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GOOD LORD, PEOPLE! PEOPLE CAN DIE DOING THIS! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! ................
I know one thing for dang sure. We ought to all get together and fix training prices. I mean, it's not like scuba diving is a choice people make. It's like insurance and Bose radios, isn't it? Everybody has to do it. Right?
Price Fixing would be the case if retail dive shops or instructors themselves, and located within a particular geographic market; were to agree upon a minimum price offered for training at the end-user level. This is an illegal practice in the United States, and is not at all what I suggested in my comment.
What I referred to was for the training agencies, to require that retailers and instructors adhere to a MSRP minimum suggested retail pricing standard and that this be a condition of retaining their dealership status. This is quite another thing, and is a perfectly LEGAL practice which provides for the protection of brand-value. Before you start shooting your big mouth off to criticize, you best know what youre talking about.
And in fact.......people can and do get seriously injured, lost at sea, or dead..... doing this sport. If think otherwise, then please stay in your quarry with the other wannabees and don't get on my boat. I suggest you spend some time reading the DAN incident reports and statistics on diving injuries and deaths.
Furthermore, the insidious reason that the for-profit training agencies have NOT used a logical pricing stanard of practice (such as setting an MSRP for example); in an effort to protect the economic model of the industry; is because the FOR-PROFIT training agencies such as PADI (NAUI for example is NOT-FOR-PROFIT status), have since their inception; made their money NOT from providing training materials, value-added products, nor even from protecting their brand value (its quite the opposite in fact); but have instead made their money by perpetrating a fraudulent liability insurance scheme.
Particularly PADI, has been known for years, to have made huge commissions (kick-backs), on the over-inflated liability insurance policies sold to instructors and retail dive shops. For that reason, they have been financially incentivized to PUMP OUT as many instructor certifications as possible, to as many people as possible in order to maximize their take from insurance premiums paid annually by instructors. The agency makes far more money on this, than they do on the meager numbers of non-leadership certification fees that they are paid annually. It has become nothing more than a pyramid scheme.
In fact, they crank out so many instructors (a great many with less than a year of diving experience, and just 100 or so dives to their credit); that they have effectively flooded the market with far too many instructors than the actual market for non-leadership training can support (again; the purpose for which is to certify as many instructors as they can, to whom they can act as the exclusive broker in selling another companys liability insurance policy, whose exclusivity is a condition of status with PADI). PADI is in fact currently the defendant in a huge lawsuit against them, for their involvement in exactly this fraudulent and illegal practice.
What is clear, if one takes a look at the industry statistics; is that PADI for example, issues a total number of non-leadership certification cards annually; that equals fewer than 9 certifications for every ACTIVE PADI instructor certified. I cant speak for others, but trying to justify investing in an annual liability insurance policy and membership dues (together costing just about $1000 annually), in addition to equipment investment for one's self and one's students, as well as accepting the significant financial and safety risk to teach just 9 students per year at less than $200 each is not something that anyone in their right mind should sign up for.
Comment all you like, but I stand behind every word of my previous post, and your comparison to price-fixing only reveals your own ignorance. The training agencies have been ripping off the instructing and retail dive shop community for decades; both directly and indirectly; first by taking kick-backs from the insurance companies for whom they act as exclusive broker along with access-exclusivity agreements ( so that you cannot teach unless you buy exclusively THEIR insurance, and theirs only ); and secondly; by making the requirements, standards, and cost of initially becoming a certified instructor ridiculously cheap and easy; and thereby creating practically NO barrier to entry for that level of so-called leadership training. Theyve further destroyed any standard of practical value that can be offered by what should have been REAL professional instructors; by flooding the market with cheap, easy, low-standard training products for non-leadership level training, like on-line courses.
In the process, PADI has led the charge to completely diminish the real value that should be part of any SCUBA training, and has forced ALL training agencies, even those that held some vestige of honor and integrity by remaining NOT-FOR-PROFIT (such as NAUI), to follow suit and diminish their own standards to PADIs level, just to remain in existence.
It is THAT dynamic which is a shameful aspect of the recreational SCUBA industry. And as for the children.... you G***damn right, I will protect them from the stupidity of pinheads like you; with every fiber of my being.