Campsite Les Rives du Lac ***

Lovely site right next to the lake. Given pitch number to check happy before booking. Large pitches in neat hedged rows. Helpful staff. Brilliant cycle path to Annecy and around lake. Carrefour supermarket walking distance. High standard toilet facilities. Would highly recommend.

We sent a reservation request through the ACSI website and received an e mail advising there were several suitable places for our large caravan. I was advised to book via their web site. However although I could get on their home page the booking page failed to open countless times either in wi fi or my mobile. I therefore e mailed advising I could not get their site to work and asking them to hold the reservation. I received an e mail advising there were no spaces. I telephoned (in French) to complain that I had a booking but could.not use their site as it did not open. Told if I did not use their site there is no booking and there was no space. I said this is not how ACSI bookings work but this made no difference. Told there was no space. So I cannot review the site as we did not go there! To add insult to injury next day I got an e mail advising me they had held a site but I did not turn up! They had been insistent on the phone there was no pitch! So make very sure you have a place before wasting a journey.

Very bad attention to newcomers.

What originally was an unfortunate misunderstanding, ended up in a very annoying situation due to the bad attention and attitude of the camping's staff. I'll explain:

We arrived at noon while it was raining. I entered into reception to ask for a pitch for 2 nights, and I was quickly assigned number 61 without letting us any other option (no problem with that). The woman at reception told me to settle into the pitch and do the paperwork afterwards. Thus, I prepared our car and caravan to enter and approached the barrier. This is when the bizarre situation started.

While I was in front of the barrier, the woman did not open it. My wife went to reception again to ask her to let us enter. With very bad manners, the woman told my wife that she would not let us enter until we went to the pitch on foot and confirmed it was OK for us (even if we were not given any option to choose). So I did.

I went running to the pitch (it was raining!) and came back to confirm the woman. Then she still did not open and told us that we should enter the camping by another entry surrounding the perimeter road. I explicitly asked her if it really existed the other entry, and if it would be opened for sure. She confirmed it, so we took the car plus caravan and went for it. To do so, we needed to do some real maneuvering to turn around the car/caravan ensemble in a quite narrow space. In the meantime, the woman went outside the reception, and was looking at us without saying a word. She did not open the barrier during all that time.

At this point, we started surrounding the camping looking for the other entrance until we realized that there was not such. Too late for us since we ended up in a cul de sac where we had to turn around the car/caravan, again in a very tight space.

We came back to reception to discuss the situation with the staff, and the woman very sharply told us that it was evident that we had not rightly get her indications, and treated my wife and myself as if we were actually dumb.

If we could not choose the pitch, why did her insist on us going on foot to look at it before opening the barrier? It was raining and inconvenient to do so. I already had told her that for 2 nights, any pitch was good for us...

If we did not understand right her indications, why didn't she tell us while she was standing by our car observing us having a hard time maneuvering the caravan to turn it around? It would have then been very easy for her to make us realize about the misunderstanding, and open the barrier for us without further hassle. Instead, she was frozen there without saying a damn thing.

We got really upset by those bad indications and bad/rude manners so we eventually did not stay in that camping. Of course, I cannot further judge about the camping facilities/services; and the Annecy surroundings are indeed awesome.

But this situation, under the rain and with a 3 y.o. kid in the car that got also really nervous, was outraging for us. Not coming back to that place ever.

Small quiet site perfectly located by lake Annecy with small sandy beach and alongside cycle path. Ideal for us for windsurfing. Friendly staff and excellent sanitaires. Recommended.