Spanish Practices

[Bill]

 

Here is the bizarre story of the prices I was charged at a Spanish campsite which shall be known only as Camping XXX.

 

I made a reservation by e-mail and received the following reply:

 

Muy Buenas,

 

We get some availability for those dates.

Our prices in July and August are :

- pitch : 16€

- adult : 5,40€

- electra 6A : 5€.

 

Please to confirm that bookink,

 

Camping XXX,

Nathalie.

 

If you add up that lot it comes to €26-40. There is no mention of IVA (Spanish VAT) but I know it is 7% and applies only to the pitch element. So, price including IVA should be

 

- pitch : 17,12€

- adult : 5,40€

- electra 6A : 5€.

- Total : 27.52€

 

When I booked in I was given a piece of paper stating that the price I would be paying was €25-04 – which included IVA. I didn’t query this because

a) the girl who booked me in spoke very little English

b) the difference was in my favour anyway

 

So, when I came to pay I was expecting to be charged (€25-04 x 7 nights =) €175-28.

 

In the event I was charged

 

- pitch : 13€

- adult : 5,40€

- electra 6A : 5€.

- Total : 23.40€

 

before IVA, for a total of (€23-40 x 7 nights =) €163-80.

 

All this was beautifully set out and all the extensions and casts were correct, but I have no idea why the pitch price suddenly dropped €3, nor how all this tied in with what went before. But there was more to come.

 

For no reason I can see I was given a discount of €93-80, which reduced the total to €70 exactly. I put all these numbers into a spreadsheet and looked at everything as a percentage of everything else – but nothing made sense.

 

The bare fact is that they did all these calculations then decided to charge me €10/night, and gave me the discount needed to make that happen.

 

Then they added IVA to the whole lot – which I assume means that the total charge was for the pitch and they didn’t charge me anything at all for capitation or electricity.

 

My money was taken by the lady who owns the place, who speaks English with mother-tongue fluency (to say nothing of TEN other languages) so I suppose I could have asked, but I thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie.

 

The bottom line is that I have had a week in high season in this Rolls-Royce of a site – the best site I have come across anywhere since I started motorhoming – for €10-70 per day, which is near as dammit £7 per day.

 

It is frequently said that Spain is a lunatic asylum run by the inmates.

 

Indeed, except that the terms “Spain” and “run” do not belong in the same sentence. I think it is more a case of the keepers being on permanent siesta while the inmates just do their own thing.