A holiday park company has once again come under fire for allegedly using ‘dirty tactics’ to get static caravanners to agree to their terms and conditions.
Turnberry Holiday Park owners Park Holidays have been accused of ‘further wrong doing’ since their U-turn back in September last year, which saw bosses allow dozen of owners to stay on site after it was claimed caravanners were told to ‘upgrade or get out’.
A statement from Park Holidays at the time said they would honour any contracts from the previous owner Bridge Leisure.
But now caravan owners claim they are once again having to fight to have their original terms met.
Mary Miller, who previously organised meetings between affected caravanners, said owners were given a booklet stating Park Holidays’ fees, and claims she was told that by paying the fees they were agreeing to Park Holidays’ license — a document they haven’t seen.
She said: “They said by paying our fees — which we are obligated to under our licence agreement — that we have agreed to Park Holidays’ licence, without actually giving us a copy of it.
“I said I was paying under duress as I had to pay as part of my valid licence, and that I cannot agree to a contract without viewing it first.
“They said they would honour existing contracts and clearly they’re not trying to do that.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that you’re having to constantly fight.
“I took that fight on board for those elderly people because it wasn’t right and I thought that would be the end of it.
“But they’re just coming out with dirty, dirty tactics.
“The solution is for them to agree that my license until 2031 is still valid and current, and for them to stick to the terms of it.”
Another caravan owner, who wished to remain anonymous, claims she was approached by a persistent salesman on the site who urged her to upgrade their family caravan or they’ll be ‘put off the park’ when their pitch agreement runs out.
She said: “It felt like bully-boy tactics.
“The GM [general manager] apologised for the way the salesman spoke to us, but said what he was saying was in fact true.
“The whole experience was awful.
“We don’t want to leave because we love the park, but we don’t like what the park’s becoming.
“The reason we picked Turnberry Holiday Park was because it wasn’t expensive and we got told at the time there was no-age limit, as long as your caravan was well maintained and didn’t pose any risk in terms of health and safety.
“Really the contract we’ve got isn’t worth the paper it’s written on because they’re [Park Holidays] saying ‘well that’s their [Bridge Leisure’s] contract and not ours’.”
A Park Holiday spokesman said: “Park Holidays UK is not asking any holiday home owner who bought from the previous park owners to sign any contract which compromises their holiday home’s tenure on the park.
“In other words, the original site licence agreement they signed which specified how long their holiday home could remain on the park is being honoured in full.
“The Park Holidays UK contract reinforces this, and simply details the company’s standard park rules to which all holiday home owners agree, and which is consistent with the wording in the model contract provided by our industry body, BH&HPA, and widely used throughout the parks industry.”
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