shock horror!

[Gassy]

Then there is the other side of the coin.

The independent site
just outside Selby is amazing,the staff in the office are very polite,the marshalling is normally 1st class with plenty of marshals per group that goes into the fields.The masks are decent and if you do have fogging problems they will swop out your mask or give you some anti fog spray.
The markers work extremely well (infernos)and are stripped,cleaned and lubed after every days play.Marshals carry spare markers into the field so should a problem arise they cannot fix then they swop your marker out there and then so your game is not interupted.

Don't judge every site from one bad experience and it is ashame people don't come back to paintball after a visit to deltaforce

 

[H]

I'm interested in knowing what site it was....

I'm thinking about organising a punter day for some work friends soon.

 

[Ali]

punter ball is terribleeeeeeeeeeeeee! though it is how i started off..
last time i played punter ball was at centre parcs with the cousins, worst bit of money ive ever spent!
by the time you've walked out of the safe zone you couldnt see your own hands through the lens!

 

[Ali]

and as for DF, thats where i started off back in 06, i found it nothing but brilliant help and advise wise! if it wasnt for the lads at DF i wouldnt of got into proper ball.

well i would of but would of bin more difficult

 

[3L1TE hax]

I've always liked Campaign opposite DF in cobham.. went Delta Force once, went campaign the next time, have never been back to deltaforce again and i only recommend campaign if people are asking...

 

[Robbo]

I think it quite amusing that DF's hard sell paintball at malls etc [as we all know] is a curious model because if they sat down and thought about their approach for a while, it wouldn't take long to work out why they have to spend soo much money paying spotty students who know fuhk all about our sport to sell their brand of paintball in malls etc ...

All they have to do drastically cut this expense is take better care of their customer base and then this would mean they hang onto a lot more of their customers than lose punters at the rate they do because of poor customer service .... the more players who like the product means the less they have to market their business to replace their somewhat unnatural wastage ... Buisness101 you'd think but then again, how many real business people are in our sport?
Not many I care to bet .. we get the guys who look to make a quick buck and end up hanging around because our industry allows for people with not much going on upstairs to make a living ... sad but true I'm afraid

You've only got to go and look at some well-run sites to see what's possible and if anybody wants to know them, I don't mind supplying a few names ... in fact, didn't we have an idea some time back where we were gonna have a forum where people were credited for good sites and condemned for bad ?
My memory is cr@p, I'm sure one of my mods will remind me of what was suggested

 

[Buddha 3]

So, DF is great at recruitment, but terrible at retention...

Imagine what would happen to paintball if you had a company that was good at both.

 

[Missy-Q]

So, DF is great at recruitment, but terrible at retention...

Imagine what would happen to paintball if you had a company that was good at both.

It's a management issue. Ivan knows the game (he played for the Turks back in the day) and is an all-round nice guy. The guy he bought DF from was a different story, and may of the bad press DF gets is a result of the early 'Duncan-days'. I can tell you that they used to buy new equipment all the time, far more often than your average field, so they do invest in their gear at least. A problem for them was that they use a lot of paint, and typically want to buy it as cheaply as possible, so they often end up with paint that perhaps isn't the best...

If they had solid remote management staff they would do a lot better, but if the majority of their managers have little or nothing invested in the experience of their customers then this is unlikely to change.
However, field owners who complain about the quality of experience offered by DF should definitely be careful what they wish for.

 

[Robbo]

Jay, that was the point I was raising above, it seems ludicrous to me the non DF sites haven't got together, even if say a dozen of them did and targeted lucrative demographic areas such as London, Brum, Manchester, Liverpool and so on .... all it needs is someone who can think outside the paintball box and get off his ass and do it ..... easy said and relatively easy done once you get going but still, we see no evidence of it anywhere.

I'm sure if Niall from Campaign, Ged from NPF, Barry from Phoenix and a few more guys got together, this in itself would attract the others, well some others at least anyway. It's all about creating a critical mass and once you've done that, it kinda generates its own momentum ....

 

[ses_paintball]

Mayhem is an independent site that springs to mind and its honestly the best site ive ever played at for a rec day. Staff are all clued up and never ever under staffed for games. If anything overstaffed.