Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[Angelo Farina]

I see more and more shops forming 'clubs'. Which are in reality a captive audience for the shop to sell more courses.

In reality many clubs make some agreement with a local shop. Often run by one of their members.
This allows for price discounts and is not a bad thing.
If the courses are organised by the club, at small prices and using volunteer (unpaid) instructors, there is not any conflict of interest.
Of course there are also intermediate cases, which should be evaluated case by case.
During my career, there was a moment when during winter I was a volunteer unpaid instructor at my local club. We had a preferred shop, run by my former instructor. He also was operating as an unpaid instructor in the club.
During summer I was working instead as a professional (paid) instructor in holiday resorts.
Of course there were potential conflicts of interest, both for me and for my former instructor who was a shop owner.
But we tried to manage them as fairly as possible, and no club member or shop customer did ever complain.
Money is not evil. It just needs to be properly managed.

 

[Edward3c]

In reality many clubs make some agreement with a local shop. Often run by one of their members.
This allows for price discounts and is not a bad thing.
If the courses are organised by the club, at small prices and using volunteer (unpaid) instructors, there is not any conflict of interest.
Of course there are also intermediate cases, which should be evaluated case by case.
During my career, there was a moment when duringvwinter I was a volunteer unaid instructir at my local club. We had a preferred shop, run by my former instructor. He also was operating as an unpaid instructor in the club.
During summer I was wotking instead as a professional (paid) instructor in holiday resorts.
Of course there were potential conflicts of interest, both for me and for my former instructor who was a shop owner.
But we tried to manage them as fairly as possible, and no club member or shop customer did ever complain.
Money is not evil. It just needs to be properly managed.

That's not the type of shop 'club' I'm on about. These are set up by the LDS to take former students, and others, out diving (at exorbitant prices), whilst marketing the next course. Or even running training sessions on recreational trips.

The three PADI/SSI shops in my area all have these 'clubs'.

 

[Still Kicking]

If you are fortunate enough to live in an area with local diving, book a spot on a dive boat and study your fellow passengers. Look for the ones who are squared away both on the boat and especially underwater.

Between dives, strike up a conversation and ask for their recommendations on local instruction.

 

[Searcaigh]

Cmas/Bsac OW courses organised by clubs in UK and EU include everything, it is like Padi OW+AOW+Nitrox+Rescue plus other 3 or 4 specialties. We even teach deco procedures...
And the cost of such course is usually less than 100 eur (but you must first become a club member, which can cost other 100 eur).
Instructors are unpaid volunteers.
This is an entirely different world than Padi or other US-based for-profit agencies, shops and paid instructors.
But, as said, I am not in the position of judging those for-profit methods.
As a parent, after training for 10 years our sons with the Cmas methods, we still did find useful to have them certified OW and AOW in Padi courses.
Although you cannot see the benefit, I ensure you that a Padi instructor can provide some useful knowledge, even during the "platter of specialities" of an AOW course.

PADI is probably one major reason why SCUBA diving is so popular today and for that reason manufacturers of SCUBA gear have had a larger target population than say back in the 50s and 60s when this hobby was just taking off.

If PADI and other non-club agencies had not started and the world was taught by clubs only, then gear would be even more expensive than it is today due to less people diving and the cost of manufacturing to an even smaller population of divers than it is today.

This is all I did. Paid for the card, got the cert without a single dive.

Nice of you to own up that you are a fraudster

“It’s all about the instructor”
This is all you hear.
Tell us all how a newbie or someone unfamiliar with diving and dive instruction is supposed to know who a good instructor is or how to find one.
What, ask the shop? Do you think they are going to tell you that their instructors suck?
Ask other divers? What if they don’t know any other divers? What if all the other divers they know suck and were instructed by sucky instructors?
All of you make it sound so simple and almost go as far as saying it’s the students fault for not doing their homework.
Clue: THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING FOR!!! THEY’RE NEW!!!
Imagine how it makes someone feel when after they take a course they come here and explain that they think they might have not had the best course. People pile on and rant and rave about this and that, how they got screwed, turn them in!, blah blah blah. By that time the place already got their money and the student had no idea what they were sold. And then all they hear is “it’s the instructor not the agency” or something to that effect. How the hell were they supposed to prevent this before it happens?
All of it just go in circles and nothing ever changes.

Sorry about the rant (well not really) but I feel better now.

Absolutely

You don't know what you don't know.

Luck and mentorship from other divers that you meet at every level of your diving journey helps a lot. Personally I've been very lucky in that aspect, which is why I'm still diving today.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

In my opinion the starting error is relying on a shop.
The goal of a shop is making money selling equipment.
There is an evident conflict of interest if they also organise courses.
My suggestion for someone wanting to begin scuba diving is to search for local clubs and ask them.
If no club in the area, use Facebook or other social media for getting in contact with local divers and ask them.
If there is a club, there are good chances they organise courses at much smaller cost than for-profit agencies.
If instead you have to rely on the local divers community, follow their suggestions: they will point you to good instructors, possibly working outside any shop.
Or to some serious dive operator, providing both guided dives and tuition (these are easily found in nice diving locations, but of course do not exist far away from diving spots).
There is just one case when I suggest to buy a cert card in a shop: you are scheduled for a nice tropical vacation and you need to get the card in a weekend just before leaving.
But do not expect to be trained by a shop. They are just selling you the card, taking barely the minimal effort allowed by the agency issuing the card.
I am not saying this is a fraud, there can still be a reasonable value/cost ratio in this purchase. Simply one should not expect to get proper tuition, when you are just buying a card from a seller.

The problem here in the US is the shop IS the place where everyone goes for classes, at least with the mainline agencies. Yes, there are exceptions like private GUE instructors and other private instructors, but that is not mainstream.
Instruction doesn’t happen through clubs here.
From what I remember of local clubs is they meet once a month at a pizza joint and drink beer and eat pizza and talk about diving like their latest trip to some exotic and wonderful place that 99% of us will never be able to go to.
As far as setting up local dives, yeah there was a little of that but it was mostly the core four or five people that had boats and a lot of times they were off salmon fishing instead if diving, or if they did go diving they excluded everyone else. Very exclusive structure and very frustrating for someone joining thinking they were going to meet dive buddies.
No one had a compressor, there was no active instructor, there was no big boat, nothing like that.
All they wanted was for new members to pay the annual dues so they had money to do their own thing. Borderline fraud IMO.
I think the best a new diver can do is try and get certified locally through a shop that trains divers to dive in out local environment. At least in my area the diving is tough enough that they need to teach them more than what you’d get at a tropical resort cattle drive type environment.
I can’t complain about the quality of my local instruction, they did everything they were supposed to do and didn’t skip anything. I don’t particularly agree with the content especially with AOW but that’s not the instructors fault. I think the content structure needs to be revamped. I would have spent more money and enjoyed more class time/dive time learning more stuff.
All I can say is students that are really interested in knowing more, they should embark on some self study like reading the New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving, and other books, then just work like hell to find good buddies that can show you. You have to want it. It’s not like it used to be, it’s an uphill battle now to try and get past the mediocrity of what this sport has become.

 

[tursiops]

All I can say is students that are really interested in knowing more, they should embark on some self study like reading the New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving

That book is 50 years old....and does not touch upon much of what we consider to be best practices today.

 

[boulderjohn]

The History of NAUI, written in part by AL Tillman, NAUI instructor #1, goes into the questions in this latest section of the thread. It says that in the early days, there was a serious question of how to attract students. It showed three different approaches by the different agencies.

1. The YMCA decided to focus on clubs to gather new students and provide instruction.
2. NAUI, trying to survive on a non-profit model, decided to focus on university students. The thinking was that the students had to spend tuition money on physical education classes no matter what, so making one of the class options scuba was essentially giving the class to students for free.
3. When NAUI's approach was not working, they had to pull back from national efforts and focus on California. When they did, they canceled a Chicago area instructor training program. The Chicago NAUI branch angrily formed a new agency, PADI. That new agency decided to follow the lead of NASDS and offer instruction through the sporting goods stores that were selling the gear.

That history plainly says that in retrospect, plans 1 and 2 were mistakes, and they clearly failed. Plan 3 was the successful model.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Phys

That book is 50 years old....and does not touch upon much of what we consider to be best practices today.

physics don’t change

 

[Ny-Hedeby]

I can offer you a hammer and a dead horse, but I think it would be more productive to say "If you are ever looking at diving in Northern Ohio, I am available!" We can do those dives again just for the fun of it.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The History of NAUI, written in part by AL Tillman, NAUI instructor #1, goes into the questions in this latest section of the thread. It says that in the early days, there was a serious question of how to attract students. It showed three different approaches by the different agencies.

1. The YMCA decided to focus on clubs to gather new students and provide instruction.
2. NAUI, trying to survive on a non-profit model, decided to focus on university students. The thinking was that the students had to spend tuition money on physical education classes no matter what, so making one of the class options scuba was essentially giving the class to students for free.
3. When NAUI's approach was not working, they had to pull back from national efforts and focus on California. When they did, they canceled a Chicago area instructor training program. The Chicago NAUI branch angrily formed a new agency, PADI. That new agency decided to follow the lead of NASDS and offer instruction through the sporting goods stores that were selling the gear.

That history plainly says that in retrospect, plans 1 and 2 were mistakes, and they clearly failed. Plan 3 was the successful model.

…aaand I just ran into a young gal last Saturday at one of my local dive sites shore diving with her dad. Turns out she got certified through Humboldt State University (NAUI). One if the finest most thorough programs around. BTW, Sonoma State has the same program through NAUI, very thorough course. I used to help the instructor at the latter. It’s a full semester long. They go through everything. Most of the students are getting degrees in marine biology/ marine science.
I would not say non profit models do not work, maybe not to make money but there’s more it than that, what about turning out good divers?
If all it’s about is expanding the quantity of divers so they can fill charter boats, go to resorts, and buy gear, basically feed the machine then yeah PADI is king. But are they turning out the quality if divers university NAUI does now or YMCA used to? I don’t think so.
And, is the instructor at those cert mills getting a fair portion of that money? I heard it’s starting to cost instructors money to teach.
So in the end who is the retail model successful for?