the camper rental experience

So, just a little bit on our camper trailer rental experience. All good, I'd say. We went through outdoorsy.com, though I also looked at rvshare.com. People list their personal rv for rent. Pictures and all the info about it and their rental policies are there to view. You can put in your dates and see what's available and the price. If you want to rent/reserve one, you enter your info. The only con in searching their website, is it seems to show a lot of rv's that might not be very close to the city you enter, so you have to be careful and watch and know the area.

In my case the lady who owned it replied right back, after I reserved it. Said to let her know if I had any questions. The website takes a 20% down payment to hold it. It appeared the refund policy in case of a cancellation, could vary by owner. About 4 days or so before, the rest of the rental fee was charged to my card. Two days before a $500 damage deposit was charged, to be credited back within 7 days of return.

I contacted the owner a few times, with questions, in the preceding couple of weeks. She was always very quick to respond. Though I had asked her if there were any camping chairs in the camper  (we weren't really going to have room in my car to bring those too) and she said no, there wasn't. So, I ended up making sure DD had a couple extra chairs with them. But, once we got the camper, I saw there were 4 camp chairs underneath in their storage area. I had also asked if bedding was included and she said yes. But, thankfully we brought our own pillows, as no pillows were included. The bed also only had a fitted sheet and a comforter on it. I'm kind of a top sheet gal, but oh well.

It was an easy pick up process. She had a check list to go through with us. I had to sign for it. She had it filled up with water and batteries charged (it didn't have a generator). We had asked if there was somewhere in the area to dump. She said there used to be a place in their little town (which we passed through) but she wasn't sure anymore. Other than that it was 30 miles in another direction.

Everything with the camper worked fine. We didn't use the kitchen or other "amenities" like tv, etc, since we were eating food provided by others and really only used it to sleep and take quick showers in. Since we didn't know how much water it held, we took "navy showers".  She had told me in one of her messages there was a vacuum in there, but I never found it. Underneath the dining seating was a cabinet that I found a vacuum hose and another vacuum attachment, but I never found a vacuum. I just used the broom and swept it out, before we returned it.

I had initially told her we would be returning it around 10-11am, but the evening before DH decided let's get going asap, so we would be returning it about 9am. I sent her a message to let her know (the outdoorsy site has email and texts linked together, so you can reply to each other either way). She said she'd make sure her dh was up by then, LOL. I didn't really think 9am was too early, but I guess, haha. We didn't find any dump place in their town and she had said not to worry about it, if there wasn't.

We got there right at 9am and her dh came out with his checklist to make sure it was all in good order. I had commented that since we were only camping about 20 miles or so away, we didn't have to put much miles on his tires, so that was good.  He asked if we dumped it and I said no, so he said he would to to their next town and could do it, but it would be $30 charge. Ok. no problem. I assumed they would credit my $500 damage deposit back, less the $30 dump fee, but the whole $500 was credited the next day.

All in all it was a good experience, and about the same as it would have cost us to get a motel room for 2 nights. I don't know how often they find renters and how much they had to give the outdoorsy company, but I suppose it's a good way to have a camper, use it when you want and earn some money back on it to make the payments. But, like DH says, he's too picky and couldn't handle letting someone else use his nice stuff, haha. But, most people aren't as particular about their belongs as my dh is, so it probably doesn't bother them.