Ministry Of Paintball Misselling Again.

[smelly pete]

This is diabolical, on Ebay M.O.P. are selling tickets to Paintball sites in the UK for wait for it......... £24.99 that would normally sell for............ wait for it £800
Now i know what you are thinking, would you buy anything that was about 7% of the market value and expect to get great value.

Then you got to pay £10 deposit on top of this and that gets you 100 Paintballs Free, whats the £10 for then?????? if the Paint is free.

First impressions count, so when new customers arrive and then have to pay extra for Paintballs, they will no doubt feel they are being ripped off.

They ripped off some of my customers in the past, Steer clear!.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/highburypaintballsales

 

[Iron Lions - Ed]

As I understand it M.O.P are a 3rd party booking agency. i.e they book customers for sites but have nothing to do with the sites.

I assume the £24.99 is walk on fee for the rental players which gets collected by the site when the rentals arrive. The £10 deposit is kept by M.O.P as a commission for getting the booking for the site and the site agrees to give the players 100 paintballs. (Costing the site under £1). In effect it costs sites £1 for each person M.O.P in for them. Im sure they make it back very quickly Somewhere about ball 130 I'd imagine including the first 100 being thrown in as part of the booking.

I'd imaging most sites would give a better price when approached directly but if M.O.P can find customers prepared to pay extra by using their agency good for them. Means punters being directed to sites due to M.O.P marketing which isn't such a bad thing.

 

[Liz]

The cost to the site is a bit more than just the bill for 100 paint - they still have to supply lunch in with that, any extra refs (1 for every 15 customers according to UKPSF guidelines), gas, overall cleaning, wear & tear etc. I think a site operator I know estimated that each Ministry customer has to shoot around 400 paid for balls for them to break even.

The biggest problem with Ministry of Paint is the salespeople, the same problem you sometimes get with Delta Force. These people know little about the sport & often don't even know the full terms & conditions of the tickets they are selling e.g. customers have been told when they ask that if anyone doesn't turn up then the rest of the group get their paint; also it's often indicated by the salespeople that you can get by on those 100 paint for the day. Give them their due, once the "booking fee" of a tenner has been paid the letter the organiser gets sent says that most people will use around 500 paint in a day, but many don't notice that!

 

[Iron Lions - Ed]

I was taking the cost of lunch,gas, cleaning,staff etc from the £24.99 walk on fee which the site pays for whether booked by Ministry or not.

The 100 balls is the only extra cost and that is made up quickly from 20-30 balls. In fact, if the punter had gone straight to the site they may have had 200 balls as part of the walk on fee....so the sites might be making more through the Ministy booking!

PS: I don't work for them! Just playing devil's advocate.

 

[Liz]

Ed, the site sees absolutely NOTHING of what is paid to the Ministry, none of the £10 "booking fee", none of the however much is paid for the tickets in the first place (£24.99 in the case you referred to) - every single penny of that goes to MoP. The site cover all the costs, and don't receive any money whatsoever until the customers buy extra paint.

 

[Iron Lions - Ed]

Oh well, fair enough then. Moral of the story. Work for M.O.P

 

[Jon S]

As Liz said, I work for a site that gets business through the M.O.P, though it isn't strictly out of choice! The situation is that M.O.P gives the site "bums on seats", the idea being that they'll shoot balls to make up for it. The other (hopeful) benefit is that when they come back, they'll book direct, in which case the site will get its own green fee.

M.O.P are nothing but self-promoted middle men, who have taken a gap in the market, by promoting paintball sites in the high street, on eBay etc...so they do provide a service and they do provide business to the sites, which is good, but they also take the lion's share of the money for little to no work! (Of course it takes work to do what they are doing, but it does take the piss considering they're getting rich off of other people's hard work and investment). They're essentially a glorified booking-office, and if the street sellers work on commission only (dont know if they do but it wouldnt surprise me) it means that there is little risk and lots of profit. Compare that to the site owner who may or may not get the amount of players turning up, and has all the costs associated with running a field to deal with. Like Liz also says, there is more to it than just the paint.

The only hope is that eventually word of mouth (hopefully positive word of mouth for the sites themselves, negative for M.O.P) will see them as having sucked the proverbial oil-well of clueless punters dry...it can only last for so long and I guess by then they'll have found some other big thing to cash in on.

So I'm a bit neutral on the issue...on the one hand they give my site work, which in turn gives me marshalling wages! On the other, they're pulling in heaps of cash which I feel is un-deserved.

 

[Liz]

The only hope is that eventually word of mouth (hopefully positive word of mouth for the sites themselves, negative for M.O.P) will see them as having sucked the proverbial oil-well of clueless punters dry...it can only last for so long and I guess by then they'll have found some other big thing to cash in on.

The supply of "clueless punters" is endless, there are always more people growing up. But for MoP the majority of their bookings seem to be foreign people (who mostly appear to be students by their very limited budget), and as such there are always new "victims" for their salespeople. Unfortunately for the sites, these aren't the kind of people who become repeat customers as they are often only in this country a few months.

 

[Beaker]

I lived in a shared house for a bit and a guy in the house fell victim to either MOP or Delta Force, can't remember which.

Considering a PGi staffer was in the next room you'd have thought he'd ask but apparently not. In the end I sent him towards Chuck for a good days balling.

 

[Jon S]

The supply of "clueless punters" is endless, there are always more people growing up. But for MoP the majority of their bookings seem to be foreign people (who mostly appear to be students by their very limited budget), and as such there are always new "victims" for their salespeople. Unfortunately for the sites, these aren't the kind of people who become repeat customers as they are often only in this country a few months.

Yeah, it could be wishful thinking / naive optimism on my part. Maybe I should join them or start my own agency...