The Cyber Diver guy must have dropped off his medication. Very entertaining reading!
Erik Noteboom,
Don't be foolish Erik. You are attempting to prevent the global scuba diving community from accessing valid, current information about Dive Center Aquarius, including independent, unbiased dive consumer ratings of your company. It's not going to happen.
The ScubaLinx directories are designed primarily for the benefit of dive consumers, who participate directly by submitting ratings, reviews and requests for site listings. Similarly, more than 80 percent of the news at CDNN is now generated by readers who send links to various articles, help to edit pages, author their own news content and organize proactive marine conservation campaigns. Unlike "old media" scuba diving magazines, tourist boards and industry-controlled web sites that exist solely to promote advertisers and therefore lack credibility, the CDS network is a consumer-first and conservation activist-first concept.
Still, the global reach and extraordinary popularity of the network (over half a million unique site visitors and more than six million page views each month) also attract companies and non-profit organizations that recognize the many benefits of "new media" promotion. There are many beneficial things companies can do to utilize the network to promote their products/services. Bashing ScubaLinx and insulting the people who work on it, as you have done repeatedly during our discussion, is absolutely NOT one of those beneficial things.
Yes Erik, you have the right to behave in any manner your wish, however, your
insults and reckless, derogatory insinuations aimed at disparaging ScubaLinx
do nothing at all to benefit your company. Instead, your rant serves to confirm
the accuracy of the consumer ratings of Dive Center Aquarius contained in the
ScubaLinx Curacao directory.
If lashing out at our industry's leading scuba portal network is the best you
can do to help Dive Center Aquarius achieve its goals, perhaps it would be
beneficial to step aside and appoint someone else to represent your company,
someone who better understands how to professionally manage a business. All
you have accomplished in this dialogue is to confirm that you are a hobbyist
who lacks not only basic business skills, but also common sense.
That is one of the fundamental differences between modern, professionally managed dive centers/dive resorts compared to just a few years ago. There is an ongoing shakeout in the global dive industry that steadily replaces the "I love diving" hobbyists with professional business people who are more than just divers drifting into low-income, lifestyle jobs.
They know and love diving too, more than you perhaps, but they also understand how to professionally manage a business, which is obviously not your forte. Professional means, among other things, knowing how to write a proper business letter, knowing how to responsibly represent your company in a positive way to the media, and knowing how to compete and succeed with effective marketing plans that invest a certain percentage of your profits back into advertising and promotion including a professionally designed web site, which is another thing you lack. In short, the hobbyists who have nothing in the way of advertising and promotion apart from an ugly, home-made, unprofessional web site and a modest Google page-rank, usually finish dead last. This is 2007 Erik, not 1987. If you cannot professionally manage your company, if you cannot afford to promote your business, if you cannot effectively compete, you will fail, no matter how big or small your company is, no matter how good or how bad dive consumers rate your company at ScubaLinx.
You say you are not asking for support but you are. Any business professional would certainly understand that the issue of company resources and the cost of support is a very real one, and they would also understand that what you want is free support and free promotion. As an amateur hobbyist, you can live in "la la land" and fantasize all you want about whatever rights you think companies are obligated to give you, but the reality is that you are getting absolutely nowhere with ScubaLinx and you are going backwards with Bluenose. We've got a very bad impression of you Erik, and with each subsequent email, it only gets worse.
Again, if you are too cheap or too poor to spend $50 per month to promote your company, then you have no alternative but to accept things as they are, not the way you would prefer them to be. You have to accept that ScubaLinx is not obligated to communicate with you nor work to promote your company. You have to accept that dive consumers rate Dive Center Aquarius in the bottom third of Curacao dive operators. You have to accept your crude, unprofessional web site screams "WE ARE LIFESTYLE HOBBYISTS--WE ARE NOT PROFESSIONALS!" You have to accept that you are not our client, not our friend, not our family and apparently not a very nice person, nor even one with a modicum of common sense.
A friendly, nice, honest person -- a family kind of a guy -- would never imply that we were dishonest and deceitful when we forwarded positive comments from other dive center owners about ScubaLinx. Honest people don't think that way. And a friendly, nice, honest person would never refer to his competitors as "factories". Again, honest people don't do nasty things like that. Really Erik, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your competitors are dive centers, and no matter how much more successful they are than you, they are not "factories". When you recklessly attack the people you consider your adversaries, and again, you have done so repeatedly in our discussion, it reflects negatively on you, not your intended victims.
Of course, it goes without saying that ScubaLinx cannot be all things to all people, and they don't try to be. It also goes without saying that one of our primary objectives at Bluenose is to expand and promote the network we represent (Dutch version of ScubaLinx should be online no later than Feb '08), not bash it. Anyone with common sense would understand that and not imply that we are being dishonest and deceitful because we choose to cite the vast majority of positive comments rather than a few negative ones when we are working to promote the benefits of advertising at ScubaLinx and other CDS scuba portal sites. (Get real Erik--you make yourself look like a complete ass with your aggravated rant.)
What else can I say? I don't want to insult you and call you a fool. But
what am I to think? Your reckless comments and ill-advised insults have
done nothing
at all to benefit your company. In fact, it now appears that Dive Center
Aquarius was accurately rated before, when it was at the bottom of the
list. Whatever.
After carefully reviewing the record of our discussion, I'm afraid we would
NOT want to get involved with Dive Center Aquarius even if you could afford
the $50 and wanted Bluenose to work for you.
Enjoy your hobbies Erik and your lifestyle thing. For our part, the discussion
is closed.
Best regards,
Nathan Parry-Davies
Bluenose Global Media Network
From: "Dive Center Aquarius"
To: "'Bluenose Global Media Network'" <bluenosenet@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Dive Center Aquarius - attn: Erik Noteboom
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:57:45 -0400
Nathan,
First of all, I never asked for free support. I think that I deserve the right
to ask questions if somebody lists my company on their website and consumers
get the wrong information or information that has been tampered with. I have
the rigfht to know what happend.
About the money....$50,- may not seem to be a lot for you and when I lived in
the Netherlands it would have been peanuts for me as well. But I live in Curaçao
right now with about 27 dive op's and another 30 instructors teaching "out
of the back of their cars". We are fighting every day to stay in business
and one wrong comment can do a lot of damage. So is listed as bad dive op. Can
you image what we felt when we saw this? For us diving is still kind of a hobby
and we want to keep it that way. As soon as it becomes work and we have to treat
our costumers as costumers instead of "friends", paying us enough to
make a living but not to get rich, we will stop being a dive op. But I will feel
sorry for those people who'd love to spend time at our dive shop feeling as if
they were part of the family.
You can't call it mismanagement but a way of living. And we want to do "business" the
honest way. I know most people just want to get rich fast not being bothered
by hurting other people but we are not one of them.
If Scubalinx is giving the wrong information and not replying on any emails then
I want them to remove me from their site.
The only way they can do business is if people come to their site and get the
right information. Otherwise they will be out of business very quick. The internet
is a fast communication item and bad news travels fast.
One thing, I don't need them to get business. I just wanted more people to enjoy
diving for fun and a reasonable price instead of going to a dive factory. $50,-
a month for being on top of the list? I don't think so. Luckely most of my costumers
are dutch and they don't look at sites like scubalinx. They will check the dutch
forum about diving at Curaçao. Or just stop at the dive shop and decide
YES or NO.
Good luck with your business.
Kind regards,
Erik Noteboom
P.S. I deleted the other two emails as the are nice but anybody could have written
them. Besides that, I guess you wouldn't send me any emails of people not being
happy with EFS, CDS sites or scubalinx, would you?
From: Bluenose Global Media
Network [mailto:bluenosenet@yahoo.com]
Sent: woensdag 3 oktober 2007 21:32
To: Dive Center Aquarius
Subject: Dive Center Aquarius - attn: Erik Noteboom
Erik Noteboom,
You are confused. I do not work for ScubaLinx and do not have access to their
data files. But I will come back to your question below.
I work for Bluenose. Among other things, we represent a growing network of
consumer-oriented sites and scuba-related companies that utilize all or part
of the network to
promote their products/services. We work to bring companies the most cost-effective,
leveraged and targeted advertising solutions.
Erik, what you want -- free support -- is simply impossible. ScubaLinx provides
information about some 5,000 companies to a half million dive consumers without
fee. It simply does not have the resources to provide a per request, complimentary
support service to thousands of email inquiries every month from so many
consumers (that want help spending their money) and companies (that want
help not spending
their money).
Moreover, the CDS scuba portal network does not exist to provide free promotion
to you and other business owners who want to exploit it in order to grow
your companies and make more money. You don't work for free--why should the
people
who work at ScubaLinx or jDiver or CDNN or any of the other sites we represent?
Bottom line? If you want the people at ScubaLinx (or other CDS sites) to
work for you, if you want them to help you promote your company so that it
can get
bigger and make more money, you need to spend $50 per month on the EFS package.
If your company is so insubstantial, mismanaged and unsuccessful in terms
of cash flow that it cannot afford to spend the same amount of money I spent
yesterday
on lunch at a medium-priced restaurant, then you really should consider doing
something else with your life. I don't mean to be rude Erik, but every dive
op, no matter how small, should allocate a certain percentage of revenue
for marketing
and promotion. $50 per month is not much money these days, but if you consider
the global reach and immense popularity of ScubaLinx, even such a small amount
can benefit your company with extremely powerful, leveraged and target promotion.
Finally, you asked about ratings plummeting during a one-week interval. As
I said, I do not have access to the ScubaLinx database but that sort of thing
definitely
can happen. The reason is that the ratings that affected your score were
probably not submitted during the one-week interval you referred to. That's
my opinion
based on my limited knowledge of variables ScubaLinx utilizes to discourage
ballot box stuffing.
Erik, if your company is as good as you say it is, then I'm fairly certain
it will do much better if you sponsor the directory. How ScubaLinx (and other
CDS
scuba portal sites) can work for you is something that I can explain in detail
provided you are genuinely interested and can shake $50 out of the Dive Center
Aquarius piggy bank every month.
Best regards,
Nathan
Dive Center Aquarius wrote:
Dear Nathan,
I understand your point but you still haven't answered my question. "How
can it be that we are #1 one day and within 7 days # last. From a score of
9. ?? to 1.77 ?"
You need an awful lot of bad reviews to achieve that. I just wanted an answer
on that question. Was that to much to ask? The good name of my company is at
stake here. I want to protect that. We work very hard here and we are
a small dive operator trying to become bigger by working our ass off and making
sure we have happy and satisfied costumers. Our listing at Scubalinx is
not doing any good if you want to achieve a thing like that. So please answer
my question. I want to know if I can trust your site.
Maybe it is a good thing to have a good page on your website but only if the
info found on your website is correct. Otherwise it's just another website
with old outdated information and I think we have plenty of those already.
So if you can answer my question I can make a decision based on good information.
Kind regards,
Erik Noteboom
From: Bluenose Global Media Network [mailto:bluenosenet@yahoo.com]
Sent: dinsdag 2 oktober 2007 23:20
To: Dive Center Aquarius
Subject: Dive Center Aquarius - attn: Erik Noteboom
Erik Noteboom,
The purpose of the letter you received was simply to describe a couple of options
that would certainly benefit your company. If you do not wish to utilize ScubaLinx
to promote your company, that's fine.
The success of the CDS "consumer first" concept in terms of global
reach and popularity (over half a million unique site visitors and over six
million page views each month) naturally attracts companies that understand
that although its not perfect, the consumer-driven and consumer-oriented information
is far more credible than "old media" scuba magazines, tourist bureau
press releases and industry-controlled web sites.
Still, CDS is an independent, non-profit organization and the purpose of ScubaLinx
and other CDS affiliates is primarily to inform, educate and motivate dive
consumers and conservation activists.
Best regards,
Nathan
Dive Center Aquarius wrote:
Dear Nathan,
I did not request for a page in ScubaLinx. I had you on my website so
people were able to rate us and had an easy entry to your directory. I thought
your site might be useful. Until I found out that I was rated # 1 one day and
the next day the last. I wondered what happend so I did send several emails
with questions on how this would be possible. I got no answer on any of my
emails. So I decided to remove you from my website. I do only business with
companies that are trustworthy and frankly I did not had that feeling after
what happend and the (non) reponse to my emails.
So if you can explain what happend back then I will consider placing your link
back on my website.
Kind regards,
Erik Noteboom
Dive Center Aquarius
Curaçao - Netherlands Antilles
From: Bluenose Global Media Network [mailto:bluenosenet@yahoo.com]
Sent: zaterdag 29 september 2007 19:43
Subject: Bluenose Global Media Network
Erik Noteboom,
We have received your request for a web page in ScubaLinx, the world's first
and still most popular scuba diving directory. Launched in 1995, ScubaLinx
is now affiliated with the popular CDS scuba portal network, which attracts
over half a million dive consumers and generates six million page views each
month.
To comply with the latest ScubaLinx requirements, you need to add the ScubaLinx
logo to your index page and add the following text link right underneath the
logo as follows:
<
http://www.scubalinx.com>Scuba Diving Directory
Of course, if you do not wish to put the ScubaLinx logo and text link on your
index page, you can take advantage of the new, powerful and cost-effective
Exclusive First Sponsor (EFS) package (beta 2.02 release).
The standard entry-level sponsor fee is $119 per month, however, our new EFS
2.02 package costs only $59 per month and offers many powerful promotional
benefits including:
1. Custom-designed, search engine enhanced web pages,
2. Hundreds of banner advertisements to increase your corporate brand recognition,
3. Top 10 search engine listings to attract new customers to your products
and services,
4. Thousands of text links to enhance the page-rank of your primary web site,
And it's all available to dive consumers and adventure travelers on CDS, the
web's most powerful scuba portal network! Remember, the EFS package is available
only to the first sponsor of each directory. Even prior to the official launch
of EFS 2.02 scheduled for October 7, 2007, travel companies, resorts, equipment
makers and dive ops around the world have expressed strong interest. To avoid
disappointment, be sure to reply now before one of your competitors takes advantage
of the special half-price EFS rate.
Best regards,
Nathan Parry-Davies
Bluenose Global Media Network
The Art of Online Advertising