Well that's a good point. In every profession there are some incompetent people, from police to politicians, from professors to priests... and yes, some carpenters and some regulator techs.
Normally the industry will filter them out but it doesn't always work that way. My conviction, however, is that without regular practice, my chances of making a mistake are about on par with the worst of the worst.... and if I won't trust my regs to the worst of the worst, then I shouldn't be doing them myself either.
If you believe otherwise then I would advise you to research the Dunning-Kruger effect. What it basically says is that people who are incompetent and unaware of their incompetence are much more likely to overestimate and/or over state their skills and qualifications than actual experts. You can see multiple demonstrations of the Dunning-Kruger effect every time you turn on the evening news so you don't need to look far to understand how it works.
That said, you are right about one thing. You MUST be critical because you want your regs to be serviced by someone you trust and it's true that you can't trust everyone.
R..
The problem I have with that is I have no way of knowing how much care they're putting into my regs unless I watch them, which likely isn't an option because if I follow someone around for a couple of hours they're probably going to call the cops, and on average, servicing my regs (at least around here) has taken two weeks to a month. The stories I have heard about the LDS that I referenced before are from a family member (of the shop owner) that I believe and trust, and that's about as far as I'm going to go with that.
I don't have a "local" option that I can trust. My regs have come back working perfectly fine from another LDS about an hour away, but that shop has unfortunately shut down, so now my option is to learn it myself or drive three hours away. (Risking sending an entire reg set through Canada's mail system isn't something I'm prepared to do right now, especially since I have nobody to check on them to make sure they work when they get back to me.) I prefer to learn myself. And I'd be willing to drive to take a course or two. Why am I okay with that?
1. I learn fast. Damn fast. I've taught myself tons of stuff by reading print or online. That said, I'm also mechanically inclined and I have most of the tools that are listed above.
2. This is MY life support equipment. I'm obviously more invested in it, even more invested than someone who has worked on a pile of them. If I screw up, it's my life we're talking about. Not some customer's life. Mine. If you screw up my life support equipment and I die as a result, maybe you get sued by my estate or you get bad PR and have to close down or maybe you just lose a little business and have to lay off an employee or two. I get DEAD. And I paid you for it. Maybe I'm just jaded because I live in a landlocked province that has bowls of chicken noodle soup to dive in and there aren't a ton of dive shops around and I'm forced to deal with people that I don't trust fully....who knows. I'm still fairly new to diving, so I don't know all of the local dive scene yet, and I'm still a fairly new customer. For those of you that live in more diving-friendly areas, you probably get to deal with great dive shops because there's a ton of local competition, so everyone has to be on their A-game, so maybe more care is exercised. Around here, not so much competition and it's a bit more exclusive.
That said, I still haven't decided what maker to go with. The Apeks regs that I'm considering are in central Alberta, which is about a 9 hour drive from where I live, so checking them over or having someone more experienced look at them isn't an option for me. They were recently serviced, but then again I have no idea what that dive shop is like, so I'm not fully comfortable making the purchase. Might feel more comfortable if I knew someone that could service Apeks stuff, but my buddy only has training for Aqua Lung gear. I have decided that I'm going to go with something new, and I'll probably pick up a singles setup on a long hose and a sidemount setup from the same company when I go that route (probably next-year country now....we're buying a house this year.)
