What can we do about Skyride?

[BillyVance 34]

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Anyone know what happened with the Skydive Arizona lawsuit?

A hearing has been set in answer to Skyride's motion to dismiss.

And so it begins...oh and for those that have seen "Dances With Wolves"...just call me Stands With A Fist Up Skyride's Ass

There, fixed it for ya... Sorry greenies... just had to...

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[CSpenceFLY 1]

Found this posted on another forum.


Randy Travis, an investigative reporter with FOX5 Atlanta, will be doing a report on the ASC / Skyride scams on their Thursday evening news programs at 6 and 10 PM. I haven't seen the report, but it should be interesting. Be sure to watch, especially if you have any doubts about those operations.

[Thanatos340 1]

I checked Pacer last night to see if anything new was happening in either Lawsuit (Arizona Skydiving VS Skyride or Skyride/ASC vs USPA)..

A Hearing is Scheduled in the Arizona vs Skyride Suit in Mid-July. I believe that this hearing is to hear oral arguments in both sides Motions to Dismiss (Skyride Filed Motion to Dismiss the Claims made by Arizona and Arizona filed Motion to dismiss Counter Claims made by Skyride.)

Nothing new at all posted on the docket for the Skyride vs USPA lawsuit.

Disclaimer.. I am not a Lawyer. Just a Layman who has access to Pacer and the above is my Non-professional, Uneducated interpretation of the Docket for the two cases.

[lauraliscious 0]

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Randy Travis, an investigative reporter with FOX5 Atlanta, will be doing a report on the ASC / Skyride scams on their Thursday evening news programs at 6 and 10 PM.

Cool! I'll definitely watch. They were at the Farm filming & interviewing about a month ago. I was wondering when it would air...

Enemiga Rodriguez, PMS #369, OrFun #25, Team Dirty Sanchez #116, Pelt Head #29, Muff #4091

[matthewcline 0]

So what was up with the news story?

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[Thanatos340 1]

They just aired the story on skyride on the 6:00pm and 10:00pm news here.

Gave them (Ben Butler) time as well to state thier opinions.

Mike G and Hans Paulson were interviewed as well as two different people that were scammed by them.

I think they could have found better example of the scams. One guy complaining because he was promised 60 seconds of freefall and only got 30.

Another complaining about how they Charged her credit card twice and wouldnt refund the money.

They brought up the Chris Martin Phone number theft and the fact they were booted from the USPA.

Hopefully someone recorded it and can post it to Skydiving movies.

The story could have been better and but it was a Nice Commercial for The Farm!!

[marks 0]

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They just aired the story on skyride on the 6:00pm and 10:00pm news here.

Gave them (Ben Butler) time as well to state thier opinions.

Mike G and Hans Paulson were interviewed as well as two different people that were scammed by them.

I think they could have found better example of the scams. One guy complaining because he was promised 60 seconds of freefall and only got 30.

Another complaining about how they Charged her credit card twice and wouldnt refund the money.

They brought up the Chris Martin Phone number theft and the fact they were booted from the USPA.

Hopefully someone recorded it and can post it to Skydiving movies.

The story could have been better and but it was a Nice Commercial for The Farm!!

got it on tivo,

[pusspuss 0]

That sucks I am in south florida and missed it. I hope someone does post it so I can see it.


Brett

[marks 0]

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That sucks I am in south florida and missed it. I hope someone does post it so I can see it.


Brett

brett, your on tv!!!!!

[pusspuss 0]

I heard. I hate to see my ugly face on there!

[skinnyshrek 0]

is he robbing shit...lol

http://www.skydivethefarm.com

do you realize that when you critisize people you dont know over the internet, you become part of a growing society of twats? ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?

[pusspuss 0]

What? Robbing?

[omnifire 0]

Hey guys sorry for bringing this thread back up, but i need to vent this out a little...

Around the end of last month, my friends and I purchased tickets with 1800SKYRIDE to try out this skydiving business. The guy on the phone (Andre) told me they had dropzones everywhere. Long story short, I didn't get to jump nor did they reschedule a jump, but I did receive a refund eventually. Unfortunately, they only refunded me 148.80, not even half of what I spent on tickets for my friend and I. I filed a claim with my bank and they said that SkyRide has 30 days to provide me with the remainder before they could start taking actions.

I think its kind of funny that they:
-Spelled my name wrong
-emailed the wrong email
-failed to get the dz an acknowledgement of me coming
-failed to transfer over my jump to another state

but they still manage to get all the numbers correct when charging my Visa.

If anyone feels that they may need any input for a classaction lawsuit(or anylawsuit for that matter) i'd be willing to give more information to support your case.

I've submitted a complaint against skyride with the FTC, but it probably won't matter.

I noticed that most of the experienced people in the skydiving community know of and avoid skyride, yet they have let this organization get top results in the google page ranking. All it would take is a community effort to link to their favorite dropzone's website in their xangas, blogs, myspace, forum signatures....anything.

I'll even contribute

Houston Skydiving
http://www.skydivespaceland.com/

Austin Skydiving
http://www.capitolskydiving.com/

kudos to those who read all of this

[diablopilot 2]

Who are you?

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[skydived19006 4]

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Hey guys sorry for bringing this thread back up, but i need to vent this out a little...


kudos to those who read all of this

Skyride does rank fairly well, but they draw most of their business through paid search engine ads. There have been a couple of efforts to organize with DZOs to combine resources, set up a link site, and use very general search terms such as “skydive”.

Jan Meyer was even bad mouthed her for her www.wheretojump.com effort, which received virtually no support from the DZO community. Now Joe Jennings is working on www.skydive.com to do basically the same thing, but he’s “selling” harder than Jan did, and maybe his will go somewhere. It’s been my experience that most DZOs are extremely independent, and don’t want to send money to someone for something that they could do themselves (that said very few DZs use paid search ads, even though you can do it for little money). Most will go to the rescue of a fellow DZO (unless there’s bad blood), and help out each other, but they will also cut each others throat at times. Skyride is an excellent example of throat cutting, if it weren’t for the few DZs that deal with Skyride, it would cease to be an issue. Some people just can’t see the forest for the trees.

You are correct about the link trading. If every legitimate DZ in this country would put up a page with links to every other DZ, we’d all benefit from the page ranking. It would actually be fairly easy to share the basic code, once one person did the ground work, but it would also be a pain to maintain, although in this case if these pages over a couple of years ended up with a few dead links it most likely wouldn’t matter. That said, most search engine crawl software tries to detect “link pages” and discounts the relevance (as I understand it)

Martin
Air Capital Drop Zone

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[jtval 0]

hell if the DZO wanted to save money and still agree one one thing they could all post a link the the DZ list on USPA websiteand/or dropzone.com.


unfortunately if the Skydive.com thiing comes about it'll only create confusion to those who aren't well versed in the scam

in a way it'll give it some legitimacy.


I agree that if all the DZ's didnt honor them they'd go away but in the same aspect that would be taking it out on the student who just drove up to a few hundred miles to make their skydive.

for all they know nothing is wrong and they are scheduled. can you turn away someone who drove to the dz thinking that they spoke with you only to find out you never knew anything?

it would be great if the DZO's could say "you need to get a refund" and have them buy a ticket from the DZ. but knowing that thestudent would than think YOU are scamming them it puts the DZO ina shitty situation.

I say fuck skyride! fuck 'em all the way to hell.

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[jtval 0]

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I say that the dz.commers like me who have nothing better to do during the day call them and keep them on the phone for hours and send them lots of crap email.

If I understand the process...everytime you click the link from the GOOGLE search pageit cost them money.

Each timeyou log in, go to a search for skyride and click the link.
their advertising bill will go through the roof if we all do that....then maybe they will not be able to afrod the advertising

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[skydived19006 4]

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I say that the dz.commers like me who have nothing better to do during the day call them and keep them on the phone for hours and send them lots of crap email.

If I understand the process...everytime you click the link from the GOOGLE search pageit cost them money.

Each timeyou log in, go to a search for skyride and click the link.
their advertising bill will go through the roof if we all do that....then maybe they will not be able to afrod the advertising

It’s called “pay per click”. Basically a business will bid for placement on particular search terms such as “skydiving florida” (see attached bids for this term). If I bid $1.00 and the next highest bid is $.50, whenever someone clicks my ad I’ll pay $.51. In the attached example the highest bid is $3.50, the next is $2.00, so if you search for “skydiving florida” on Yahoo, Msn, AltaVista, etc., and click on the miamiskydiving.com ad, it will cost “Miami Skydiving” (This is actually a Skyride clone site, it’s not Skydive Miami, or any other real DZ in Florida), they’ll have to pay $2.01 for every click. The advertiser can also set a daily maximum expenditure, like say $50.00 a day, when that number (whatever it may be) is hit, the ads will cease to come up for the rest of the day.

Take a look if you like http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-mdp&p=skydiving%20florida

Disclaimer, I personally would not suggest that people do this search and run up costs for any advertiser. Also, you need to be careful which ads you click through on, it may be a real DZ, and you’ll end up costing a legitimate DZ money. That said, I can’t keep anyone from doing anything immoral, illegal, etc. Do as your conscience allows.

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[jtval 0]

ok. I understand your post. and I would imagine it wouldnt be worth it since they probably have a limit.


but I dont know if you meant that it is illegal when you typed

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That said, I can’t keep anyone from doing anything immoral, illegal, etc. Do as your conscience allows.

How is clicking on a website illegal? even if the intention is to cost them .

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[IanHarrop 41]

This topic was discussed in this thread sometime ago and there were two prevailing thoughts.

- we should take the high road even if we perceive Skyride as not doing so and avoid these kind of tactics.
- that Skyride's legal team is watching dz.com and as such we need to be seen as taking the high road in these forums.

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[jtval 0]

ok , but how would clicking be iilegal?

I mean I am ACTUALLY interested in seeing their sights. I am curious to see just how they are ripping peopleoff and also curious to see hwo closely they are trying to match the website to the REAL DZ.


It's funny that someone suggested that Skyride has a team of lawyers to protect their rights.
interesting concept that they would be bothered about by a doing something perfectly legal.

If we are clicking the links to educate ourselves its fine.

I visit DZ websitesALL THE TIME. why should skyride be excluded

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[IanHarrop 41]

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ok , but how would clicking be iilegal?

I mean I am ACTUALLY interested in seeing their sights. I am curious to see just how they are ripping peopleoff and also curious to see hwo closely they are trying to match the website to the REAL DZ.


It's funny that someone suggested that Skyride has a team of lawyers to protect their rights.
interesting concept that they would be bothered about by a doing something perfectly legal.

If we are clicking the links to educate ourselves its fine.

I visit DZ websitesALL THE TIME. why should skyride be excluded

Can't argue with you, clicking their sites with the intent of educating yourself is not illegal.
In the past there were some that suggested clicking their sites with the intent of just running up their bill and it is this behaviour that has been discussed in the past.

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[jtval 0]

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[Can't argue with you, clicking their sites with the intent of educating yourself is not illegal.
In the past there were some that suggested clicking their sites with the intent of just running up their bill and it is this behaviour that has been discussed in the past.

Right, and even I suggested that in the post you replied to but I guess I shouldn't have been so vague.

I mean, if those of us are curious click on the site. yes it would riase their price but its out of an actual curiousity. But sincethere are 10'sof thousands of us on this site I'm sure there are a few who haven't really researched this topic. by doing so it would also knock there ad prices as a side effect.

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[skydived19006 4]

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ok , but how would clicking be iilegal?

I mean I am ACTUALLY interested in seeing their sights. I am curious to see just how they are ripping peopleoff and also curious to see hwo closely they are trying to match the website to the REAL DZ.


It's funny that someone suggested that Skyride has a team of lawyers to protect their rights.
interesting concept that they would be bothered about by a doing something perfectly legal.

If we are clicking the links to educate ourselves its fine.

I visit DZ websitesALL THE TIME. why should skyride be excluded

I don’t know that it is illegal, I also imagine that there may be some sort of “stop loss” control written into the software such that if a link is clicked more than a couple of times within a certain time period from the same url, it’ll trip a trigger, and stop the charge. That is pure speculation on my part. I agree that it’s totally acceptable to surf around, and click the paid ads looking over some of the 800+ Skyride, Soaring Sports, Thrill Planet, etc sites. That said, you’ll inevitably end up clicking through on real DZs, and running up their costs as well.

Martin

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[jtval 0]

as far as I understand it'll only be charged once per ISP ( is that the correct term?)
So if you went to google and typed up skyride and clicked thier website and repeated this process, they would only be charged once unless or until your ISP address was update.

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