Since this whole thing began a couple of years ago we have dealt with many different companies and people. The interactions have been concerning matters from sponsorship to media to shipping of vehicles. As I have stated in some previous entries, many of these interactions have been far less than satisfactory.
When we have our hands out to sponsors and media, it is easy to understand why they are not getting back to us. However, some of the people we contact work at places that we trying to spend money with, and sometimes it is very large sums of money. For us to ship the vehicles it took over a month to just get a quote, for insurance we generally cannot get a response at all, instead we have to call them over and over.
It is extremely frustrating when you have to bang someone’s door down to get them to take YOUR money. Our new friend Shane at A1 Scuba is exactly the opposite of all this. We have been trying to get A1 Scuba on board as a sponsor for quite a while. They help us get our certifications for scuba and helped us out with a few of the costs. We always wanted them on board as we have had a commitment to get local sponsors on board from the beginning to keep a tie to home.
Everyone there has been good to us, but since we started working with Shane, things have been nothing but great. We met him about a month before we left and he agreed to up the level of help that we were getting from A1- he agreed to get us some of the scuba gear that we needed. All we were really asking for was a couple of sets of fins and a few other simple pieces of gear. Since A1 is a small business we knew that we could not ask for too much from them.
After an afternoon talking with Shane he agreed that he would contact the gear companies and get them to sponsor us through A1. As he proceeded to work on this for us, he ran into some trouble and ended up with no companies interested in getting on board. Shane gave me a call and told me the news and I appreciated his efforts and figured that we could at least get a discount on the gear from A1. To my surprise, he told me that A1 would still get us the gear on their tab because he did not want to go back on our agreement.
The gear is now on the way to us in Australia and the bag has at least double the amount of gear promised neatly packed and ready to go. Shane did not fulfill the original agreement, he went far above and beyond. This is the way business should be done. Enough said.
Thanks a ton Shane.
You can go to the A1 Scuba website and purchase all kinds of great products from their site, learn more about Scuba, get certified, and even dive in the Shark tanks at he aquarium in Denver. Support their shop, they are good people.
