davelepka

The band is just a rubber band around the inboard C or D line attachment point. Right before you wrap the tail, you take a bight of the steering lines and wrap it with the rubber band. The purpose is to control the tail and steering lines during packing, not to effect the opening. The lines pop out of the band right after the canopy comes out of the bag, and the brakes are fully 'unstowed' during the actual opening. Those canopies open great without a brake setting, and after that they fly like a big Stiletto. Very nice turns, and a great flare.

I understand that, and I addressed that in the next paragraph of my post, which you may or may not have read, as it did not show up in your quote from me. It reads - Maybe I should have worded it differently. A website is marketing, but in this case, it is not new, original or useful marketing to DZOs, as they are alreayd involved in such marketing by means of their own websties. As such, PROskydiving is not producing any new customers, they are just grabbing the existing customers from the web before the DZ website can. Seeing as the point of marketing is to increase sales, if all you do transact with a customer already looking to make a jump, you have not produced any new sales, simply administered an existing sale. You, of course, were nice enough to prove this by saying the following - Of course. Who would they be competing with to get preferential search resutls for, say, Skydive Tulsa? My guess is that the only other people interested in optimising those search results would be Skydive East Tulsa, and Skydive West Tulsa. So PROskydiving is competing with the very DZs they claim to 'serve'. They are looking to over power them in the search results, and have all Tulsa area skydivers book through them, where they will collect their fee, and then pass them on to the DZs. If PROskydiving was not in existance, Tulsa area consumers would find the actual DZ websites for their local DZs, and simply book the jumps directly. I'm not sure where your math skills are at, but there are no new customers being created with this type of 'marketing', so either it's not really marketing, or it is and PROskydiving is failing horribly, but in either case they certainly should not be collecting a cut of the profits. It seems for your sake, yes. If you want to post something that makes sense, then you wouldn't mind me being around, as I would just agree with you.

The website I was rtefering to was PROskydiving. If you read the post, I was speaking toward to pressure a DZO feels to join PROskydiving in an attmept to keep another local DZO from doing the same, and recieving the lions share of the local, web-based customers. My response to that problem was that if there was no PROskydiving, there was no problem. I am well aware that a website is a valuauble tool for a business, and have stated many times in this thread that PROskydiving is only coming in between local DZ websites, and local people looking for those sites. This both implies that I am aware DZ have websites, and that there are customers looking for them.

This is a perfect example, thank you for posting it. Your business is local, and I assume the booking service you use is also local. As such, they are marketing in your area, with a marketing plan designed for your area. That's how the garner more business from the area than you would on your own. For starters, PROskydiving does not market anything as of yet. I don't consider running a website to be marketing, and even if you want to call it marketing, it's not providing a service to DZOs because they are already invovled in web marketing with their own websites. Does your business have a phone number? How would you feel if the booking service attempted to intercept every phone call you got, and then tried to charge you a commission on any bookings that resulted?

That's exactly what I was going to say. Well, not exactly, you were much nicer than I was going to be, but you hit the nail on the head with that one.

I think I'm finished with this thread, or the thread is finished with me. In either case, I'll summarize what I beleive to be the tipping point of this whole situation, where it tips from good to very, very bad. If you want to sell DZOs on your website based on a non-existant, but potential national marketing campaign (despite its pitfalls), and you can get them on board with that concept, more power to you. If you think that your e-commerce enabling is better than any other solution, and you can get DZOs to pay you a premium percentage rate over the other solutions, more power to you. The sticking point is when you market online for customers outside of the Chicagoland area, and then charge the highest percent commission on passing those customers along to the DZs in their area. What you're doing is fishing in another man's pond, and then selling him his own fish. He can't stop you, and he can't fish better than you with your $75,000 fishing pole, so he has no choice but to pony up and pay you for the fish that are rightfully his. The guy has to feed his family, and if he doesn't pay you for the fish, you'll just sell them all to the DZO next door. Plain and simple.

According to your website, it's 20%, unless that DZ maintains a link to PROskydiving, then it's 15%. Reservations that come from the DZ in the first place may be at the lower rate of 5% to 6%, however, what happens when the customer on a DZs website clicks through the 'required' link to PROskydiving? Bam! Right back up to 15%. In the end, it still comes down to your $75,000 website against the local DZ website. With your volume and cash flow, it should be no surprise to anyone which site is going to appear on top of every search, and garner the most customers. Of course, this results in the majority of the customers being through PROskydiving at the premium rate. Do you think we're stupid? You point out this non-sense like it's going to justify your position, but any businessman with half a brain can see the forest from the trees. Nobody is doing business with you because they want to, they're in it because, by your own addmittance, they have to be, or risk losing everything.

Maybe you should stop posting here, as you continue to incriminate yourself. What you're asying with the above is that you use your $75,000 website to attract customers already looking to make a jump. Out there in internet-land, it's your $75,000 website against the local DZ website, which 9 times out of 10 was put together gratis by a web-designer fun jumper. Once you have them, you'll hand them over to any local DZO willing to split the profits with you. How is that a service to DZOs? How is that a benefit to the sport?

There's nothing good about what you're doing for anyone except yourself. I challenge you to find me one DZO who wouldn't prefer for you to not be in their market, and not be taking close to half of their profits. Yes I said half. For anyone not follwing this, a DZO stands to make about 40% to 45% profit on an average tandem. PROskydiving takes a 20% cut of 100% of the price of every tandem they sell. Do the math - 40% profit on a $200 tandem is $80. 20% cut on a $200 tandem is $40, and a $40 cut on an $80 profit is half. That's right everyone, Doug here thinks that letting a DZO have access to his own local customers is worth 50% of the profits. Local customers who already made the decision to skydive, and went as far as searching online for a local DZ. Without PROskydiving, these customers would have found a local DZ, and worked with them directly. With PROskydiving, they book through the website, and the DZO gets half of their money absorbed in the process. Does anyone out there think there is any way to justify this? In person, over the phone, or via e-mail? Lets' face it, if there was, he would have done it right here, 40 posts ago. Instead, he repeates the same boilerplate, corporate speak bullshit, and doesn't directly address any of these issues. I don't have a dog in this fight aside from my love of the sport. In fact, I recently discovered that my own home DZ is in fact, a PROskydiving DZ. So when a local DZ goes out of business because PROskydiving has cornered the market and funneled all the business (minus half of the profits) to one local DZ, my DZ will be one left standing. Never the less, I have taken considerable time and effort to illustrate how PROskydiving is terrible for the industry, and a danger to the future of the sport. In contrast to that, Doug here, who stands to profit immensly from this, has taken very little time or effort to defend his actions, and the reason for that is because he cannot. Everything I have said is correct, and this is why he refuses to address it in public. He has no defense to the points I have made, and his inaction is what really validates my postion. I know if someone took the time to accuse me of running a business that was borderline criminal and a blight to the industry, and they were wrong, I would defend my good name, and that of my business. I see no such defense as so such defense exists. As an aside, I really wish I had a dog in this fight so I could persue it further than some online scuttlebut. If this was effecting my livelyhood, I would direct a HUGE amount of effort into derailing this situation post haste.

Buying beer is largely cermonial for a non-drinker. Your fisrt jump is a good one, maybe your graduation jump, and beyond that any significant 'firsts'. The on going joke about buying beer everytime you say the word 'first' is mostly a joke, but if you are a drinker then it's just good practice to buy beer for the DZ. I'm sure you've caught on that there is a lot of 'community' beer at the DZ, so those that partake need to kick in a case or two every now and again. Hanging out at the DZ is optional. Nobody will give you a hard time for having a long drive and needing to hit the road. You'll be welcome to hang anytime you have the time. Tipping is another story. As a full on 'student' who intends to complete the program and get a license, you probably don't need to worry about tipping for every jump. You can keep track of the instructors who work with you, and maybe when you complete the program, tip or gift each of them accordingly. There's a long standing debate about how much or what to tip, but my vote has always been cash, and how much depends on what you can afford. If a college kid tips me $10, I appriciate that as much as a doctor who tips me $50. Some people say just buy the guy a beer, or dinner, but in the end cash can be spent for either of those, or whatever the instructor may need (or want). In terms of pay, every professional skydiver knows what they're getting into. None of them are there because it's the only job they could find, they chose that line of work. The vast majority are not full time jumpers, and have a 'day job' of some sort to pay the bills.

If you consider that many DZs will do 100 tandems in a month, those numbers ratchet up fairly quickly. Figure on a six month season, at 100 tandems a month, you're looking at $5700 a year for GoDaddy compared to $28,000 for PROsydiving. While I realize that not all of that is profit, as Visa fees apply, they apply euqally to both figures, so if you peg that at 15% of the total, the yearly revenue for Godaddy is $4850, and PROskydiving will pocket $23,800. You show me the DZO who doesn't want to save $19,000 a year. Even of Godaddy doesn't provide all the services of PROskydiving, I'm sure there are ways to close the gap in services for far less than $19,000. I challenge you to show me the DZ who wouldn't jump at the chance to save $1900 a year on DZ operational costs. If a solar powered water heater for the shower house would result in a savings of $1900 per year, I'd be willing to bet that the Z-hills shower house would become the new standard. For everyone out there, condier if you will the number of DZs doing 600 or more tandems per year. Keeping in mind that Doug from PROskydiving states that at his DZ, 56% of the business is had through the website, and that number is growing. Even if you assume that PROskydiving will book 400 tandems per year for these busy DZs, that will put $16,000 dollars (after subtracting 15% for Visa costs) in PROskydivings pocket. Now ask youreslf how many DZs are in the program, and how many will book 400 tandems. Is it 10? So PROskydiving will make $160,000 for running a website? $160,000 that should have gone to DZOs actually providing the service? Maybe it's 20, and they'll score $320,000. If you factor in every DZ in the 'program' not just the ones topping 400 tandems, it's easy to see how PROskydiving intends to extract a HUGE sum of money out of the industry. Will it top $1M? I'm not sure, but if you consider the above math, it wouldn't be too far fetched. Deos anyone remember when Cary from Skyride said, "Go ahead and sue me, I have more money than god"? The money in these scams is astronomical, which is why I continue to say that these people are greedy, parasitic, and a danger to the industry.

Timmyfitz shoots! He scores! That actually is news to me. I'm both surprised and not surprised. Aerohio was one of the first anti-Skyride DZs, and had a page in their website dedicated to debinking that 'scam' in order to help consumers make the right choice. That said, Aerohio recently underwent a change in ownership, so that historical prespective is just that, history. If you read my posts, I take no umbridge with the employees or fun jumpers at DZ who do business with Skyride or PROskydiving. In fact Doug from PROskydiving has said this in reference to his acceptance of Skyride GCs - -and he goes to say this about PROskydiving- I myself have described the position of DZOs in this as 'bent over a barrel'. As such, it becomes difficult (not impossible) to blame the DZOs in either one of those two 'networks', but when you trickle it down one more step removed to the employees or fun jumpers at those DZs, you cannot hold it against them. As for CSC, ASC and any other DZs owned directly by the operators of these sites, those employees are fair game, as they are directly doing business with the actual offenders. I'm on the fence toward fun jumpers at these DZs, but mostly do not hold it against them. As far as jumping somewhere else, I would not consider it. Aero is the best choice anywhere near here, this PROskydiving business notwithstanding.

And some people like to hurl thinly veiled insults for the same reason. Nice work pot. Your pal, Kettle

'Pircay' in this day and age, aside from the high seas, generally refferes to the reproducing of copyrighted materials, movies, musis, etc. I used that term because in a sense, PROskydiving and Skyride essentially 'raid and plunder' the internet for other DZs customers. There are no laws that I know of that govern this sort of thing. The problem is the rapid growth and development of the internet is ten times faster then the law makers can keep up. This is why Skyride was able to operate so long unchecked, being able to pin exactly what they did to a specific law (that would hold up in court, where you have to be VERY specific) was so difficult. This is also why it took such a monumental effort from SDA to bring their suit to court and see it through to fruition. This is also why I'm so hell bent against any of these 'business models'. Just because today you can operate this way without legal repercussions doesn't mean that it's right, or that it will remain 'legal' for very long. Eventually the laws will catch up with the internet, and there will be some sort of regualtion regarding this type of bahavior. In the meantime, I'll stand firmly behind the conpect that in this little industry, we can cut these people off at the knees by simply not doing business with any of them. This is where competitors need to come together and simply agree that they would both be better off, and on even ground with each other, without any of these 'servive' providers anywhere near their geographic market.

In that scenario, my thought was that the $45 goes to PROskydiving, and the Visa % is on top of that. A DZO will have to pay Visa with or without PROskydiving, so you might as well just keep that seperate from a website user fee. Do you really think they're doing it for $1 to $2? I know this isn't Skyride, but I've heard numbers around 20% for the Skyride cut. I can't imagine that PROskydiving (who apparently is familiar with Skyride) would drop from 20% to .5 or 1%. My guess is that it's closer to 20% than to 1%. But all of this is just 'pie in the sky' talk, because they're not just an e-commerce service provider. If they were, they would never come into contact with your customers until AFTER they were your customers and ready to make a purchase. A customer would go to YOUR website, choose a product, and would only see PROskydiving after they hit the 'checkout' button. That is not the case, as they are actively 'selling' in your market, and making the customers their own, extracting their cut, and then passing them on to you. That's the key difference here, no matter how try to slice it, they are getting in between local DZOs and their customers. They are either cut in on the deal, or they will forward the customers to a competing local DZ. It's borderline extortion. For all the 'services' you gain, you lose the ability to directly connect with your customers, unimpeded by an outside organization. A Chicago DZO has no business shopping for customers in any other market then Chicago, or the Chicagoland area. No good can come from a Chicago DZO retaining control over the customers of a DZO in another state. In refernce to Paypal, you are in direct connection with your customers, and you can deal with them as you like. If you want to use their service, you pay a fee. If not, you process the payment otherwise. If after a sale Paypal became your only way to communicate with your customer, and any attempt to collect payment outside of Paypal resulted in Paypal cutting off your communication with that customer, and locating that customer another seller with the same item who was willing to be paid via Paypal, then yeah, that sounds just like the PROskydiving deal. It really is that messed up.

Relax man, I was comparing you to the OP. My presumption is that you will pull lower and fly a faster than canopy then him, putting you on the ground sooner with a larger portion of the load landing after you. It was actually a nod to your expereince, not against it. Of course, sometimes I type too fast and glaze over certain details. In general, your average jumper will be landing a condsiderable distance from the packing area, sometimes across an active runway. As such, vacating the LZ before the other canopies are down is not an option. The best you could do is maybe clear out before the tandems or students land. Tandems are being piloted by professionals, and are slow. Student rigs are piloted by students, and are also slow. Both easy to keep track of. You seem to feel that setting the brakes is somwhow different than the other steps in your multi step routine, but it's not. I don't jump booties - score some free time for me. I don't jump with ear plugs - score some free time for me. I wear my helmet in to the packing area - score some free time for me. In comparison to me, your routine, which you seem to think is Ok, requires for more time and steps to begin clearing the LZ, but you have no problem with that. Do you see the point? It's just another step, and like I said (and you said) you take a look, and do something. Take another look, do something else, and so on. Here's the kicker, out of all my jumps 75% have been videos, where I land in the middle of the LZ, and stand there waiting to film my landing and interview. In addition to setting my brakes, I unstow my slider, take my rig off, remove half of my jumpsuit if it's warm, re-set both of my cameras from freefall mode to gournd mode, retirieve my sungalsses from my jumpsuit pocket, sometimes fish out a fresh stick of gum, and on, and on. After doing that 4000+ times, I've never been hit or had a close call of any kind. It's good to respect the LZ. It's not a walk down a secluded beach, but it's also not a minefield. Anyone capable of making a safe skydive is capable of minding their surroundings in the LZ. Landing with the attitude that you must clear out is what will cause people to rush and make mistakes. Landing with the understanding of the environment of a live LZ, and acting accordingly is what will keep everyone safe. In the end, you might as well look at the canopies anyway. It's clearly the most interesting thing happening anywhere near you, so have a look and watch other people land. Study the canopies, and watch how they react to the winds and jumper input. You can learn a lot by watching others land, and maybe even be able to offer them some advice based on your observations.

You realize that you have 300 jumps, and are jumping from the largest plane in common use in to one the smallest landing areas in skydiving, right? OK, Elsinore's LZ is not tiny, they have the entire desert, but the grass area isn't all that big as far as LZs go. Either way, the OP is a new jumper, presumably landing somewhere mid-pack, and anything short of an Otter puts maybe four or five jumpers before, and four or five after. Like I said, you have to be somewhere, and where that is matters little, short of standing the middle of the peas during an accuracy contest. Pay attention to your surroundings. If there are no canopied on final heading in your direction, you can look away for a moment and stow a toggle. Check again and stow another. Do you mean to tell me that you hit the ground, gather your canopy, and scurry out of the LZ with your eyes truned skyward at all times? Anything short of that, you might as well be standing still. You keep your eyes open, and clear your ears so you can hear a canopy getting close, or the out of control jumper under it yelling at you to move.

It's not a bad idea to stow them right after you land. You're standing there with the toggles in your hands, and the risers hanging off your shoulders. It helps to prevent tangles, and maybe twists depending on which way you put them on. Getting out of the way of what? Unless you can gather your gear and completely remove yourself from the landing area before all the canopies have landed, you'll always be blocking some part of the LZ. Sometimes standing still is the better option, as you're an easier target to avoid when you're not moving. You might as well stow your stuff. Of course, you should keep your head up, and pay attention while you're out there, but in the end you're always going to be somewhere, so it might as well be where you landed.

Pardon my french, but that fucking retard tracked straight at that paraglider. On a lighter note, I like the single riser set-up on the paraglider round reserve. Very cargo-like, but also a good way to keep things simple down toward the jumper where there might be canopy/lines/harness parts, etc. Seems like a smart way to keep the reserve and lines clear of any mess.

Not really. The execution may be a little different, and the one may provide some additional services to the DZ, but in the end (as of this point) they are both in the business of online 'advertising' for tandems across the country, and then 'selling' those tandems to a DZ in the area the tandems actually live for less then the DZ would charge a customer off the street. I use the word 'advertising' sparingly, because all they're really doing is optimising their search results for every lcoation in the country, and hijacking customers already looking to make a jump. Let's rewind 20 years, and imagine that I placed an ad in the Chicago area phone book for tandem skydives. I took calls, booked tandems, and then called Doug over at CSC and said, "Hey Doug, I got these tandems ready to jump, if you want them I'll send them your way for 15% less than you charge everyone esle. If you don't want them, I'm going to send them over to Roger at SDC. One more thing, this yellowpages ad has worked out so well, I'm actually going to take out ten ads for 'DZs', just to make sure I get the majority of Chicago area skydivers calling me first". How well would that be recieved? How much different is that than optimising search results for skydiving in geographic areas other then your own, only to 'sell' the business to the operators actually in that area? Not much different if you ask me. OK, but your post is about the nuts and bolts of the website. Online order processing and shopping carts is a business to itself. If that's really the idea, and this website is customized for the skydiving market, that would be another story. DZ.com lists 281 DZs in the US. If PROskydiving is really such a great onine tool for DZOs, they should have no problem becoming a service provider to at least half of the DZ in the US. So lets say they get 140 DZs on board. They charge them a flat rate of $45 per month, which works out to $6300/month total. The $75,000 cost of the website is repaid in 12 months, and from there on the site generates an income of $75,600 per year. That would be a way to really provide a 'service' to DZs. We both know that's not what's going on. With very little effort on their part, they are intercepting web traffic that should rightfully go to a local DZs website. Then they are passing that business on, for a fee. They are doing nothing, nor providing anything for the DZ that is worth a cut of the business, far from it. It's simple greed. The guy thinks he can sit in Chicago, and just rack up cut after cut of tandems being sold to DZ across the country. No DZO could possibly be happy with this because they get no benefit what so ever. The only service provided is administrative, and I don't know of any businessman who would want to be forced to use one administrative solution because that provider was essentially holding their customers 'hostage'. I can imagine scores of businessmen who would prefer to collect the maximum revenue possible from their customers, and then spend it on administrative solutions as they see fit. They would have the freedom to choose what works for them, and to change those solutions in the future as they see fit. I'm telling you, this whole thing is borderline mafia behavior. You have to business with them to be protected from them. If you don't, they'll work with your competition, and you'll lose big time. Finally, and I've touched on this before, but the only redeeming angle of this whole scam is the prospect of new and unique customers, not hijacked from the web, but generated through some sort of off-line, real world advertising campaign. However, for starters, no such campaign is currently in place, but even if it was, I cannot see a way to run a successful campaign designed to benefit 140 sole proprietorships literlly scattered across the country. What sort of advertising do you know of that would equally benefit Perris and Skydive Smokey Mts (real DZ). I don't even know where Skydive Smokey Mts is, and that's part of the problem. If it's not a big-city DZ, how do you advertise to reach the big cities and small town equally? If you cannot do that, then the big city DZs will get the bulk of the advantage from the advertising, but all the DZs on the program will be paying an equal cut of their profits to 'participate'. The idea of wrapping a truck with skydiving advertising was mentioned by Chicagoland. Unless you plan to wrap a truck in each and every locality with a DZ in the program, that part of the advertising will only help a fraction of the DZ in the program, but again, they're all paying an equal cut. I know there are differences between this operation and Skyride, but I maintain that even an honestly run program such as this is still internet piracy, where web traffic is intercepted and held as leverage to recieve unjust enrichment. The bottom line is that DZs would be better off without this website anywhere near their customers. Let them collect 100% of the revenue, and make their own decisions about how to handle the payments and bookkeeping.

This is a point I wanted to touch on. It's now been established that you get a cut off of every tandem that books through your website. It's also been established that a DZ can bypass your fees by booking over the phone. I don't know what that cut is, but I'll guess $30, which is less than I have heard Skyride takes. So a DZO who gets on board with you, and - -will be discouraging customers from booking over the phone where the DZO would not have to cut you in on the deal. You may indeed give them a pass on paying you your cut, but you'll be doing everything in power to direct customers into web-based sales. The real point is this - the DZO can easily answer his own phone during the week. If he's too busy to handle that, he has the revenue to hire someone to answer the phone. On busy weekend days, bring in a part time worker to the office to handle the phones. It's not hard to find a young new jumper willing to work from 10 to 4 in the office on Sat to make extra money to jump with on Sun. On top of that, youcould offer them $12 or $14 an hour in jump money which only costs the DZO $10 an hour in actual costs. So for $60/day you get an extra office person to work the peak hours and cover the phone. As an added bonus, when the phone isn't ringing, they are there to help with waivers, manifest, or run the cash drawer. Let's see your website do that. Assuming you do ding the DZ for $30 a head, if the phone operator books two tandems, the DZO saved enough by not dealing with you to pay the guy for the days work. If he books 3 or more, the DZO is ahead money. Until you can generate new, unique customers for a DZ, you're not doing anything but butting into their existing business and helping yourself to a cut of the profits. In truth, I'm not sure that your service would be of value even if you did implement a national advertising campaign. Unless you are advertising on NBC/ABC/CBS at primetime, your advertsing will not help every DZ across the country. Smaller DZ in smaller markets won't benefit from anything less than that. The reason that travel booking services can benefit their clients (airlines, hotels, etc) is that these are national businesses. Motel 6 knows that national advertising will be of greater benefit to their hotels in the big cites as opposed to the locations in smaller towns. However, being a national chain, the big reveune increases of the big city location when combined with the smaller returns felt in the small town locations will average out to a company wide increase in revenue. Last time I checked, the smaller DZs in smaller towns get no benefit from increases in reveunue at Perris, Spaceland, or SDC. The huge populations will create for more effective advertising around L.A., Houston, and Chicago, but none of this benefit will trickle down to small DZ not near those population centers. A booking service of any kind is not a benefit to local businesses only targeting local customers.

That was very clear. You stated that a DZ could by-pass your fees if the tandem booked with them directly, but if it was done online, then you would indeed get a cut. You went on to state that 56% of your business was now online, and that it was on an upward trend. My point was that even if DZ could avoid fees by not booking online, with your system in place, the majority (and growing) of bookings are going to be done online. What I'm getting at is that you do indeed take a cut of the profits. Your concession to allowing no-fee phone reservation for DZ is, by your own admission, not much of a consession. Beyond that, your own position is that consumers want to buy 'click only' over the web. So you draw them into your website, then give them option to buy online, or do further work to read another webstie, and make a phone call. So again you're offering them exactly what they want, and collecting a fee, but you give the DZ the option to not pay a fee if the customer books over the phone. Here again we have a case where if the consumer had no option to buy over the web, they could easily deal directly with their own local DZ. The existance of your website creates the problem of DZ having to compete with online booking. No website would equal no problem. I'll revisit the concept that these are fist time consumers in this market, and have very little knowledge of the business end of skydiving. How many tandem students are aware that DZ are almost exclusively sole-propieterships? Or that in this day and age, there is no corporate giant who owns and operates the majority of skydiving centers? My guess is none, and that they do not actually know who they are dealing with when working with your website. Again, look at Skyride as an example. It was the ignorance of the consumer that allowed Skyride to run roughshot over them with their dis-honest business tactics. The consumer accepts that as the de-facto business practice in skydiving, and happily (at the time of purchase) pay the 'big plane' fee. What it comes down to is that you are a bookign service without the hallmark of a booking service. If I went into the hanger at a DZ one day and said,"Who can finsh this tune.. 'Expedia....", my guess is that at least half would chime in with, "Dot coooom". Or if I asked who knew what a 'Travel Gnome' is, the same percentage would reply he was the mascot for Travelocity. How is this possible? Easy, they run an effective national advertising campaign. You are not running any such campaign. To be making bookings online, in the absence of any such campaign, is straight up internet hijacking of customers. The key to analyzing any business arrangement is to asses the cost/benefit ratio. Without generating new business, and simply intercepting the existing business, there is no benefit to the DZ. The DZ would have been better off without your website, left to manage it's own local customers who were already searching for a DZ in their area. These are people who live near the DZ, who were seraching for a DZ in their locality, who end up sendng a portion of their money directly into your pocket. There is no benefit to the DZ or consumer. Both would have benefitted from a direct transaction. The DZ would have made more money, and in turn been able to offer the customer a better expereince becasue of the increased revenue. Bigger faster plane? More rigs for faster turns? Air conditioning in the gear up room? Nobody but you benefits from your website booking tandems who were already looking for a DZ. Spin it anyway you want, but you wouldn't drop $75,000 on a website if you didn't think you could make ten times that over the next few years. That's all money NOT going into the pockets of local DZOs actaully providing skydiving services to local customers.

I've seen a bunch of bachelor and bachelorette parties at the DZ. Not everyone has to jump, just the bachelor and anyone else interested. Plan the jump towards the end of the day, and proceed directly to the strip club afterwards. On a serious note, be aware that anyone suspected of, of smelling of, drinking or drugs may not be permitted to jump. Be sure to keep the bachelor sober until after the jump, or he may be turned away. Of course, bring booze with you and have it ready in the landing area as soon as he touches down.

So the primary reason a DZ would be interested in a booking service, which would be to attract new business not already searching the web for a DZ, is not in place. So what then is your purpose? Moving on, you say this - - and shortly after, you say this - So which one is it? Can the DZ opt in and pay no fees, or, by your own admission, opt in and pay a fee on 56% (and growing) of their bookings? You can't have it both ways. The only reason they would have this expectation is if it was available in some areas but not in others. In all reality, tandem customers have no 'expectations' because these are first time consumers in this area. Skyride is a case in point here. Why would you agree to drive for hours to get to a DZ, pay a big plane fee, and other bullshit fees? Becasue you've never bought a tandem before, can only assume that what you're getting is the standard in the industry. If all of those customers had been in contact with an honest, local DZ, not a single one of them would have been wondering how much the 'big plane' fee was. In this case, you're creating the expectation by injecting your website into the searches for local DZs in various markets. There are three DZs in northern Ohio, and not one has web-only sales. No consumer in this area would expect that until you show up with your site. You are creating the expectation, and the need for DZ to be on board with you to meet that expectation. Here's where it gets really bad, you say - -and then you go on to say, in regards to your service - That's why I use words like greedy and parasite. You know exactly what you're doign because you've been a victim of the 'extortion' yourself. Either you play ball, or the other guy will, and you'll lose out on all that business. Of course, even when you play ball you lose because you have to do that much more business to overcome the fees from the 'booking service' to realize the same profits at the end of the year. Being a victim of this, you should be ashamed to be rolling out the next wave of the same scam. Anyway you want to 'business talk' the thing up being 'streamlined' and offering 'tools', at the end of the day you are reaching your hands into the pockets of DZs who have nothing to do with you aside from the customers you draw into your website from their locality. Nothing. Once you have their customers, however, they are forced to have something to do with you, because if they don't, their competitor across town will. Sound familiar? In the end, I thought this was the most telling of all - we all need the business to keep those expensive turbine aircraft running for you guys. *** That's right, YOU need all the business to keep the turbines running at YOUR DZ. What keeps the turbines running at the DZ where you are taking their profits to your DZ? What about their competitor across town who isn't in your 'program', what keeps their turbines running while you funnel the lions share of the local business to your 'partner DZ' across town? I understand the internet is an important tool for marketing in this day and age, but in the end the size of the market dictates the level of marketing needed. I have a favorite local Thai place that is a sole-proprietership. I looked up their website the other day because I lost my take-out menu. The website was stone simple, but did have the hours, address, phone and a PDF of the menu, and that was perfect. They don't need web ordering, I didn't have to create an account, and there were no videos or blog. The reason this circa 1998 website works is because they are local business looking only to cater to local customers, and needing only to compete with other local businesses. Sound familiar? DZs are local businesses, and they are only trying to attract local customers, and should only be competing for those customers with other local DZs. The size of the market will dictate the size of the marketing effort. Perris and Elsinore will drop a pretty penny or two on marketing to draw from the tens of millions of people in their area. Skydive East Kansas City and Skydive West Kansas City will have a markedly smaller marketing budget. The long and short of it is that Perris or Skydive East Kansas City would both be better off without you anywhere near their market. Their best option is to deal with only their local competitors, and let the market itself set the bar for the marketing budget. When you roll in with your $75,000 website you set the bar impossibly high for DZs. The difference is that to compete with you, they would all need to spend $75,000 each, but you only have to spend $75,000 once, combine it with the magic of the internet, and now you can hold DZs everywhere hostage so they either play ball, or get out-marketed by your efforts. I'm willing to accept that you think your system is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll maintain that you're a crook who got tired of being a victim, and jumped ship to be the victimizer yourself. I don't wish you luck or success in your efforts.

Here's what I wrote in another thread to a jumper in your situation - The instructors who taught you how to jump are an excellent resource for helping you select gear. They know you, and have jumped with you, and are generally a good resource for you well beyond your student days. You could even ask them to reccomend a good local rigger. You're going to need a rigger sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. In the interest of gaining a new customer, most riggers are happy to oversee your first rig purchase. You shouldn't have to pay for advice or guidance, but expect to pay for inspections, and time spent shipping/recieving items on your behalf. In the end it will be money well spent, and you'll have yourself a safe, suitable rig.