An email that recently made the rounds among campground owners encouraged them to “renew” their advertising on the Go RV Park website. In instances that were called to my attention, Maryland campground owners were provided a link to a page where they could see their advertising located, along with a $49.00 renewal price. The email also stated that the website had “acquired the Maryland Campground and RV Park Directory Inc. and SW Publications Nationwide.” At first glance, $49.00 sounds like a good deal, and the fact that your park (and every other park whose data has been harvested) is already listed makes the “renewal” make sense.

Take a second glance before reaching for your wallet. The “Maryland Campground and RV Park Directory Inc.” does not exist to my knowledge, although it sounds both legitimate and oddly similar to the directory of the Maryland Association of Campgrounds. Then, “SW Publications Nationwide” is another company that appears to be both nonexistent but very similar to “Southeast Publications”, a well-recognized vendor within the campground industry. Many of us tend to miss the little details, and many people who read “SW Publications” mistakenly interpreted that as “Southeast Publications”. Finally, the GoRVPark.com website sounds confusingly similar to the GoRVing.com website that is a partnership of the RVIA, the RVDA, and National ARVC.

In addition to your own listing and compiled listings of every other campground, the website features banner ads for industry giants that include KOA, ELS, Good Sam, Bass Pro Shops, and Walt Disney World’s Fort Wilderness Campground. This certainly suggests legitimacy, but who says that any of those businesses paid for, authorized, or might even be aware of their ad space (at least until now)?

Back to the $49.00 “renewal” price, that would truly appear to be a bargain. The company’s website offers a $149.00 advertising fee and says that “This $149.00 yearly price is for a LIMITED time only. RV Parks, Campgrounds & RV Resorts who sign up NOW will NEVER be subject to the regular annual cost of $499.00 per year.” Interestingly enough, this exact wording appears on the earliest appearance of the website on the Internet Archive, when it was apparently launched in 2010. How can this possibly be a “LIMITED time” offer? To further suggest its authenticity, the website claims that “Go RV Park is the #1 Google ranked portal and intuitive network of websites for RV information.” Beyond the fact that this gobbledygook is total nonsense, a Google search for “RV information” shows the website totally missing in action, at least on the first 10 pages of search results.

Fortunately, the assessment that I provided to the Maryland Association of Campgrounds was shared with its membership as well as National ARVC, which issued a press release warning members to read their emails carefully before responding to this type of offer.

Another type of email that is not specific to the campground industry but seems to continually make the rounds are the ones that scare recipients into believing that their domain names are ready to expire and need to be renewed immediately. Only the fine print (which many people either skim or do not read) explains that the senders are not domain name registrars but are selling highly suspect “traffic generator software tools”, implying that failure to pay for the “search engine optimization service by the expiration date, may result in the cancellation of this search engine optimization domain name notification notice.” (Don’t think for a minute that anything you do will stop these email notices!) Along with a number of payment links and the recommendation to “Act immediately”, the recipient will typically misread the words “Failure to complete your SEO domain name registration search engine optimization service process may make it difficult for customers to find you on the web.” This statement means absolutely nothing, but many people think that their domain name registration is ready to expire, or that their listing on Google is ready to suddenly disappear, and pay the fee (typically $84.00 or $86.00) before they realize their mistake. Fortunately, most reputable email service providers (such as Gmail) send these solicitations into spam folders.

Another email scam is the one that sells compiled email lists. They usually state that the lists are “opt-in verified, 100% permission based and can be used for unlimited multi-channel marketing.” One that I recently received began with the words, “Greetings of the day! Would you be interested in acquiring an email list of ‘RV Owners List’ from USA? (sic)” Another that came in within the last 48 hours offered “100K Email Marketing only for $160 USD, regular price $360 USD” or “900+ Million World Wide Email List only for $75 USD, Regular Price is $450 USD (sic).” Unless you like receiving spam yourself, want to get your email account closed, want to have an email marketing account terminated, and want to be reviled by most recipients, do not even think of buying or using a compiled list. Again, most of these solicitations end up on spam folders themselves.

Confusion over email scams like these is quite valid, as evidenced by the dozens of emails that clients have forwarded to me, wondering whether or not the emails are legitimate. Scammers like these profit tremendously if only a small percentage of recipients fall for the bait, and knowledge like this is your best defense against becoming victimized.