Problem with dropzone / operator

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

The sceptic in me also wonders about the sudden rash of north americans apparently looking to do training in Thailand, given about a gazillion DZs on their doorstep?

well, for those in the winter states, the cost of airfare + vacation time isn't that different going to Florida, or to Thailand. Hell of a long flight though - I did it SF-LA-Seoul-Bangkok and boy does that take a lot out of you.

[Genn 0]

Andreas,

I hope this doesn't deter you from continuing with the sport. I can understand your frustration. I believe you are rightfully upset. If you were given the opportunity to do the jumps you paid for, this thread would probably be a positive review instead of a negative one.

I looked at Extreme Sports Cafe's website and didn't see anything that clearly stated a no refund policy, given your circumstances. Also, I did see them claim to have students graduate from the course in 3-10 days. The 3 months you gave them seems more than adequate.

It is clear to me this person is looking for any/all reasons not to accommodate you.

It's no wonder new membership is down.

[flyingdodo 0]

Quote

I looked at Extreme Sports Cafe's website and didn't see anything that clearly stated a no refund policy, given your circumstances.

http://www.extremesportscafe.com/termsconditions.html

Quote

Where a course has been started and a student elects to leave that course part way through (for any reason) then the course fees will be deemed to have been used in full. The only exception to this is certain career packages, and other packages where a partial refund policy has been agreed before hand.

We do not enforce this at all, but have it there simply to avoid people dipping in and out of a course such as our AFF course in Thailand, where (as I have explained above) it is not cost effective for us to offer an 'open-door' policy (which we do offer on 99% of our courses).

The above page is linked to from every page of the web site.

Also in our online store.... (Linked to from every page)
http://www.extremesportscafe.com/catalog

Nonetheless, we offered Andreas the possibility of transferring his course to any of our other partner centers, anywhere in the world. We also provided several dates (including tomorrow, and the following few days) to complete his course. He declined all those options.

Flying Dodo
'Always on the edge of extinction!'

[spicypete 0]

Quote

Quote

For a couple of newcomers who only signed on to DZ.com for the first time today, neither of you are behaving very well. .

The sceptic in me also wonders about the sudden rash of north americans apparently looking to do training in Thailand, given about a gazillion DZs on their doorstep?

well, for the first thing, we go on vacation there and it is quite convienient to take a course where you have lots of free time... such as when we are on vacation. is that too far fetched for you to fathom?
my goodness, i said who i was, gave my website, and said nothing but an honest opinion... and all i seem to get back from the other side is inuendos that we may be trying to mislead readers. it is rather sad to think this is your defence... but to those that speak honestly and with some sence of logic and open mindedness... i thank you for your opinions, even if they differ from mine slightly.

i still feel that since you had no plane for an extended period, and you were partly to blame by not having the service available for a good portion of the time when this fellow was wanting to finish his course... you should have made some exception to the rule as it would have been the right thing to do, if only in this case. in this world, exceptions are made every day, but then again, to make an exception would have meant a slight loss of money to you, so it seems even though you were partly to blame, you decided not to make an exception and decided to keep his money.... do i have the jist of this down correctly?
i am sure both sides have their own spin to the truth... and the reality is somewhere in the middle.
so again... you decided not to make any compromise, and you stuck to the rule even though you did not have a plane available for an extended period of time. i guess that is not in your contract... it probably just states there is no refund... it likely has not clause to favour the customer if you do not have the services available. am i right or wrong?
sincerely peter norman.

ps, i know my spelling is poor and i did not use a spell check, i did not get a degree in spelling or typing... lol.

[Genn 0]

Edit: Taken to PM

[dump_master 0]

FlyingDodo, responding to accusations of divulging customers personal information.

Quote

For the record..

That was not deliberate. I really did not do that deliberately.
My apologies to Andreas for that.

I have since tried to edit the post to cover his up also, but cannot edit the post any more.. If an admin would be so kind I would appreciate it if they would mask Andreas' email address too..
Flying Dodo
'Always on the edge of extinction!'

Kindly note, dear forum readers, that after I pummeled FlyingDodo on his misspelled signature file, he somehow found the ability to go back and edit every post in this thread and correct the spelling!

A shame he could not muster that same ability to mask or remove Voltage's email address from the very same posts!

Ethical? That word apparently isn't in FlyingDodo's vocabulary.
BUYER BEWARE!

Dump Master
"If you're gonna play hard ball with me, you had better wear a cup!"

[NWFlyer 2]

Quote

Kindly note, dear forum readers, that after I pummeled FlyingDodo on his misspelled signature file, he somehow found the ability to go back and edit every post in this thread and correct the spelling!

A shame he could not muster that same ability to mask or remove Voltage's email address from the very same posts!

Ethical? That word apparently isn't in FlyingDodo's vocabulary.
BUYER BEWARE!

Dump Master
"If you're gonna play hard ball with me, you had better wear a cup!"

You might notice that if you change your sig file (assuming said sig file is contained in your user profile, as many are), it will change in all posts (past, present, and future) to which it is attached. However, the posts themselves can only be edited for up to 6 hours after they were posted. After that point, only a moderator can make edits to the content of the post itself.

Edited to add: if the post itself has been edited, there will be a note on the bottom of the post that looks something like this:

(This post was edited by NWFlyer on Feb 27, 2006, 11:59 PM).

[dump_master 0]

Kindly noted NW Flyer. I had NO idea! The post has been deleted by me.

Time for me to eat humble pie here and I do apologize to FlyingDodo for that post.

Dump Master
"If you're gonna play hard ball with me, you had better wear a cup!"

[Orange1 0]

spicypete... you seem to be confusing me with the DZO. as someone else said it's hard to jump in winter in northern areas... & if you're going there on holiday it's cool... i just asked a question. maybe you should look at who actually posts what you are answering to before ranting off...

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[flyingdodo 0]

Quote

Time for me to eat humble pie here and I do apologize to FlyingDodo for that post.

No problem at all.. I editted my sig as you kindly pointed out my spelling error! So thanks for pointing it out.. As you can see I registered on Drop Zone dot com quite a long time ago, and that error has been there since day one! How embarrassing!!

Flying Dodo
'Always on the edge of extinction!'

[flyingdodo 0]

Hi Genn,

EDIT - Thanks for your PM. Much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Stephen.

Flying Dodo
'Always on the edge of extinction!'

[voltage 0]

Hello tustinr, Stephen, readers,

I am not a "sour" costumer. Please don't judge me to fast, because after Stephen's post I was very emotional and that is what shows in my posts afterwards. Now with some distance I see it was not a wise way to react, but I pledge for understanding. It came as a hard punch to me after a beautiful time in Thailand.

I just came back from a 10-day stay in a buddhist monastery, and want to take another try to sort it out now with hopefully more calm.

It seems that there is no way to resolve the forged e-mail until Stephen gets it out of here or some sort of clears it up.

That leaves the issue that started the thread. I see his no refund policy as well as his effort to build up the dropzone and do not question both.

My main points are:

That I was not properly informed beforehand. What he wrote about this sounds very properly, to get it to the reality as it happend two points have to be added. In all documents I received (all by e-mail) there was NO mentioning about the no-refunds policy or what it means (it was on the website under terms&conditions, but I overlooked it there sadly), and there was a conversation where I clearly put the question if I will be able to finish in my timeframe (3,5 month) and he confirmed without a word about no-refund etc. If I had known the implications, I would not have booked. All the risk of airplane problem etc. was on my side without me having the slightest idea of this.

And that the plane in Pattaya was down from 28th of November until about beginning of second week of February (and the first possibility in Pattaya to actually jump would have been 1st of March). Not a short time.

The offer from Danniel to jump on 1st March to 3rd March was not possible because of Stephen (I was ready to go, he was not ready to organise it).

I am also not very fond of jumping together with him, because I am new to skydiving and have some fear of my own to cope with. No need to have to worry about such things, that is why I intially stated I don't want to jump with ESC again. After Danniel assured me that Stephen will not be involved in any teaching or whatsoever I was ready to go.

What I did ask from the beginning was a fair approach. Sadly, the possibility to jump somewhere in Spain or wherever does not help me very much because I am a beginner and first need to get my license (I live in Germany). I invested over 2000 Euros for the course fees and now have somewhat a harder time to finance a major part of that again in Germany to complete. That is why I asked for money back. My goal is simple to be able to finish the course, not to earn money out of Stephen.

I will write a PM to Stephen again to ask if he sees any possibility to resolve the course issue.

Thanks for all the people contributing,

Andreas

[akahntengri 0]

Unfortunately I have also recently had a very bad experience from skydive Thailand: On calling to book my brothers tandem I was told that they we're nearly fully booked for the Saturday (so I quickly booked online)-but we were the only ones there, I was told explicitly that there would be kit for hire but there was none (apparently there was an attempt made to borrow kit from local jumpers), and the owner was not present (was in bankbook) and had left the tandem to another company-‘skydive Pattaya’.
This was obviously very disappointing, as my brother had got his hopes up for jumping with me, so we left without my brother jumping.
From this impression skydive Thailand appears unprofessional at best, but I fear likely much worse.
Just so everyone knows much of what the infrequently updated website promises isn’t there-notably the 'late 2005 porter'.
Staff themselves and the operator of 'skydive Pattaya' were friendly and it would be a wonderful place for DZ, but ruined by behaviour of owner.

[bigway 4]

I can smell that from the UK.

Fill in your profile please. I am looking at going to Thailand on my way back home with a few mates. Have been there 7 times already never jumped though in thailand. This time was going to be a full on jump fest for our group. The only concern is taking our rigs to thailand and carrying them around everywhere.

Please fill in your profile so your statement can be taken serious as at the moment it really smells like you are trying to bring up an old thread to stir that bullshit i can smell all the way over here in the UK.

I really hope this dropzone is not as bad as i have read, but then again it is only one person who sounds like a real problem customer and now some random mate of his trying to save his face. I am really looking forward to thailand jumping so please do not make me worry about this crap if you are full of shit.

.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

[akahntengri 0]

I can understand that you might not take me seriously as I haven’t filled in my profile, I chose not to because I would prefer to remain anonymous even at the expense of this message having less weight. As a fairly new skydiver I don’t really know how far I can comment without recriminations.
If you don’t trust me that’s entirely your choice, however I am also a jumper from the UK and there is no bullshit-I do not know Andreas. Anyway like I said it’s your choice, hopefully you will have a better experience out there than we did.