Scams?

[Nyal Williams]

We had a couple show up at our club with an email indicating the husband
had bought a glider ride through an online company devoted to thrill
event sales. The email indicated they had contacted our club, talked
with our president, and made an appointment for a flight at 1:00pm. No
such contact had been made, we did not recognize the name of the
company, and we called the whole endeavor into question.

The husband called that company, which wanted to pay us via their
company credit card. We don't take credit cards and we refused to talk
to the company. They then told the husband that they would refund his
payment and we suggested he refuse payment of that fee when billed by
his card company. He was happy with that when we told him that our
charge would be $99 instead of the $175 he had authorized on his card.

Apparently there are at least two companies and maybe more making these
third-party sales on line. I have heard that at least one of them is a
scam and I would be reluctant to accept any such arrangement unless it
were made through SSA.

[[email protected]]

This problem should be fairly well know. For example see
http://glidersailplanerides.com and http://www.funjumper.com/skyride
for some info on these jerks. http://glidersailplanerides.com was
started by glider FBOs annoyed by this scam.

www.1800SKYRIDE.com is the biggest scammer but they have many many
related sites and domain names including www.thrillplanet.com they
hide behind. They started scamming for parachute jumps and I believe
the USPA kicked even them out. Their "customer problems" (i.e. scam)
for parachute jumps even got featured at least twice on local TV in
Atlanta although coverage was pretty soft. See for example
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=470757&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1

Unfortuantely companies like Google make money running their scam ads
and approaches to Google to do something about this have got to the
right group but they have declined to do anything claiming there has
not been enough consumer complaints. Apparently "do no evil" is easy
if you keep your head buried in the sand, or somewhere else dark.

The worst thing an FBO or club can do is to try to honor scam gift
coupons, that just helps these scammers continue. Clubs and FBOs could
help by noting on their web site they don't take certain gift coupons
and having themselves listed on http://glidersailplanerides.com and
can link to that site off their home page. Warnings on the SSA web
site about this would be helpful, I'm not sure where efforts to get
that done ever went.

Darryl


On Jun 11, 10:48 am, Nyal Williams
> wrote:
> We had a couple show up at our club with an email indicating the husband
> had bought a glider ride through an online company devoted to thrill
> event sales. The email indicated they had contacted our club, talked
> with our president, and made an appointment for a flight at 1:00pm. No
> such contact had been made, we did not recognize the name of the
> company, and we called the whole endeavor into question.
>
> The husband called that company, which wanted to pay us via their
> company credit card. We don't take credit cards and we refused to talk
> to the company. They then told the husband that they would refund his
> payment and we suggested he refuse payment of that fee when billed by
> his card company. He was happy with that when we told him that our
> charge would be $99 instead of the $175 he had authorized on his card.
>
> Apparently there are at least two companies and maybe more making these
> third-party sales on line. I have heard that at least one of them is a
> scam and I would be reluctant to accept any such arrangement unless it
> were made through SSA.

[Drew Pearce]

I run an fbo in the San Francsco area and have helped
set up the US
directory site.

I have been worried about bringing to much attention
to the problem
when customers come to my company website for fear
they will not
know who to trust and buy dad a tie instead. We have
not found a good
answer yet but are working on it. We have only recently
found out about
them sending people to glider clubs for their rides.
This could create a
major liability for the club that gives the ride potentially.


The fbo's have just started trying to get organized
to fight them as a
group. Please help spread the word.

Our biggest problem right now with fighting the scams
is the fact that
there are a few glider operators that still will honor
their certificates . It
is hard to convince Google or Yahoo that they should
take action when
there are still operators taking their certificates.
The fact that no one
thinks to complain to Google or Yahoo is also a problem.
Many also
never know they were scammed since they are not the
one trying to
redeem it. There are a few lawsuits we have heard about,
3 are by state
atty generals, and they would help the situation if
they are won but they
have been going on for a few years now and they expect
a few more we
were told. These guys have been doing this for years
now and it is just
amazing that they can not be stopped. They seem to
have found the
perfect scam.

There is a new website run by 800-skyride that sells
everything you can
imagine in every location. The new website is
http://www.luxergy.com
Gliders are under the plane rides section. See if they
have a location
near you. I'll bet they have atleast 5. You can see
which locations they
really have at http://www.glidersailplanerides.com


Please note that we have not put clubs on the list
but if someone wants
to get me an accurate list of the clubs I will create
a club site and link
them together. We wanted to make it extremely easy
to find the ride
location nearest them without potentially getting lost
on the SSA site.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.




At 19:00 11 June 2007, wrote:
>This problem should be fairly well know. For example
>see
>http://glidersailplanerides.com and http://www.funjumper.com/skyri
>>de
>for some info on these jerks. http://glidersailplanerides.com
>was
>started by glider FBOs annoyed by this scam.
>
>www.1800SKYRIDE.com is the biggest scammer but they
>have many
many
>related sites and domain names including www.thrillplanet.com
>they
>hide behind. They started scamming for parachute jumps
>and I believe
>the USPA kicked even them out. Their 'customer problems'
>(i.e. scam)
>for parachute jumps even got featured at least twice
>on local TV in
>Atlanta although coverage was pretty soft. See for
>example
>http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?
contentId=470757&version=1&locale=EN-
US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1
>
>Unfortuantely companies like Google make money running
>their scam
ads
>and approaches to Google to do something about this
>have got to the
>right group but they have declined to do anything claiming
>there has
>not been enough consumer complaints. Apparently 'do
>no evil' is easy
>if you keep your head buried in the sand, or somewhere
>else dark.
>
>The worst thing an FBO or club can do is to try to
>honor scam gift
>coupons, that just helps these scammers continue. Clubs
>and FBOs
could
>help by noting on their web site they don't take certain
>gift coupons
>and having themselves listed on http://glidersailplanerides.com
>and
>can link to that site off their home page. Warnings
>on the SSA web
>site about this would be helpful, I'm not sure where
>efforts to get
>that done ever went.
>
>Darryl
>
>
>On Jun 11, 10:48 am, Nyal Williams
> wrote:
>> We had a couple show up at our club with an email
>>indicating the
husband
>> had bought a glider ride through an online company
>>devoted to thrill
>> event sales. The email indicated they had contacted
>>our club, talked
>> with our president, and made an appointment for a
>>flight at 1:00pm.
No
>> such contact had been made, we did not recognize the
>>name of the
>> company, and we called the whole endeavor into question.
>>
>> The husband called that company, which wanted to pay
>>us via their
>> company credit card. We don't take credit cards and
>>we refused to
talk
>> to the company. They then told the husband that they
>>would refund
his
>> payment and we suggested he refuse payment of that
>>fee when
billed by
>> his card company. He was happy with that when we
>>told him that
our
>> charge would be $99 instead of the $175 he had authorized
>>on his
card.
>>
>> Apparently there are at least two companies and maybe
>>more
making these
>> third-party sales on line. I have heard that at least
>>one of them is a
>> scam and I would be reluctant to accept any such arrangement
>>
unless it
>> were made through SSA.
>
>
>

[Jim Little]

The irony here is... by posting to newsgroups with the web addresses
to these scam websites, you are actually INCREASING the chance they
will turn up when someone searches google for "glider ride"! Google
(and other search engines) use a variety of proprietary methods to
determine page relevance. The number of times that website address
appears on OTHER websites is one of the key factors for determining
how "good" that website is. It is kind of like a popularity contest.
So when you post to a newsgroup about scam sites, you do NOT want to
include their address in the typical http://www.google.com/ format!
If you must include the website address, it is better to do it
something like this:

www [dot] 1800skyride [dot] com

That way you aren't increasing the likelihood that they will get MORE
search engine hits.

[[email protected]]

I really would not worry about this, spreading the word is much more
important. Lets worry about getting some of the anti-spam sites up
high in the listings by promoting them/linking to them from FBO and
club sites. The 1800Skyride scumbag scammers are already rankied in
the top few search terms by Google and others and often list in the
top one and two paid results on Google. You are unlikely to change
this already high ranking. I would be much more worried about being
clear which @##holes you are warning people about. Especially for
public web sites I would provide links to the scammer sites surrounded
by clear warnings that these link to scams but I'd link to the anti-
scam sites first and most clearly. For the scam pages a redirect to a
bounce page warning the next page is a scam is a great thing to do as
well.

And if you are bored you can look on their web site (www.
1800skyride.com) for photos of your glider or photos from your club/
FBO site they have stolen. One of my club's gliders and Drew's Duo
"HGC" are shown there and he is definitly not doing rides for them.

Darryl

On Jun 16, 11:03 am, Jim Little > wrote:
> The irony here is... by posting to newsgroups with the web addresses
> to these scam websites, you are actually INCREASING the chance they
> will turn up when someone searches google for "glider ride"! Google
> (and other search engines) use a variety of proprietary methods to
> determine page relevance. The number of times that website address
> appears on OTHER websites is one of the key factors for determining
> how "good" that website is. It is kind of like a popularity contest.
> So when you post to a newsgroup about scam sites, you do NOT want to
> include their address in the typicalhttp://www.google.com/format!
> If you must include the website address, it is better to do it
> something like this:
>
> www [dot] 1800skyride [dot] com
>
> That way you aren't increasing the likelihood that they will get MORE
> search engine hits.