We drove to the office to speak with the manager in hopes of clarification as to why the site we chose was any less of an RV site than the tent sites that were available. I asked to see the manager and it seemed that the whole office knew who I was once I said my name. It was the front counter supervisor who told me the 2nd reason for why we could not be in that site and that was because it sits next to a transformer. I told her I do not wish to speak to the man who said he was the manager; in which she said he is the maintenance or facility manager.

We were escorted to the manager's office, where he, the manager, was sitting in his chair and the maintenance manager was also in the office. The manager did not get up from his chair to introduce himself or shake our hands. The other manager (unknown name) never said a word for the entire meeting, which was very unprofessional; the room had more of an inquisition vibe than a real meeting where all voices would be heard. 

Neil then attempted to explain everything that happened, but he kept interrupting him, which caused Neil to get upset with him. but he kept repeating the same chant we were all too familiar with by now, "that is not an RV site (Reason #1), you need to move".  Again, when Neil questioned how the site is any different than all the other sites, we got the same chant…"that is not an RV site, you need to move".   After repeating his chant a few times, he then said the site is for a cabin (Reason #3).  At this point, it was clear we were being talked at, similar to how a police officer at a traffic stop is known to talk at the person being pulled over.  He was establishing his dominance in a similar and intimidating way.

There was no two-way dialogue happening at all, so I said "we are done here" and got up to leave and the manager replied very sarcastically “Yeah we are done!”  As we were leaving, the manager casually told my husband he was "filling out the paperwork to have our Thousand Trails membership revoked, and you can try to fight it if you want to".   The manager never told us the reason for his decision, nor did we want to stick around being talked at.  We left the 'meeting' with no further understanding of the problem with the RV site, than when we went in, but with a much clearer picture of the management style at this park. 

We went to move our RV to the 'tent section', and as we were hooking up, another staff member came over to us.  At this point, I broke down in tears, saying "We're moving…. I don't want any more trouble, we're moving, we're moving!"  and just wept.  Confused, the poor staff member asked what the problem was, and after hearing about how we were treated, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, 'please don't worry, that guy is an ass referring to the maintenance/facilities manager, so we took comfort in his consolement and continued to hitch up and move.

Both managers are bullies and should be held accountable for terrorizing your members.  As this is being written, remembering the rudeness of both managers, my heart is racing, and my hands are shaking.  We don't want to be at this park.  We don't want to see the managers.  We have no choice but to stay three weeks to take care of my family, who are local to this area.  We will be very happy to leave, but we know we will need to return for future family commitments and dread the thought of future interactions with these bullies.  We have seen the facilities manager driving by, staring at our RV as he passes, which makes being here so much harder.

Immediately after we were unhitched, I called Thousand Trails membership. The lady I spoke with listened to our story; she emailed a link and explained what to do, telling me not to leave out anything I had told her. She reassured us telling us that she has never heard of a manager having the ability to terminate a member. During the conversation the lady stated that Soledad entered into the notes that the reason we could not park there is because of a transformer being next to the site, but neither manager ever gave that as a reason for why, but he is submitting a request to have us terminated from TT!

Thank you 

Neil and Debbie Wolf

Email co-written

 

This is a photo of the site we were in.  The 50A pedestal is in the back right, and the water is just behind the wood pole.  The RV fit without issue.