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.