Mr 4 styles
Forum Master
i just requested the prices for a comp coming in march got the price list within 40 minutes! you simply have to state in your email ( not a call) that you do the booking for the comp .. they want your business!!
Is Pro Am becoming a sport of only the wealthy?
- Thread starter debmc
- Start date
Mr 4 styles
Forum Master
then the password protected package prices become an unncessesary hassle to deal with and I can understand why people get upset.
it takes 15 seconds to shoot them an email requesting the prices
and there will never be a travelocity for comps solo....
it takes 15 seconds to shoot them an email requesting the prices
and there will never be a travelocity for comps solo....
Mr 4 styles
Forum Master
Cal..i have just as easily gotten prices for a comp when dancing am/am only or both pro/am and am/am or pro /am only you just have to ask in the manner mentioned by me earlier
snapdancer
Forum Master
I believe that the service being sold to the consumer is participation in a dance competition with a pro. Nothing in the law requires that the component prices your vendor pays be itemized for you. Try this: go to MacDonald's and ask what the price is for the pickle they put on your hamburger, or the squirt of special secret sauce they put on your Big Mac.
But if you were required to pay a fee to your companion, who must eat with you every time you eat, would it not he smart to know what McDonald's charges for their pickles or buns, or the whole burger? Maybe Wendy's burgers are more cost-efficient for you (notice I didn't sat cheaper). The fee to your companion is the same regardless of where you eat, but why is everyone acting like it is none of my business what the cost of a burger is or can't seem to understand why in the world I would find it useful to know this or to compare burgers?
Why is that, though? I'm curious...why is it assumed that a person is going to compete with a pro? Is that because that's how it is most of the time?
If I'm put in the position of having to ask the organizer for prices, usually I get a favorable response. But not always.
I'm wondering if part of the disconnect here is entering a franchise competition versus entering an independent competition. If you're entering a franchise competition, then the Pro is an employee of the franchise and then the franchise *is* providing both the organizational services AND the Pro's labor to the student - and it might be easier to lump things together and hide the component service costs.
But if I'm entering an independent competition, the organizer is providing only the organizational services to me; the organizer is not providing a Pro for me. My Pro is not an employee of the organizer, and my Pro provides his services entirely separately from the organizer's services. So, in that case, I'm dealing with two separate service providers, each pricing their own costs.
No... I think if you are going to make that analogy....ask a coworker to pick up a burger for you. Meanwhile you look at the McDonalds price list and you know how much you owe them for that burger.
To get an idea of the dynamics that go into all of this from the organizers point of view….. Very nice guy who happens to be a coach and a comp organizer w/ comp located near enough to me that I was going to go spectate even though I wasn't competing was doing coaching sessions at my studio. There is a very nice dinner at the comp that is a charity fund raiser. Nice guy coach comp organizer mentions the dinner--basically doing his best to market it because why have a fundraiser dinner if you don't market it? At some point, I ask how much the dinner is…nice guy coach comp organizer hesitates, perhaps glances over at my pro, and I finally realize that he is leery of stating price because he doesn't know how my pro wants to handle it…or if pro wants to/can attend himself…or who knows what else. Here are some interesting points (if you have followed the story so far):
1. All of the information was freely available on the website!!! This tells me that there are enough pro/am students who never even look at comp sites that nice guy comp organizer had no idea what kind of a minefield he would be stepping into if he stated the price.
2. I hadn't done any NDCA comps at that point and hadn't had much experience attending "events" such as a dinner with a pro. It was only because of threads on here that I understood what was going on. And honestly, without what I had learned from here, my initial reaction would have been, "what do you mean I'm going to a charity dinner and I'm expected to pay for pros time…oh, as an ESCORT…WHAT??????" Because of what I had learned on here, I saw it differently. (For the record, pro did not make income from it--it was a charity event and all money paid by students went to charity).
Actual events are off-topic, but…. We did go to the dinner, I was horrified that he kept on asking me to dance…it was an embarrassing crowd to be dancing in front of…when the dancing started, we were the first couple on the floor. (Pro was just trying to do his part to be a good party guest and get the dancing started… I was mortified. Fortunately other people joined in quickly.
) The floor eventually became quite crowded and during one dance he suddenly snatched me back in, saying, "you probably don't want to step on the organizer of the Ohio Star Ball." (Since I was slightly unnerved by the whole thing, my following was not necessarily at its best…even for low-key party dancing…) Truly, it was a wonderful dinner, for a very good cause that I was happy to contribute towards…. Can you tell how uncomfortable I was??? Not to mention, I don't really like to do black tie….
1. All of the information was freely available on the website!!! This tells me that there are enough pro/am students who never even look at comp sites that nice guy comp organizer had no idea what kind of a minefield he would be stepping into if he stated the price.
2. I hadn't done any NDCA comps at that point and hadn't had much experience attending "events" such as a dinner with a pro. It was only because of threads on here that I understood what was going on. And honestly, without what I had learned from here, my initial reaction would have been, "what do you mean I'm going to a charity dinner and I'm expected to pay for pros time…oh, as an ESCORT…WHAT??????" Because of what I had learned on here, I saw it differently. (For the record, pro did not make income from it--it was a charity event and all money paid by students went to charity).
Actual events are off-topic, but…. We did go to the dinner, I was horrified that he kept on asking me to dance…it was an embarrassing crowd to be dancing in front of…when the dancing started, we were the first couple on the floor. (Pro was just trying to do his part to be a good party guest and get the dancing started… I was mortified. Fortunately other people joined in quickly.
) The floor eventually became quite crowded and during one dance he suddenly snatched me back in, saying, "you probably don't want to step on the organizer of the Ohio Star Ball." (Since I was slightly unnerved by the whole thing, my following was not necessarily at its best…even for low-key party dancing…) Truly, it was a wonderful dinner, for a very good cause that I was happy to contribute towards…. Can you tell how uncomfortable I was??? Not to mention, I don't really like to do black tie….
Joe
Forum Master
Yes, but the two biggies are NDCA members.
JudeMorrigan
Forum Master
I think the food analogies are inherently flawed. Dance competitions are not hamburgers. (Ok, that wasn't exactly profound of me. 
) I think I am going to try to explain why I think so by attempting to answer the "why would anyone need the information anyways" question.
My instructor is an actively competing pro. I've never say down and tallied up how many competitions she's done over the course of a given year, but I'm pretty sure it's north of 20. There's a certain core set that she does each and every year, but there's a good bit of variation in the rest. Furthermore, she only rarely has a student travel to competitions with her. It's not that she isn't delighted to have them do so (she frequently tells me how much she wishes I could compete more often), she just doesn't have any students with tour-winning type resources. (Which, in fairness, may well be intentional. I don't know as that would be none of my business.)
Anyways, when she sends her schedule out roughly quarterly, the clear implication is that it's for our reference as far as when she will and won't be in town for lessons. Certainly, I tell her what competitions I want to do. With the exception of the two local comps, she certainly doesn't come to me with any sort of "Ok, Comp X is coming up. I'm starting to put together the invoices. Do you want one?"
All these things combine for a few things:
1) When I mull my competition schedule, I start with the yearly view of the NDCA calendar
2) I look without an a priori knowledge of what my pro's schedule is going to be. (Plus, if there were one I really want to do, she's shown a willingness to try to work to make that happen.)
3) I look at far more different competitions than I could possibly actually do.
A concrete example: I intend to do Ohio this year. That's no problem at all - that's one of those aforementioned core comps she does every year. But, it's Ohio, so I feel like I should have a more aggressive competition schedule this year than I have in the past. I consider Starz a no-brainer addition to my schedule. In a perfect world, I'd like to do two additional comps. Probably one in the March-April time frame and the other late-summer to early fall. But ... I may only be able to justify one additional comp. That'd probably be earlier in the summer. If I wanted to try to plan things out purely based on "I can either afford the "retail" price or not", I'd have to go to my pro with a "Mmm, yeah. If you could make me invoices for all the comps you might do from March to early October, that'd be greaaat. And I'm going to need you to come in Saturday and fill out these TPS reports. Yeah...."
I hope it's intuitively obviously that that would be stupid and obnoxious of me. On the other hand, if comps listed their prices, I could work out most of the price of the comps myself without having to pester anyone else. Granted, there's not *that* much variation in price from comp to comp and I don't dance all that many heats. But $50 here, $50 there, pretty soon you're starting to talk about real money.
That said ...
while that's all 100% true, I think there's another factor that contributes to why some students like to see as full a price breakdown as possible. Competitive dancesport is expensive. And pro-am is the most expensive format of it that there is. For the vast majority of PASD's, it's easily the largest discretionary expenditure of the budget. For some, it's even bigger than their mortgage.
That's scary. Frankly, it can be terrifying. Particularly given that it IS purely a hobby for most dancers. I honestly beleive that a lot of it is that, even given well-respected instructors where there's no susicion at all of shenanigans and no desire for any sort of haggling, having that price breakdown makes the dancer feel more in-control of their finances. Even where it makes absolutely no practical difference. Whether the emotional difference is worth catering to is probably something that's entirely subjective.
But it IS qualitatively different than buying a hamburger.
) I think I am going to try to explain why I think so by attempting to answer the "why would anyone need the information anyways" question.My instructor is an actively competing pro. I've never say down and tallied up how many competitions she's done over the course of a given year, but I'm pretty sure it's north of 20. There's a certain core set that she does each and every year, but there's a good bit of variation in the rest. Furthermore, she only rarely has a student travel to competitions with her. It's not that she isn't delighted to have them do so (she frequently tells me how much she wishes I could compete more often), she just doesn't have any students with tour-winning type resources. (Which, in fairness, may well be intentional. I don't know as that would be none of my business.)
Anyways, when she sends her schedule out roughly quarterly, the clear implication is that it's for our reference as far as when she will and won't be in town for lessons. Certainly, I tell her what competitions I want to do. With the exception of the two local comps, she certainly doesn't come to me with any sort of "Ok, Comp X is coming up. I'm starting to put together the invoices. Do you want one?"
All these things combine for a few things:
1) When I mull my competition schedule, I start with the yearly view of the NDCA calendar
2) I look without an a priori knowledge of what my pro's schedule is going to be. (Plus, if there were one I really want to do, she's shown a willingness to try to work to make that happen.)
3) I look at far more different competitions than I could possibly actually do.
A concrete example: I intend to do Ohio this year. That's no problem at all - that's one of those aforementioned core comps she does every year. But, it's Ohio, so I feel like I should have a more aggressive competition schedule this year than I have in the past. I consider Starz a no-brainer addition to my schedule. In a perfect world, I'd like to do two additional comps. Probably one in the March-April time frame and the other late-summer to early fall. But ... I may only be able to justify one additional comp. That'd probably be earlier in the summer. If I wanted to try to plan things out purely based on "I can either afford the "retail" price or not", I'd have to go to my pro with a "Mmm, yeah. If you could make me invoices for all the comps you might do from March to early October, that'd be greaaat. And I'm going to need you to come in Saturday and fill out these TPS reports. Yeah...."
I hope it's intuitively obviously that that would be stupid and obnoxious of me. On the other hand, if comps listed their prices, I could work out most of the price of the comps myself without having to pester anyone else. Granted, there's not *that* much variation in price from comp to comp and I don't dance all that many heats. But $50 here, $50 there, pretty soon you're starting to talk about real money.
That said ...
while that's all 100% true, I think there's another factor that contributes to why some students like to see as full a price breakdown as possible. Competitive dancesport is expensive. And pro-am is the most expensive format of it that there is. For the vast majority of PASD's, it's easily the largest discretionary expenditure of the budget. For some, it's even bigger than their mortgage.
That's scary. Frankly, it can be terrifying. Particularly given that it IS purely a hobby for most dancers. I honestly beleive that a lot of it is that, even given well-respected instructors where there's no susicion at all of shenanigans and no desire for any sort of haggling, having that price breakdown makes the dancer feel more in-control of their finances. Even where it makes absolutely no practical difference. Whether the emotional difference is worth catering to is probably something that's entirely subjective.
But it IS qualitatively different than buying a hamburger.
Ah - so independent-franchise-affiliated studios now give their students the option of bringing in their own independent Pro when the student attends an independent-franchise-affiliated competition? I didn't realize that. (It's been quite a while since I did one and at that time it was a "closed" competition only for students of the studio, and the studio supplied the organization services and the labor - I had no choice to bring in an outside Pro.)
But, *I* would still want to know the cost of each heat, and the cost of the studio supplying one of their employees as my Pro versus the cost of me bringing in my own independent Pro.
FancyFeet
Forum Master
Jude, wish I could like your post twice!!!
In order to set my schedule for this year, I looked at 16 different competitions - their prices, their venue, who entered last year, the schedule, and what their requirements for scholarship were - and pro's planned schedule. As I already now what and how my pro charges, with this info I was able to build both a schedule and budget for the year. I am so glad that information on pricing for 15 of the 16 comps was readily available online (though admittedly, much of it was 2014 data as we are still way out for most of them), as asking pro to participate in my crazy need to plan just doesn't seem fair. He gets my need to do it, and sees the results... but trust me, he did not need to be involved in the hours of research and list-making.
Edited to add: To clarify, will not be dancing anywhere close to 16 comps... if I'm really careful with dance and everything else, I can do 4.
In order to set my schedule for this year, I looked at 16 different competitions - their prices, their venue, who entered last year, the schedule, and what their requirements for scholarship were - and pro's planned schedule. As I already now what and how my pro charges, with this info I was able to build both a schedule and budget for the year. I am so glad that information on pricing for 15 of the 16 comps was readily available online (though admittedly, much of it was 2014 data as we are still way out for most of them), as asking pro to participate in my crazy need to plan just doesn't seem fair. He gets my need to do it, and sees the results... but trust me, he did not need to be involved in the hours of research and list-making.
Edited to add: To clarify, will not be dancing anywhere close to 16 comps... if I'm really careful with dance and everything else, I can do 4.