How the AutoCamp Weather Guarantee Works

We booked a few nights at AutoCamp Catskills for a few weeks from now. Today, two weeks from our arrival, I received the following email, offering us a “weather guarantee”.

Keep reading to find out why you might want to NOT be in an Airstream during bad weather!

Invitation to Purchase AutoCamp Weather Guarantee

Subject: Guarantee a great experience, no matter the weather

RAINY DAYS ARE FREE WITH A WEATHER GUARANTEE 
Rain or shine, guarantee you have a good time. AutoCamp has partnered with Sensible Weather to allow you to add weather coverage to your trip and get money back if the weather is less than ideal. Sensible will watch the weather for you and automatically notify you for reimbursement if it’s going to rain. 


HOW IT WORKS
1. Click here to see your custom Weather Guarantee for your upcoming trip to Catskills. 
2. Add the Weather Guarantee to your reservation through a secure transaction. 
3. Sit back, relax and Sensible Weather will take care of the rest – we won’t disrupt your trip unless you have money to claim.

After that, there were the details of my reservations: check in date, check out date, number of adults and children, average daily rate, type of room, total cost, and confirmation number.

I clicked the link under the first “How it Works” step and arrived here:

Getting Paid by the AutoCamp Weather Guarantee

Well, it has to rain! So, who says it rains? NOAA.
Note: my average daily rate for my upcoming stay at AutoCamp Catskills is $216.00.

For $10,97 for each of my 3 days (2 nights), I would pay a total of $32.91 to get back a maximum of $144 per day of my $216 per day.

The Details

We reimburse up to your daily rate when the official NOAA day-of forecast says it will rain for 3 or more hours between 8am and 8pm.

Hours of Forecasted Rain	Reimbursement
Between 3 and 6	$72.00
6 or more hours	$144.00

You still get to enjoy the time when it’s not raining, and you receive a notification automatically to receive your reimbursement.

Questions and Observations Regarding the AutoCamp Weather Guarantee

I was taken to a link at where I could see from the full URL that included in the URL was the following (the “referrer”, which I will discuss, below):

• the currency I paid in (US Dollars for me)
• the “partner id” which I assume was either for AutoCamp as a company becuase then next was
• latitude and longitude, which I assume belonged to, specifically, for AutoCamp Catskills
• “exposure total coverage amount” which I can see is my average daily rate x 2 (not including taxes)
• reservation id number

First, the link to take me to the offer goes to a website whose main domain is sensibleweather.io. There is no website there. Second, there is what’s known as a subdomain: addon.sensibleweather.com. That will take you to a blank page. Apparently, this site does not exist except when it contains all the details of the “referrer,” as I outlined, above.

It didn’t take much looking to see AutoCamp has partnered with Sensible Weather. The offer weather coverage for vacations, just like what AutoCamp is offering with their Weather Guarantee. Cool concept! I wasn’t aware of it prior to this.

Next, and super important:

We reimburse up to your daily rate when the official NOAA day-of forecast says it will rain for 3 or more hours between 8am and 8pm.

Awfully interesting, this 8 am – 8 pm “clock”! If you think about it, it’s fair. The reality is, they’re covering the daytime hours …and parto of the evening. Sure, rain at or after 8 pm might cut into your fire pit, but the reality is they’ve just insured you against ALL the daytime hours in the fall/winter. I think this is super fair.

A few points to consider:

• you’re not being reimbursed 100% of the daily fee
• taxes amount to about $50 something for the trip; taxes aren’t covered either
• if you’re bringing a pet, you’re paying $75, so you’re risking that, too

Singly most important point to consider: this focus on the weather reminds me that the Airstreams do not have cook tops! You cannot cook in a pan in the Airstreams! Rainy days take on a whole new dimension when you can’t cook on top of a stove.

For us, we’re going with an X Suite this time, in great part due to it being mid-fall in the Catskills, which means it will be cool if not flat out cold for possibly all meals. We’ll want to be cooking indoors, anyway, but the consideration of cold and rain makes the decision of going with the X Suite seem all the smarter.

Last: AutoCamp is currently allowing cancelations 72 hours prior to arrival. If you cancel, do you get your money back? Not likely. In fact, the closer you book, the higher the rate might be, depending on the forecast! That’s just how insurance works, and we accept that. It’s balance of risk tolerance.

Conclusion

We think the AutoCamp Weather Guarantee is a smart purchase. The generous window of time – especially on days of check-in and check-out – make it a serious contender of an expense.

Couple that with AutoCamp location (for us, the Catskill Mountains of New York State) with month of the year (for us, November!), and you’ve really got to take it.

However, the other variable in all this: the Airstreams do not have cook tops! You might want to seriously reconsider renting a cabin or X Suite instead.