Escapees RV club sold to the Harvest Host people!

[Kirk]

This is taken from the Escapees Facebook page.

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Escapees RV Club's Post​

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SKPs- Escapees RV Club​

Big Announcement!

Dear Escapees Family,
We have some heartfelt news to share. Escapees RV Club is now part of the Harvest Hosts family! This exciting union allows us to bring even more unique camping options and a stronger community network to you.
Harvest Hosts will carry the Escapees torch with the same dedication and care we’ve always had. Your current benefits and services will remain unchanged, and we’re thrilled about the new opportunities this brings. This transition excludes the Mail Forwarding service and Escapees RV Parks, which will remain under existing ownership.
Thank you for your continuous support and for being a part of our beloved community.
Please visit [Harvest Hosts Transition · Escapees RV Club] for more details.
With gratitude,
The Carr Family

 

[Lou Schneider]

Honestly I'm disappointed but not too surprised by this news. It's like Thor or Forest River taking over a formerly independent RV brand. Everyone says "no changes are planned at this time" but this usually only lasts until the new management is in place.

I am a lot holder in one of the "Escapees" co-op parks. We have Escapees in our name but are governed by a separate corporation comprised of our park members. Park management was blindsided by this announcement.

 

[Kirk]

Park management was blindsided by this announcement.

At least some of the employees were also.

 

[Lou Schneider]

30 years ago JD Gallant tried to recruit me into his RV Consumer Group. We had a lengthy conversation backstage at one of the RV shows where Joe and Kay Peterson were also speaking. JD commented that it was a shame Escapees members think they have a say in the club's future when in fact Escapees is a private, closely held corporation comprised of four people - at the time Joe and Kay Peterson, their daughter Cathie Carr and her husband Bud Carr. Until today's announcement the corporation was still owned by four people - Bud and Cathie Carr, their son Travis Carr and his wife Melanie.

 

[John From Detroit]

EVERY merger cuts down on competition and makes life harder for we the customers. EVERY ONE.
When I was a child and made my way to school (Opening line of a song I know)
The FCC had rules about how many radio/television and newspapers one company could own. both nation wide and "in a single market" The result was lots of small and in some cases not so small (50,000 watt clear channel) stations all with their own editorial staff and positions
One such station was WCFL in Chicago owned by the Chcago Federation of Labor
WCFL, a Chicago radio station, was known as "The Voice of Labor" from 1926 to 1978. The Chicago Federation of Labor created the station to serve the labor movement and working-class communities with programming that included entertainment, labor, and public affairs. During its first decade, WCFL was listener-supported, but became more commercially oriented in the 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s, the station featured sports, and from 1966 to 1976, it competed with WLS for Chicago's rock music audience. The labor federation sold WCFL in 1978, and the station is now known as WMVP.

Well today there are but half a dozen Companies that own nearly all Major Media outlets TV, Radio, And news papers I-Heart-Radio, formerly "Clear Channel communications" is a Koch company.

This means we no longer get competing views. Most of the media is paid to be conservative.

I could give examples but alas. The best ones are political.

 

[Laura & Charles]

I agree. No two companies/organizations are likely to say, “Hey, ya know, if we merge, we’ll be able to provide better service at a lower cost to our customers.” That’s how they’ll pitch it, of course. Much more likely the decision to merge/acquire is to benefit shareholders and senior executives.

I was (maybe still am???) a huge fan of CoachNet. They were acquired by Blue Compass. I haven’t needed their services since the acquisition, so I reserve judgement at this point. But BOY was i disappointed when that news broke… it rarely, if ever, works out best for the customer.

 

[DutchmenSport]

Well, after years and years of ownership, headaches, financial ups and downs, worry, and changing times, it's no surprise the "owners" would sell-out. They've established a pretty good company, probably validated a good profit now, so now is the time to sell-out, take the millions and millions of dollars and kick back and head to the Bahamas for a few months of R&R.

It happens to good businesses that were once "Mom and Pop" organizations, only far too often. But, I can't blame "Mom and Pop" especially after working hard and sacrificing everything to make the business successful. Now, it's time for some rest! Take the money and run!

 

[UTTransplant]

Very glad I didn’t renew my Escapees membership. We had one thee last two years, but didn’t get much out of it. I never belonged to HH except for Boondockers Welcome. I won’t be renewing g that either since so many hosts have dropped out. HH is a menace to a good business.

 

[jymbee]

I never belonged to HH except for Boondockers Welcome. I won’t be renewing g that either since so many hosts have dropped out. HH is a menace to a good business.

Doubt we'll renew BoondockersWelcome either. Main reason is the mess HH has made of the site and it's incessant nag nag nag to try to get you to "Upgrade" to HH. Uh... no thanks.

 

[RayIN]

After visiting Harvest Hosts website, they now say some places will have W/E/S hookups and charge a small fee.
I can envision state-licensed RV parks and county zoning boards raising a ruckus with that scenario.

 

[Kirk]

Until today's announcement the corporation was still owned by four people - Bud and Cathie Carr, their son Travis Carr and his wife Melanie.

Because so much of the operations were carried out by volunteers, many if not most of us became deluded into believing that we were in a club. I suspect that the movement toward this event began soon after the funeral for Kay Peterson. In my years of involvement with the Escapees, I watched as more of the key people for various activities became employees. Like Lou, I have put in a lot of work for the "club" without pay and often paying my own expenses. I think that we have good reason to be disappointed.

I was once a member of the American Automobile Association and later of the Good Sam Club, both of which were businesses posing as a member run club and both have become little more than marketing groups today. It would seem that I should have been more aware, but in my case the third time was not a charm!

 

[Lou Schneider]

I don't regret the time I volunteered to Escapees activities (I was one of the volunteers who set up and operated the sound systems at the Escapades for 27 years). I just figured it was payback for others who volunteered their time and expertise to create the low cost Escapees co-op park that lets me enjoy a comfortable retirement now.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Closely held businesses are often labors of love as much as a [hopefully] profit-making venture. Often that love affair with the product and the customers fades away when another generation takes over, and surely so when another business buys them out. The end of an era is always both inevitable and sad.

I suspect a similar transition is imminent here. There are only a few of us left from the original Compuserve RVForum and we try to keep the spirit of a member-focused volunteer group alive. We are fortunate that our commercial white knight (Social Knowledge) has given us a lot of leeway to continue to operate in our traditional fashion, but us RVForum oldtimers won't be around forever and the baton will get passed to another generation. And I suspect Social Knowledge will take an increasingly active role in this site as well.

 

[Kirk]

I don't regret the time I volunteered to Escapees activities

I didn't mean to imply that I regretted it, only that I allowed it to delude me into thinking things would not change significantly. I did a lot of different things over the years but Kay having checked up on us back when we were newly on the road and had an emergency is what lead me to become involved. Over time I have slowly cut back to where Escapade was my main activity, working security for 8 years and 5 of that as team leader. I miss the friends we made there and several still are part of it. I am still involved but only remotely and not nearly the amount of time that I once did. I have an entire collection of Lamplighter pins. I think my first volunteer involvement was as liaison to KOA for Kathy when she discovered that I knew the then CFO about 20 years ago. Having only been a member for 26 years you are ahead of me on years, but Escapees is how we met too.