Anchorage Daily News

Out $150,000 in trail grooming and Junior Nordic fees, the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage says it is unable to get an explanation from a Bellingham, Wash., company contracted to provide online collection of credit-card payments.

The ski association on Friday took the unusual step of warning club members by e-mail that the "money could be lost'' and suggesting they try to get their credit-card companies to act against "Count Me In,'' the operator of the Web site www.countmein.com.

"You may wish to contact your credit-card company customer service department and place your payment in dispute,'' the e-mail said.

Jeff Scott, president of the association's board, said the association is itself considering a lawsuit against Count Me In.

"We're talking with legal counsel right now,'' he said.

Both Scott and Diane Moxness, executive director of the association, were quick to add that the ski club has financial reserves big enough to make up for the loss and plans no cutbacks in Anchorage ski trail maintenance or other activities at this time.

The ski club grooms about 80 miles of winter trails in Anchorage and organizes a wide variety of events from ski races to youth-involvement programs. Next year, it is set to host the U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships from Jan. 3-8. Scott said the national ski championships will in no way be affected by the dispute with Count Me In -- a company that appears to be in serious financial trouble.

A New Jersey soccer association has already filed suit against Count Me In and its founder, Terry Drayton. In that suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle in early November, Montclair United claims it is owed $142,000 in fees collected by Count Me In but never forwarded to the soccer association.

The suit claims that two members of the nonprofit's board talked to Drayton by telephone on Oct. 7 and that Drayton "acknowledged that at least $210,000 was due ... but stated that Count Me In did not have available funds to pay the full amount owed.''

Slightly more than $67,000 was paid to Montclair a couple days later, according to the suit, but the soccer association says it has not seen a penny of the remaining $142,000 it is owed.

About the time Montclair was starting to actively demand its share of money collected by Count Me In over the course of the summer, the Anchorage ski club was just starting to amp up its fee collection for the winter.

"We flipped the switch on Oct. 1,'' Moxness said. "We used them last season and didn't have any problems.''

In fact, Scott said, the association had used countmein.com to collect fees for three years without a hitch.

Normally, Moxness said, the ski club gets a prompt notification as to who has paid for cross-country trail fees and membership followed by a check a couple weeks later with the ski club's portion of the fees. The club was notified of early October sign-ups but didn't immediately start to see checks as in the past.

Concern grew by the week.

"We were expecting a check by about the end of October,'' Moxness said.

It never came. So she started trying to reach Count Me In.

"You usually deal with them with e-mails,'' she said, "(but) we didn't get any response.''

So Moxness began calling and kept calling. When she finally got someone on the phone, she said, she was told the company was having financial difficulties, "and they'd pay us next week.''

Using that tactic, the company managed to put the ski club off through the month of November. Eventually, though, it became clear, Scott said, that what had been a reliable company in past years wasn't reliable anymore.

At that point, he added, "we shut them off as quickly as we could."

Count Me In could not be reached for comment. A machine answered the company's phone line. A message left on the machine was not returned.

Though the ski club has a strong constituency from which to summon legal help -- it sometimes appears half the lawyers in Anchorage are active nordic skiers -- Scott confessed he's not optimistic about getting the group's money back.

"It doesn't look good now,'' he said. "It's going to be interesting to see how deep this goes. There are a number of other organizations around the country that are using this company. We know that there was another sports organization in Anchorage that was using them.''

That organization, which Scott refused to name, has stopped using Count Me In, he added. A quick, online Google search found a significant number of ski, baseball, lacrosse and soccer teams across the country that appear to using www.countmein.com or had been.

One of the latter was the Fairbanks Youth Soccer Association, which still has a link on its home page but has posted a note saying "Do (sic) to online registration difficulties we are only accepting paper applications.'' The Ketchikan Youth Soccer League home page also has a link, but like Fairbanks, the organization now appears to be accepting registration and payments only in written form.

The Boeing Employees Ski & Snowboard Club, however, linked to www.countmein.com, as did baseball and lacrosse programs in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Scott said it's hard to tell how many clients the company has.

Moxness said Anchorage residents who paid trail fees online or signed their children up for the Junior Nordic program using Count Me In won't be held responsible for paying the fees again.

"We're honoring their memberships and their child's Junior Nordic,'' she said. "We're solvent. We've had the foresight of our board to put away some reserves in case of a bad snow year or something happening. We're going to be able to continue our operations. Hopefully, no one will notice anything'' at the operational level on the trails.

"We're going to be out there grooming,'' she said.

The ski association, Moxness said, will instead increase its fundraising efforts and try to encourage all skiers to pay the volunteer trail-use fee that covers the cost of grooming.

And if someone paid fees online and wants to pay the association again because Count Me In kept the money, she said the association will be happy to accept the money.

"Our members have always been very generous,'' she said.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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