Sherry, I had never replied to this in the past because I had not had any personal experience with RV.org.  However, because of what I have heard about two other ratings services in the U.S., I take the ratings from ANY rating service with a large grain of salt.

While I've still not had any personal experience with RV.org, I have heard from a source (to be unnamed) that worked for a highly rated manufacturer with information about RV.org.  Rather than try to paraphrase their comments, I'll post just a wee bit of what was told to me.  I'll follow that information with another person's comments about the Better Business Bureau, and then I'll provide my personal experience with Consumer Reports.

The following comments are from two other people who had personal experiences with RV.org and the BBB:

RV.org

"This was what I saw of the RV rating organization:  They wanted access to everything and for their suggestions to be followed;  it was like 3 days of basically wine and dine and pay for the hotel bill, then, the sales of the brochures which were expensive along with publications from the organization.  If that was not enough, the person doing the rating, which at that time was the guy that started the whole deal, asked for a generous donation for passing out brochures at the shows he would attend.  It just came across to me as "buying" a rating.  Probably was worth the cost.  I realize that the organization has expenses but if you can afford to wine and dine with money and time, the rating could easily be off target."

Better Business Bureau

"I put very, very little stock in what BBB says about any business. When we were running our businesses there came a point where we dropped our BBB membership and our ratings for all went down drastically when we dropped the membership with the local BBB. If you are a member it seems you always get a great rating regardless of how bad your business is."

Now, this is my personal experience with Consumer Reports, as posted in another forum:

Consumer Reports

"When I was a manager of a retail store of a "major national electronics store" we would get folks in wanting to buy "such-and-such" model of a product. It was normal for them to suddenly find that the model they wanted had been discontinued by our company because the technology had gone beyond that model's features. CR had a backlog of reviews to publish, so the subscribers and purchasers of their magazine for evaluation purposes were getting outdated information, and thus, were wasting their money."

So, with all the above information provided from three different people who had personal experience with the respective rating entities, you can see why I take all ratings with an eye of skepticism.

Terry

WestWardHo wrote:

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Thanks for all your responses. Terry, am I misreading your thoughtful reply or did you discuss a different website?

I, personally, did not find RVGuide.com of any use.

Sherry

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Nope.  You didn't misread my reply.  I must confess that I was commenting about an entirely different website.  Unfortunately, as a moderator, I find myself sometimes doing a "quick read" instead of a "thoughtful read," thus, I missed the difference between the RVGuide.com and RV.org.

Please accept my sincere apology for taking your thread completely out of context and discussing a completely different source.

I'm sorry for that.

Terry