Why Crystal sux

I can't believe any person would suggest not skiing at Crystal because of bad ownership....DUDE they have terrain. Go ski it and hate the management.Don't wait for a company to care about your cheap pass.

Are you kidding me?? The dollars (all 800 of them for a seasons (p)ass reaming) you spend are your only voice. I NEVER have/will pay for a pass at Crystal because the local management runs the hill very poorly (with the exception of paying patrol more than other hills). I don't think it's Boyne either.... I've had exceptional experiences at thier other facilities.

When you complain about not getting the help or responses you deserve, consider my experiences with Microsoft. Do you know how much I want to chuck my dell running Vista out the window.... with my blackjack running Windows mobile attached!! For a year I have been trying to get everything to work properly and I have given up!! Our office is switching to Mac because with over 100 verified emails to Microsoft, NOT ONE RESPONSE!! not even a "dude, we're working on it" and our company has a lot more invested than 1 season pass. Maybe one of you Microsoft folks could PM me and help out.... earn the dollars you are making while you read my rant at 11am on a weekday.

---For the record, management and marketing are very different games and I fully support the marketing presence on this forum, it's a brilliant idea and it seems like change has begun to happen.----

Getting back to the original topic of this thread...

At Crystal on Saturday 2/2/08 there were two, count 'em, 2 staff people at each of the busy lifts making sure that chairs were full. They were fairly forceful, which I'm happy about because some people are either a bit off mentally or they don't know how to count. Rarely saw a chair go up that wasn't full... secondarily, I saw people getting aggravated for being forced to fill chairs!

Oh, and the singles lines were dumping right into the front of the main merge point. Maybe they read your letter after all Keith_Henson.

Puffy, Cardog et al-

What is poorly run at Crystal and why do you think all management cares about are profits?

Complaints about empty chairs being loaded were made earlier and Crystal has re-arranged the singles lines to fix the problem. As a former Crystal employee (snowmaking crew) and someone who loves the heck out of the experience that mountain provides, I don't get it and unless the problems are clearly articulated I can't imagine that Crystal is going to get anything out of it either.

It is great that we have a voice and that Crystal is listening, but if there are only vague complaints such as, "management runs the hill very poorly" and "pursues profit with NO regard for their clients" are pretty hard to address. If I put myself in their shoes, I'd probably be thinking that those dirtbags are just going to park in our lot, skin up East Peak, and then drink beer and eat nachos at the Snotty Ungulate, why should I care?

With the winter we're currently having, I'm really finding it hard to complain about anything except that I've only been out with white fever once---so far.

best to all!

JCK, We all - well, most of us - enjoy the terrain there quite a bit and spend copious amounts of money to do so (perhaps lending to our sense that - call me crazy - as paying customers we have a right to voice our concerns about what we get (or don't) for those copious amounts of money). A little judicious searching through older threads might answer your questions regarding specificity. There are, ahem, several of them.

Puffy, Cardog et al-

What is poorly run at Crystal and why do you think all management cares about are profits?

Complaints about empty chairs being loaded were made earlier and Crystal has re-arranged the singles lines to fix the problem. As a former Crystal employee (snowmaking crew) and someone who loves the heck out of the experience that mountain provides, I don't get it and unless the problems are clearly articulated I can't imagine that Crystal is going to get anything out of it either.

It is great that we have a voice and that Crystal is listening, but if there are only vague complaints such as, "management runs the hill very poorly" and "pursues profit with NO regard for their clients" are pretty hard to address. If I put myself in their shoes, I'd probably be thinking that those dirtbags are just going to park in our lot, skin up East Peak, and then drink beer and eat nachos at the Snotty Ungulate, why should I care?

With the winter we're currently having, I'm really finding it hard to complain about anything except that I've only been out with white fever once---so far.

best to all!

As oftpiste correctly points out, the issues that some of us have w/ Crystal - or more accurately w/ Boyne USA - have indeed been clearly articulated.

s a threshold matter it is an issue of simple courtesy, let alone good business, to answer the emails of your clients/customers. Boyne USA has ignored perhaps half a dozen of my emails over the course of the past several seasons. My questions this season concerned what I consider to be a bait-and-switch re: use of my Crystal pass at Big Sky. I was completely ignored by Boyne USA when I raised the issue. That experience was, for me, yet another reason why Crystal - or more appropriately Boyne USA - sux.

Let's not confuse the mountain, the employees, the terrain, this season's pow, or anything else on the hill, w/ the way Crystal's management, Boyne USA, treats their meal-tickets; we the Crystal skiers and riders. At best we are taken for granted. Often we are ignored. Sometimes we are, arguably, cheated; as was the case w/ our inability to use our pass at Big Sky. Hence the application of "SUX" to Crystal.

I'd love to know how many pass holders would take their business elsewhere if there were an alternative mountain, w/ similar terrain, within the same driving distance from their home as Crystal? In fact I'll start that informal, admittedly unscientific poll, on another thread.

Cardog & Oft-

All I'm suggesting is that if you've got a beef, now is a good time to state it since Crystal *may* still be reading this thread. I don't have time or interest to judiciously sort through 7+ pages of posts in random tracks to figure out your complaints and I don't think Crystal/Boyne are going to do that either----life is too short.

Sorry to hear that Boyne ignored your e-mails. In a perfect world, everyone would read, understand and respond to all e-mail, but that simply isn't the case. Can you imagine what it is like to sort through Crystal/Boyne's general complaint in-box on a daily basis? I've always had better luck when I sign & stamp complaints---e-mail is a great medium for some things, but not so good for others.

Personally, I think it is pretty nice that Crystal read this thread and has already responded to an issue that was first raised here on January 21st, but maybe that is just me.

best to all---