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ChasingBlueSky

What can we do about Skyride?

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It’s a tough barnacle to scrape off.

The first objective should be to attack them legally for copyright and trademark violations, as well as fraudulent marketing claims. It sounds like we don’t have a critical mass of operators willing or financially capable of doing that. As an alternative, if each person or business that has been harmed documents the harm, and then contacts the Better Business Bureau in your area, as well as your state Attorney General, we may find a point of advocacy. I think the best option is to generate complaints to the Attorney General and define the business as a fraud operating across state lines. That might generate a formal action by the national organization of State Attorneys General. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with this approach, but there might be some opportunity there as a consumer protection, racketeering, or fraud prosecution.

The second option is to target their marketing partners. The web site for the National Skydiving Association, a fictional industry group listed here: http://skydivinginformation.com/ appears to include a list of all the participating drop zones. PilotDave has a post on this thread linking the NSA with 1800SKYRIDE. Check the list for your home DZ, and talk with the DZO about pulling out of the deal.

Unfortunately, students looking for skydiving training tend to select a business based on “the three P’s,” specifically Price Proximity, and Promotion. They generally do not do much research or evaluate claims beyond price. My book JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy was originally designed to provide information so prospective students could make reasoned purchasing decisions, but there seems to be little interest at the consumer level.
Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

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Skyride offers skydiving in the following location in Arizona, and has facticious websites for each.
In Arizona there are 5 legitimate skydiving operations:
Skydive Arizona, Desert Skydiving Buckeye, Skydive Coolidge, Skydive Cottonwood and Marana

Arizona
· Phoenix
· Tucson
· Mesa
· Glendale
· Scottsdale
· Chandler
· Tempe
· Gilbert
· Peoria
· Yuma
· Flagstaff

In Arizona there are 4 legitimate skydiving operations:
Skydive Arizona, Buckye, Skydive Coolidge, Skydive Cottonwood

So as you can see Skyride is growing arms and legs.

Tom points out some valid options.
As to the "deal" that Tom mentioned..there isnt one. Skydive Arizona has contacted skyride several times and has asked to be removed from all thier lists to no avail.








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There have ben a lot of good ideas to make this "thing" go away; however , you need something with some impact.

Three words, USPA Group Membership CODE OF ETHICS.

The guys that own Skyride also own Group Member DZ's in Georgia, Alabama and Penn.

Enact some type of policy and I would bet money these guys would be breaking it before the ink dries.

FYI Mike Mullins tried to pass a code of ethics motion for the Group Membership program, but it was not passed.

Chris Welker

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go ahead and criticize this post as you please.

im not 100% aware of how skyride operates, but from my understanding they sell tandem jumps to consumers as a third party. in doing this they tack on a fee to the tandem price and that money goes right to them. their sole incentive is that tacked on cost.

so if thats right, they are going to do everything they can to advertise their service to the public and sell as many jumps as possible to turn a profit.

so the criticisms ive heard are that its not fair for them to tack on this price. but how about looking at the positive side of this. they are bringing people to the sport that maybe would have never thought about jumping. they field questions from potential jumpers without bothering the dz.

in my eyes, they are opening this sport up to more and more people that arent familiar with skydiving.

lastly, if dropzones are dealing with skyride then they are obviously doing something right. comments?

.-.

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so if thats right, they are going to do everything they can to advertise their service to the public and sell as many jumps as possible to turn a profit


I think you missed the point...they are doing so by false advertising and copywrite infringement.

It wouldnt be a problem if they were doing this legitament, but they are not. They put info on DZ's saying they are apart of it when they are not, the pictures on the website are stolen, they list DZ's that dont even exist. That is the problem....
She is not a "Dumb Blonde" - She is a "Light-Haired Detour Off The Information Superhighway."
eeneR
TF#72, FB#4130, Incauto

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im not 100% aware of how skyride operates,



There's enough information in these forums to find out exactly how it operates. Go ahead and read the threads and you'll see everything from blatent lying, to copyright infringment to lying to customers about pricing, location, etc.

From your "understanding" of skyride I can see how you'd think it isn't a big deal, and the concept I believe is a good one (profit wise). Their implementation is where the issues arise legally and ethically. Research it and you'll see what we're talking about.

Blues,
Ian
Performance Designs Factory Team

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as I understand it skyride isnt in the instruction biz .. yet).




They seem to think they are... they offer an AFF program on their website as well.

--------------------------------------------------
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson

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If we flood them with complaints, they will have to put it on the Agenda - but knowing how that works, that will take time and would have to wait until after the next election and we would have to write to the new members of the USPA as well.



They will simply do nothing.

That company is bringing people into the sport. Those people might join the USPA.

The USPA is not about to get involved with legal issues such as these.

Plus the USPA has no real power over anything. The only thing they could do is ASK group member DZ's not to honor them.

But then that would push Tandems to non-USPA centers and you would find some centers getting upset about the USPA telling them not to take business.

The USPA will do nothing.

If they use your copyrighted material....Sue them.

If they have your DZ listed and you don't want to be...Sue them.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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The USPA will do nothing.



Chris Needels seems to say other wise this month:
http://www.uspa.org/publications/parachutist/capcom1004.htm

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USPA has been following such practices and is working with its legal counsel to find ways to curtail such scams, but it will take more than a summons or threat of a suit to keep up with creative con artists. Members need to get involved. Information is power. The more the word spreads about bait-and-switch and other deceptive business practices by a few bad apples, the fewer potential skydivers will be turned away from our sport. And if we become victims ourselves, we need to let law-enforcement agencies and the local Better Business Bureau know.

Legitimate drop zones need to get involved, too. If a DZO gets a marketing offer that's just too good to be true, it probably isn't true. We all recognize that there is drop zone competition, particularly around many of our major metropolitan areas, but deceiving customers is not the way to prevail. A solid, properly executed business plan is. USPA drop zones will do the right thing.


_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

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In Reply To
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The USPA will do nothing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chris Needels seems to say other wise this month:
http://www.uspa.org/...utist/capcom1004.htm


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


USPA has been following such practices and is working with its legal counsel to find ways to curtail such scams, but it will take more than a summons or threat of a suit to keep up with creative con artists. Members need to get involved. Information is power. The more the word spreads about bait-and-switch and other deceptive business practices by a few bad apples, the fewer potential skydivers will be turned away from our sport. And if we become victims ourselves, we need to let law-enforcement agencies and the local Better Business Bureau know.

Legitimate drop zones need to get involved, too. If a DZO gets a marketing offer that's just too good to be true, it probably isn't true. We all recognize that there is drop zone competition, particularly around many of our major metropolitan areas, but deceiving customers is not the way to prevail. A solid, properly executed business plan is. USPA drop zones will do the right thing.



Sounds like he is saying that they are looking into it...And having had issues "looked into " before...They do nothing.

He is saying what I said...Sue them. Call the BBB.

The USPA will do nothing.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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i am not from america so do not know of skyride.
Where is their marleting done? how do people hear about them?
Maybe all of us as a community could fund a massive advert campain next to their advertisments(yellow pages and such)
Not selling skydiving but just informing them what skydiving costs if they just turn up to a dz.
I do some marketing in new zealand and for all the places that bring or send us tandem customers we give 15% to the company. Now if a community formed from dropzone.com and took out advertisments next to this company we could work on a commision basis where instead of us taking a booking fee of 15% we would be advertising through next to skyride saying that if they book through us we will give it to them for 10% cheaper than if you turned up at a dropzone. For every customer we send we get a 15% commission, instead of 10% of that we give the customer a 10% dicount and with the 5% we put that into the fund to pay for our advertising. This would be a voluntary service we provide but it will make it cheaper for the customer that any other way and we also take all their bussiness from them so they will not be opening up dropzones.
We would be doing this for the good of commercial skydiving and giving the customers a fair way to enjoy what we all love.
I am sure any company that sends tandems will be working on a commission fee/booking fee.
What do you all think?


.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

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Google Ad Words and Yahoo ads are two of the biggest ways. Type in a big American city and then Skydive in google and you will get a few DZs, and on the side and top you will see the Google Skyride ads.
_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

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well lets all play them at their own game, get one of the moderators in on it, do a rally for for 100$ each and this will be start up costs. then the 5% commission from every customer will pay us all back and future advertising. Reackon their will be about 100 of us that would trust a modrator and a computer geek or maybe sangrio to start something up, we would all get our cash back in the returns and then their is interst in a bank account and we could be a company that works on a voluntary basis and we can fundraise at skydive meets and celebrate...the whoie skydive community would get behind this sort of thing."wipe out skyride'" get the pink mafia behind it and instead of advertising with planes get the girls advertising to come and jump with them. Far out there is so much we could do and beat their asses, we would just need someone that knows how to get listed on the web and another to manage the money another to run advertising, a call center to some of our mobiles while we are at office jobs and our dedication and knowledge of the sport we all love.
I am in. I just have ideas though and no knowledge of the above, but i do know how to get people to come skydiving.


.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

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i just noticed skyride offer a tandem to experience freefall for up to 75 seconds and a paracute ride for uo 9 minutes.
i gather you have to deploy main at 5000ft, this is 5 minutes parachute decent, and 75 second freefall would be from 17000ft. I never knew tandems went that high in the states. We take em to 16000ft on occassion in new zealand.


.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

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Thanks for speaking for the "community".



Hey JP ----
Can you tell us how many of your tandem passengers, er-- I mean students, and how many of the tandems you may photograph come to Perris via a SkyRide certificate per month??? - on average or peak and valley will suffice.

If you also state how much you get paid per student and as a photographer, then the rest of us can do the arithmetic to figure the vested interest.

.
.
Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

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I don't know. I'm not in the *know*.



Well then - why did you say Thanks for speaking for the "community".???

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Asking the school might help, I'm just a contractor who gets assigned students.



Last summer Perris staff told me they got 30-40 tandems per month via SkyRide in the peak (summer) season. About how many of those would you have done as a TM or photographer?

Do you think claiming ignorance in this situation is a prudent response??

.
.
Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

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