Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[Forbin's Descent]

I have stayed out of this thread for a few reasons...

You summed it all up nicely.

I agree, if my OW - AOW instructors did the actual instruction it would have been way too cheap. My cave instructor charges $300 a day and I am a tough student. He put in some long days with me and when I calculated out what he was actually getting per hour post expenses I tipped him handsomely as well.

 

[berndo]

The only reason scuba has gotten to the low that it’s at now is because nobody cares enough to fix it.

There is a conflict of interest here. PADI/SSI could raise the standards and end up with fewer sales people (instructors) who pay membership fees to work.

What business wants to reduce the number of paying members who sell their product? An instructor is essentially a freelance sales person that pays PADI/SSI to work for them. They have no incentive to raise standards and accident numbers are low enough for them not to get into trouble.

 

[Celt]

Is there some reason would be scuba divers expect more from scuba agencies than would be motorists expect from secondhand car salesmen. What about buyers beware.

 

[BackAfter30]

Is there some reason would be scuba divers expect more from scuba agencies than would be motorists expect from secondhand car salesmen. What about buyers beware.

I have a similar feeling about it as this…but how can the buyer beware if people won’t give honest public evaluations of different shops and instructors? The answer is that they can’t. We need bad experiences to be called out, and good experiences lauded. The shop/instructor can either fix the problem or suffer the consequences of the bad reviews.

 

[Celt]

I have a similar feeling about it as this…but how can the buyer beware if people won’t give honest public evaluations of different shops and instructors? The answer is that they can’t. We need bad experiences to be called out, and good experiences lauded. The shop/instructor can either fix the problem or suffer the consequences of the bad reviews.

I have no experience with agencies, does that not happen already, something on the line of Trustpilot.com

 

[L13]

You summed it all up nicely.

I agree, if my OW - AOW instructors did the actual instruction it would have been way too cheap. My cave instructor charges $300 a day and I am a tough student. He put in some long days with me and when I calculated out what he was actually getting per hour post expenses I tipped him handsomely as well.

...cave instructor...long days...
# of dives: 0 - 24

Something doesn't add up. Likely the # of dives is out of date. You have the option of removing it from your profile if you don't want to update it.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I have a similar feeling about it as this…but how can the buyer beware if people won’t give honest public evaluations of different shops and instructors? The answer is that they can’t. We need bad experiences to be called out, and good experiences lauded. The shop/instructor can either fix the problem or suffer the consequences of the bad reviews.

The problem as I see it is people get some minimal abbreviated training for whatever reason, time constraints, lousy instructors, perhaps it’s the culture of the location, etc..
It gets them in the water and they’re far from perfect, and their confidence level is not the best but they go on the dives and have fun. They don’t know what they don’t know. Diving isn’t something the majority of the public does all the time, it’s something reserved for vacations for most people. It’s not like a lemon car that you drive everyday or some other thing that you got ripped off on that irritates you to no end so you take action.
It sometimes not until months or years later that the student may talk to someone or otherwise glean the information that their OW and AOW was pretty bad.
By that time enough time has passed that they have an “oh well” attitude and just move on.
And then there’s the fact that many people have no idea that they are pretty bad divers and they don’t really care. As long as they get to go diving in warm water and look at pretty fish that’s all they care about.
This is why nothing changes.

 

[steinbil]

That's not actually clear to me. There are some posters who say the same thing over and over, but you only get to count that once. I am more impressed by what I see on dive boats and at resorts around the world; not perfection, but pretty good, in general. There are the truly terrrible, of course, but they are in the definite minority.
You should note that only maybe 1.5% of people EVER leave a review, and that people are far more likely to leave a negative review than a positive review.

If I read ScubaBoard I can run into 15-20 people saying the same thing over and over and over and over, with no facts to back them up. Sorry, that doesn't cut it for evidence. I can find more people telling me the earth is flat.

I could see that the Scubaboard population might not be representative, and that there is a lot of hearsay and unfounded agency bashing, but to claim that there is no problem at all, and implying that the people complaining about issues they have had are lying (re: "with no facts"), seems like a far cry from reality in my experience.

I have done exactly one guided dive in a group with a PADI dive center in the Mediterranean, and it was worse than I expected. It matches most of the stories I've read here on Scubaboard, so even if the sample size is very small, it's an indication to me that these stories are not made up, and that they're probably not that uncommon. They might be a minority of divers, like Tursiops suggest, but if 30-40% (or even 10-20%) of divers are train wrecks I would say there is a big problem with the dive industry.

What I experienced was certified divers with no buoyancy control, buddy skills, or autonomy in the water. Half of the divers in the group were plummeting to the bottom, destroying the bottom, and then rocketing to the surface, like a yo-yo for most of the dive. There were no buddy checks, or even independent checks of their gear. I asked my buddy if they had tested the octo, and they said "Why would I, it's not for me" You can try it if you want". And I was surprised to hear that the worst divers were happy about the dive after the fact. No clue that what they were doing was not ok.

Obviously this is just one example, and I don't have anything specifically against PADI or PADI divers - I received good instruction from a GUE trained PADI instructor, and will gladly dive with any diver from any organization, as long as they don't look like they're going to kill someone underwater. I do believe the stories I read from other SB members, however, and I do believe there is a problem with Scuba training.

 

[BackAfter30]

I have no experience with agencies, does that not happen already, something on the line of Trustpilot.com

I’m not sure where noobs would go for SCUBA advice. I go here, and there are many many posts expressing bad feelings about this or that, but they don’t name names. There will be many reasons for that I suppose, but it illustrates my concern. I fell like if you won’t name an offender, maybe you shouldn’t say anything in the first place. I know some will have legitimate reasons for silence, but are they really good enough reasons?

 

[scubaozy]

Obviously this is just one example, and I don't have anything specifically against PADI or PADI divers - I received good instruction from a GUE trained PADI instructor, and will gladly dive with any diver from any organization, as long as they don't look like they're going to kill someone underwater. I do believe the stories I read from other SB members, however, and I do believe there is a problem with Scuba training.

Your instructor trained you according to PADI standards and you feel that you and him did well, so, I suppose the problem is not the agency or training standards?