Tacoma DIVE/Travel Expo Treasure Hunt was not fair

[TedWi]

One very sad problem is that the Treasure Hunt made over 125 Divers angry. For $35.00 Rick charged us we hoped to have a fair chance at all the prizes. You do the dive, find one golf ball, turn it in to registration and we were told that at 15:30 they were to announce winners. We beleive that everyone of 150 divers had the same chance but we found this is not true. This contest was rigged.

After many delays finally at 17:10 Rick announce all winners. He made a list of all names and sorted it by first name from A-Z. When he started to read the winners we could see that he was reading in order of first names from A-Z. It was easy to see all big prizes were given early to first names that start with A, B, then C, then D,...etc. When Rick got to first name starting with letter K EVERYONE threw to first name at Z got a cheap Taiwan snorkel. Only A-J first names get the big prizes. You can see because he reads them in order A-Z

I know many vendors gave generous gifts and paid much money for these gifts but this was not fair if your name was last as ALL big gifts were given to first names low in the alphabet order. Then Rick said if you did not pick the gift up by 18:00 then they close the doors. We stood in line to get gifts and MANY people were so mad.

Vendors like to be associated with the nice guys and make a big public splash of generosity but this looked very bad when Rick made 125 very angry. It looks very bad at the vendors but they are not the bad guy.
So many people saw this and were angry in line, talking about this big rip off.

I wish he was more fair than to just give the gifts base on the letter of your first name.

 

[diveborg]

Pretty serious accusation to make there. I'd like to hear Rick's side of the story before making any further comments about the treasure hunt.

I will say that I enjoyed the expo. I was there on Saturday.

 

[scubak]

I'd like to hear from some divers that were there and Ricks' side of the story.
Those are some pretty harsh accusations!
Kirsten

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Well, I wasn't involved in the Treasure Hunt ... but I WOULD like to give HUGE KUDOS to Rick Stratton and all the folks who worked so hard on the Expo.

This is the first year for this event ... although it's an outgrowth of the much smaller event they've been doing at Owens Beach for the past few years. But the show was way more than I was expecting ... and judging from the turnout it was an enormous success. I look forward to it becoming an annual event.

As for the above mentioned complaint, you have to realize that an event of this size takes massive effort to produce ... and there will always be things that somebody doesn't like, or that could have been done better. I have no doubt the organizers will be analyzing what went well, what didn't go so well, and will be working on ways to make it an even better event next year.

In the meantime, I'm gonna choose to focus on the most positive aspect of all ... this Dive Expo brought the Puget Sound area dive community together in a way that nothing ever has done since I took up diving.

Thank you Rick, and thanks to all the people who contributed to this event. It was an awesome experience ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[JackConnick]

I'd echo Bob's comments, and add that there's never enough big prizes for everyone. I think you should write Rick directly rather than flaming him here and tell him so that he can have a chance to improve it.

I'd add that this show will put the NW dive community "on the map" with the industry and get more attention and products focused on how we dive here. This is a tremendous shot int he arm to the PNW retail dive community. Divers need to understand that the vendors go to a tremendous amount of time and $$ to set up even a small booth. Showing your support to them is appreciated and will allow them to come back another year.

It was great to meet Howard and all the rest of the SBrs that came by the booth. I will be back next year!

Jack

 

[Pez7378]

I'd like to hear from some divers that were there and Ricks' side of the story.
Those are some pretty harsh accusations!
Kirsten

I was there Kirsten, and I don't have any complaints.

 

[wkyongae@aol.com]

Well, went Sat. early morning to miss the crowd glad I did as we left it appeared to be filling up very nicely. Had a very nice time. High light for me was meeting a very nice lady from ScubaBoard. Low point not much in the way of the sport of spearfishing or freediving for that matter. Bar aside all the resort locations that do offer snorkling packages and so on.

 

[stillhope]

I attended the film festival Saturday nite, and Rick did mention that he awarded prizes in some way that had to do with peoples' names -- I don't recall the details. He said he was aware that some people were unhappy, but it wasn't his fault -- he didn't give those people their names!

 

[USIA]

I too thought it was a raging success. So did almost every other vendor that I spoke with, especially some of the bigger vendors like Oceanic, Mares, DUI and Atomic. I know we will all be back next year. It was good to meet Howard as well. I think you will see this event grow into one of the bigger events in the country in the coming years.

As far as the Treasure Hunt being unfair, I have responded to this in a couple of other threads, but Rick and his crew did an outstanding job of organizing this event and I am sorry to see that a lot of people were unhappy with their prizes. I'm pretty sure that Rick will change the process next year. Dude had a million things on his plate and how he didn't go dingy is amazing to me.

 

[RSdiver]

One very sad problem is that the Treasure Hunt made over 125 Divers angry. For $35.00 Rick charged us we hoped to have a fair chance at all the prizes...

Dood,
get over it not everyone is going to win. You pay your $35 and take your chances.

I'd like to hear from some divers that were there and Ricks' side of the story.
Those are some pretty harsh accusations!
Kirsten

Yeah, I was there and did the dive with my DM. At the 5:30 prize announcement he actually figured it out first and said "hey, they're giving gifts in alphabetical order of the first name, it has nothing to do with the arbitrary golf ball number".
He became agitated and said he thought that the divers might backlash at his shop because they had been a gift donor. He didn't stick around and went back to his booth.
There were quite a number of people in the gift redemption line that were steaming mad. One lady had won the $200 Gift certificate from Backscatter and was pissed that she had given her extra golf ball to the kid who won the trip to the Phillipines - what a greedy lady (we were only supposed to take one golf ball underwater)

Later that evening at the Video presentation, Rick was speaking and admitted that was what he did, just awarded them in alphabetical order. Not fair but that is how it went down.

Yesterday my DM said that he's received several angry emails with claims that Rick gave the gifts as payback to his friends which seems unbelievable.