How to read an alert service's claims

Disclosure: OpenCampsite publishes this guide and runs a campsite alert service. Its own claims are used as the worked example below, and no other service is named.

Alert services describe themselves with numbers: a check every so many minutes, a success rate, a count of alerts sent. Some of those numbers help you choose. This page explains what each one measures, so you can tell which.

The check interval

This is the most useful figure a service publishes, as long as you read it for what it is.

It measures looking, not delivering. The interval is the gap between two checks of the reservation site. After a check finds an opening, the service still has to send the message, the carrier or mail provider has to deliver it, and you have to see it. None of that time is in the number.

It is a worst-case wait, on average half that. If a service checks every 10 minutes and a site opens at a random moment, the opening waits anywhere from zero to 10 minutes to be seen, about 5 on average.

It belongs to a plan. Many plan pages show a short interval for the top tier and a longer one for the free or entry tier. Read the row for the plan you will be on.

It may not be fixed. Some services say the timing adapts, with busy campgrounds checked more often than quiet ones. That is reasonable, but it means the figure is typical and not guaranteed for your campground.

Whether a short interval matters for your trip

It depends on how long openings last where you are going.

• At the most contested campgrounds, a cancelled site can be rebooked within a few minutes. There, the difference between a 1-minute and a 10-minute interval is often the difference between seeing a bookable site and seeing nothing.
• At a campground that sells out for weekends but not weeks ahead, a cancelled site may sit for hours. Any interval will find it.

You can estimate which kind you have. Watch the campground's availability on the official site for a few days. If cancelled dates appear and stay visible for an afternoon, interval is not your problem.

Our own figure, as an example

OpenCampsite's plans page states a check about every 10 minutes on the free plan and about every 5 minutes on paid plans that are announced but not yet for sale. It also says timing is adaptive and that a cancellation can appear between checks.

Read that the way this page suggests. Ten minutes is the figure for the plan you can use today. "Adaptive" is not a promise of anything shorter. For a campground where openings vanish in two minutes, that interval is a real handicap, and you should say so to yourself before relying on it.

"Fastest"

A claim to be the fastest means little without a published comparison: which services, which campgrounds, which dates, and measured how. If none of that is shown, treat the word as advertising.

A stated interval is more useful than a superlative, because you can at least compare two intervals.

Success rates

A success rate needs three things before it tells you anything:

1. A definition. Does success mean an alert was sent, or that the customer got a reservation? A service usually cannot see whether you booked.
2. A denominator. Out of how many alerts, over what period, and at which campgrounds? Easy campgrounds raise the rate.
3. A source. Who counted, and can you see the method?

A high rate with none of these is not false. It is unusable for comparison. Your own odds depend mostly on the campground and your dates.

Counts of alerts sent or sites found

Large totals show that a service is active. They do not show that it works for your campground. A message sent for a site that was rebooked a minute later still counts as an alert sent.

Customer quotes and reviews

Reviews of alert services lean one way. A camper who got a site has a reason to write one. A camper whose alert never fired often does not bother.

The Federal Trade Commission's consumer advice on online reviews adds general cautions that apply here. Look at a variety of sources. Check how recent the reviews are and be wary of a burst of them in a short period. Do not assume you can tell a real review from a fake one by reading it. Its business guidance also says a connection between a reviewer and a company that readers would not expect should be disclosed.

That last point is why this guide carries a disclosure on every page and quotes no customers.

What you can measure yourself

You cannot audit a service, but you can run a small test:

1. Set up the alert a few weeks before you need it.
2. When a message arrives, note the time on it and open the official site at once.
3. Record whether the site was still bookable.

After three or four alerts you will know more about that service at that campground than any published number can tell you. If every opening is gone by the time you look, change the channel first, then the plan, then the service.