cristiancuevas

Hey Karnage Krew - I think I remember you from Hamilton - lucky for Jim that we went to help him open up Hamilton DZ when he was short of tandem masters hey. Wendy was fantastic and told Jim that yes the ticket was to be honoured - Wendy does a great job as CSO of Mercer and all their staff are great too. I do not see how this forum is going to effect tandems at Mercer as no one has mentioned tandem skydive work except yourself. If any of the guys from down there have any problems with this they can always contact us or talk about it the next time they call in for a beer on our deck. They too could have missed out on the ticket to New Calidonia! I would say it has been a while since you have been jumping in New Zealand. There are loads of DZ's that support sport skydiving in the North Island. Auckland Skydivers, Matamata, Rotorua, Taupo, Nelson, New Plymouth, Cloud9 and Skydive Ballistic Blondes, Also Abel Tasman who organise the fantastic 'Good Vibes' Boogie. I hope I did not miss anyone out. All of the above DZ's also provided tandem masters, cameramen and equipment for the Hercules Jump for Kids with Cancer. It needs to be said that we are not making it an Operators issue. We went to Mercer as fun jumpers as we support all sport skydiving events that we are able to (at the cost of closing our own drop zone for the weekend). If you advertise a prize such as that to encourage skydivers to come to your boogie (which a $45 reg fee was charged) then you must honour it. If not you cannot expect to get away with it unscathed. We would not advertise prizes for our boogies without honouring them, that is not only dishonest but also illegal. Just because I am a DZ operator does that mean I do not get to voice an opinion as I went to this boogie as a sport skydiver - not as a DZ operator? Maybe if you had not undercut the rest of the Sport skydiving DZ's with $13 slots (which does not even cover fuel for the aircraft) then maybe NZ skydive would have been able to honour the ticket. You spoke about other skydiving centres doing exactly the same by undercutting with tandems. This issue had to be made public. There were approximately 100 skydivers who could potentially have won the ticket - Jim only upset one - us. Do you go to a boogie - win a prize and expect not to get it? What happens if the prize was given by another parachute gear company and they did not honour it? Would you not say anything because you own another parachute gear shop? If so, you are doing the wrong thing by other sport skydivers - people deserve to know when this sort of thing happens. Maybe next time they will give away a 747 and attract 1000's of skydivers around the world - it won't matter - you have only upset one skydiver - you don't have to honour it anyway! We told Jim if he made the choice to not honour the ticket that we would be going public with it. He chose not to honour it and did not even attempt to solve the problem other ways. Deepseed honoured their voucher straight away - thanks guys you do a great job. We think it is pretty poor that you would mention staff and visas which obviously has nothing to do with this situation. Without overseas instructors skydiving in New Zealand would be a whole lot harder. And yes, we have a jet ranger and a long ranger on site with drop rated pilots and hope in the near future to have a cessna caravan. Cheers Davy Kelly & Cristian Skydive Ballistic Blondes

We went to Mercer (NZ Skydive dropzone, New Zealand) for the skills camp weekend in May 2007. How cool – Davy won the Deepseed Jumpsuit voucher – thanks guys, we are loving that prize already - and he also won the return ticket to the New Caledonia Boogie which was to be supplied by NZ Skydive. Well, being a busy DZ operator up north at Skydive Ballistic Blondes - Davy did not have time to go to the boogie himself so he decided to give it to Cristian (our camera guy) so he could go. Contact was made with NZ Skydive to claim the ticket. Upon ringing Jim Lyver, he informed us that he knew nothing about it and that we would have to contact his staff which we did. They informed us that indeed we had won the prize and that Jim would have to honour that. I rang Jim back and told him what his staff had told me. He said that he did not want to honour the ticket and that we couldn’t give it to Cristian anyway as he no longer jumped with NZ Skydive. It was never said that we could not transfer the ticket – we won the ticket, surely it is up to us who uses it. Eventually after about 20 phone calls to Jim we told him that we would notify all NZ skydivers that he had chosen not to honour the prize. After this he said his booking agent would call and book the ticket. The booking agent never called and Jim did not answer his phone. By this stage it was Friday and the ticket needed to be booked for the next day – it was just too late. Obviously NZ Skydive do not honour their debts. This was a really disappointing situation for us and Cristian who did not get to go to the New Caledonia Boogie. We wanted to let you all know what has happened so that you will not be disappointed by NZ Skydive when they do it to someone else. Blue skies, From all the team at Skydive Ballistic Blondes.