How this guide is written, and by whom

Disclosure: Best Campsite Alert is published by OpenCampsite, which runs a campsite alert service. That is a conflict of interest. This page explains what the guide does about it.

The conflict, plainly

A company that sells campsite alerts is telling you how to choose a campsite alert. It benefits if you choose its own. Read everything here with that in mind.

The site exists because OpenCampsite wants people who are choosing an alert to find it. The guidance is written to be useful whichever service you end up with, and the rules below are there so you can check that.

The rules

1. One service is named, and it is ours. The guide describes OpenCampsite because OpenCampsite publishes it and can cite its own pages. It does not name, rank or review any other service. A company's website is not a neutral judge of its competitors, and this one does not try to be.
2. No winner, scores or stars. The guide gives you checks to run. It does not tell you the result.
3. OpenCampsite gets the same checks. Its page applies the seven checks from the home page and lists its drawbacks, including a stated check interval that is longer than others offer.
4. The guidance has to work against us. Where a check would lead a reader away from OpenCampsite, the page says so. A hard-to-get campground on a peak date is the clearest case.
5. The disclosure travels with the content. It appears at the top of every guide page, on the OpenCampsite page, here and on the About page.
6. No paid links. The only outbound links go to OpenCampsite and to official sources. None carries an affiliate code.

Sources the guide accepts

For facts about OpenCampsite: its public plans, coverage and FAQ pages and its published summary, each listed at the foot of the page with the date it was read.

For facts about reservation rules and fees: the reservation system's or agency's own page.

For consumer guidance: government consumer-protection pages, mainly the United States Federal Trade Commission.

Not accepted: comparison sites, forum posts, customer reviews, and anyone's memory of how a service used to work.

General statements about how alert services differ, such as free plans that are email only or services that book for you, describe things a reader should check for. They are not claims about a particular company.

What the guide does not do

• It has not timed any service. There is no speed test behind these pages. A stated check interval is a figure copied from a plan page, and it is not the same as how fast a message reaches a phone.
• It does not quote customers. No testimonials appear, for OpenCampsite or anyone else.
• It does not publish success rates. Not ours and not anyone's.
• It does not predict whether you will get a campsite. That depends on other campers cancelling.

Dates and corrections

Each page shows when its text was last edited and when its facts were last checked. Plans and coverage change. If a "facts checked" date is more than a few months old, confirm the details on the service's own site.

If something here is wrong, email hey@opencampsite.com with the page and a link to the correct source. The page and its check date will be updated.

Why the disclosure sits at the top

The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements says that a connection readers would not expect, and that would affect how they weigh what they read, should be disclosed clearly. On placement, it says a disclosure should be put where it "easily catches consumers' attention and is difficult to miss."

A guide to choosing a product, written by a company that makes one, is exactly that kind of connection. So it is stated first on each page, and not left to a footer.