DiveWestOahu
Contributor
that boat has been for sale for quite a while,,,, are they still in business?
Anyone Heard of Bottom Time Hawaii?(Big Island)
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cuddlefish
Contributor
Bottom Time is still in business. I think they are maybe going to focus more on snorkeling or something but I'm not sure. They have a new boat and it looks like they are outfitting it for snorkel/whale watch trips. But they are still currently offering dive trips to my knowledge.
Here is a direct quote from tripadvisor.com if anyone still has doubts about the company called "Bottomtime". Please be aware that not every dive company is staffed with friendly caring people, and many of them are in it for the almighty buck and can be quite shrewish. My heart goes out to this couple which did everything right, and were still taken by this dishonest business.
My friend and I were excited to get our diver certification and planned our whole Hawaii vacation so that we would get certified and do a night dive with Manta Rays before we left. BottomTime had a nice online e-learning program where you take your classes through PADI online instead of being cooped up in a classroom in Hawaii. Their advertisement said that we needed to complete the online course, purchase our gear, then arrive at BottomTime to get our training for $400. So we did the course, got out gear, and flew to Hawaii to finish our training. Without telling us, they charged us $800 each, saying that the REAL cost of the training program is $800 minus the cost of gear you purchase from them.
Since then, they have CHANGED their website to say that you need to purchase your gear from them, but they still don't mention that it will cost you an arm and a leg if you don't. They even presented this altered website to our bank, saying it was the original website we signed up through. Thankfully, we have time-stamped copies of the original.
As soon as we realized we had been ripped off, we spoke to them and the lady behind the counter, Paula, threatened us by saying she was a paralegal for umpteen years and that the website clearly stated that the program was $800 minus gear costs, so she was going to keep all of our money. We had only completed the pool dives through them so I don't know what makes them think they are entitled to charge us for everything.
Long story short, we're suing BottomTime and advise anyone looking for a good Hawaii dive shop to avoid this place at all costs. Their business ethics and the way they treat their customers are terrible. If you do go there, check your bank account and make sure they charge you exactly what they advertise. I can't believe they got a four star rating from PADI, but hopefully we will fix that too.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
My friend and I were excited to get our diver certification and planned our whole Hawaii vacation so that we would get certified and do a night dive with Manta Rays before we left. BottomTime had a nice online e-learning program where you take your classes through PADI online instead of being cooped up in a classroom in Hawaii. Their advertisement said that we needed to complete the online course, purchase our gear, then arrive at BottomTime to get our training for $400. So we did the course, got out gear, and flew to Hawaii to finish our training. Without telling us, they charged us $800 each, saying that the REAL cost of the training program is $800 minus the cost of gear you purchase from them.
Since then, they have CHANGED their website to say that you need to purchase your gear from them, but they still don't mention that it will cost you an arm and a leg if you don't. They even presented this altered website to our bank, saying it was the original website we signed up through. Thankfully, we have time-stamped copies of the original.
As soon as we realized we had been ripped off, we spoke to them and the lady behind the counter, Paula, threatened us by saying she was a paralegal for umpteen years and that the website clearly stated that the program was $800 minus gear costs, so she was going to keep all of our money. We had only completed the pool dives through them so I don't know what makes them think they are entitled to charge us for everything.
Long story short, we're suing BottomTime and advise anyone looking for a good Hawaii dive shop to avoid this place at all costs. Their business ethics and the way they treat their customers are terrible. If you do go there, check your bank account and make sure they charge you exactly what they advertise. I can't believe they got a four star rating from PADI, but hopefully we will fix that too.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
Shaka Doug
Contributor
Wow! and they have such a cool logo.......
sabbath999
Contributor
Hi, I just surfed onto this thread since I was working on my TripAdvisor reviews and I was getting ready to do a review of Bottom Time.
I started reading Happy Seattle Girl's story and I immediately knew that we were the other couple mentioned in the story.
First, let me state that Bottom Time under the previous owners did indeed suck. They screwed over their employees (one of whom is a friend of mine from here in Missouri) and there were lots of past customers who would agree. We had lots of problems with our billings as well.
The facts are too similar to what we had happen on our trip for there to have been two of these from the exact same time period for this not to have been on our boat.
However, if this is the same incident, this is definitely not how things went down.
First, there were five divers on the boat and not three, and two DM's not one. The DM with my wife and I was actually an instructor, and we were doing our AOW deep dive. The other two divers were a husband and wife team, and the third woman was by herself.
They dropped in first, and went down, as we went over our dive plan with the instructor. We went down to 110 feet, basically just down the ridge from where the other group was, did our thing and came back up. The dive was only 29 minutes since we went deep and I was kind of an air hog back then. My wife and I came back up on the boat with our instructor and had de-geared when the other DM brought a single woman diver to the surface. He immediately left her there and went back down to look after the other couple and she started screaming to be picked up. Our Captain got on the radio to a nearby boat and asked them if she looked like she was OK, and he told the instructor that was with us to get ready to tow her in. They watched her swim over with the instructor ready to dive in if needed. The other boat said she just looked angry, not in panic. He waved her to swim over, which she did. She came up on deck and laid into the captain like he was some sort of house servant.
She started cussing him up one side and down the other for not unmooring and taking the boat over to pick her up (about 150-200 feet, dead calm water). He explained to her, calmly, that he wasn't going to unmoor the boat with divers down under it just to pick her up, told her that he was monitoring her and would have sent somebody to rescue her if she actually needed it, and told her he wasn't going to take any abuse off of her.
This diver, again I am not positive it is the same person, rode with us from the hotel and told us that she had been seriously bent her last dive out, and that this was her first time back in the water since then. She was a small woman and blew through an entire AL80 in about 25 minutes at a depth of 40 feet.
I have been out with this particular Captain about 10 times (he has since changed companies) and have never had a problem with him at all... in fact, he's my favorite guy to go out with.
As far as the exhaustion thing goes, the woman on our boat claimed that she was exhausted and NEVER should have been "MADE" to swim that whole distance... after a few minutes she jumped back in the water and snorkeled around the boat because she was mad at the captain and didn't want to talk with him... she did that for about 45 minutes, so I am thinking she wasn't THAT exhausted.
Personally, if it were me, I would have sent the instructor over to bring her in.... but it wasn't my boat.
Getting back to the heart of the story... I have no idea about the new owners, but personally I see no reason to risk a vacation on an outfit that has a checkered past like this one when there are so many good, reputable operators available.
I started reading Happy Seattle Girl's story and I immediately knew that we were the other couple mentioned in the story.
First, let me state that Bottom Time under the previous owners did indeed suck. They screwed over their employees (one of whom is a friend of mine from here in Missouri) and there were lots of past customers who would agree. We had lots of problems with our billings as well.
The facts are too similar to what we had happen on our trip for there to have been two of these from the exact same time period for this not to have been on our boat.
However, if this is the same incident, this is definitely not how things went down.
First, there were five divers on the boat and not three, and two DM's not one. The DM with my wife and I was actually an instructor, and we were doing our AOW deep dive. The other two divers were a husband and wife team, and the third woman was by herself.
They dropped in first, and went down, as we went over our dive plan with the instructor. We went down to 110 feet, basically just down the ridge from where the other group was, did our thing and came back up. The dive was only 29 minutes since we went deep and I was kind of an air hog back then. My wife and I came back up on the boat with our instructor and had de-geared when the other DM brought a single woman diver to the surface. He immediately left her there and went back down to look after the other couple and she started screaming to be picked up. Our Captain got on the radio to a nearby boat and asked them if she looked like she was OK, and he told the instructor that was with us to get ready to tow her in. They watched her swim over with the instructor ready to dive in if needed. The other boat said she just looked angry, not in panic. He waved her to swim over, which she did. She came up on deck and laid into the captain like he was some sort of house servant.
She started cussing him up one side and down the other for not unmooring and taking the boat over to pick her up (about 150-200 feet, dead calm water). He explained to her, calmly, that he wasn't going to unmoor the boat with divers down under it just to pick her up, told her that he was monitoring her and would have sent somebody to rescue her if she actually needed it, and told her he wasn't going to take any abuse off of her.
This diver, again I am not positive it is the same person, rode with us from the hotel and told us that she had been seriously bent her last dive out, and that this was her first time back in the water since then. She was a small woman and blew through an entire AL80 in about 25 minutes at a depth of 40 feet.
I have been out with this particular Captain about 10 times (he has since changed companies) and have never had a problem with him at all... in fact, he's my favorite guy to go out with.
As far as the exhaustion thing goes, the woman on our boat claimed that she was exhausted and NEVER should have been "MADE" to swim that whole distance... after a few minutes she jumped back in the water and snorkeled around the boat because she was mad at the captain and didn't want to talk with him... she did that for about 45 minutes, so I am thinking she wasn't THAT exhausted.
Personally, if it were me, I would have sent the instructor over to bring her in.... but it wasn't my boat.
Getting back to the heart of the story... I have no idea about the new owners, but personally I see no reason to risk a vacation on an outfit that has a checkered past like this one when there are so many good, reputable operators available.
Just my 2 cents...
I have no idea about the previous owners but the new owners are great. I am staying in Kona for 3 months to avoid east coast winters (thank god) and have gone from open water to rescue with Bottom Time. The training was great. They went the extra mile to make sure I understood everything and was safe. It was also a ton of fun. I have kept diving with them for all my fun dives and will continue to do so. They're a blast to dive with, very professional, well prepared, and safe. I would recommend them to anyone.
I have read a fair bit of negative reviews about the previous owners but would encourage anyone considering Bottom Time to not let that reflect on them. For my experience the only thing they kept was the name...
I have no idea about the previous owners but the new owners are great. I am staying in Kona for 3 months to avoid east coast winters (thank god) and have gone from open water to rescue with Bottom Time. The training was great. They went the extra mile to make sure I understood everything and was safe. It was also a ton of fun. I have kept diving with them for all my fun dives and will continue to do so. They're a blast to dive with, very professional, well prepared, and safe. I would recommend them to anyone.
I have read a fair bit of negative reviews about the previous owners but would encourage anyone considering Bottom Time to not let that reflect on them. For my experience the only thing they kept was the name...
cuddlefish
Contributor
Actually...rule number one is "never hold your breath". Rule number two is "never run out of air".
Running out of air was your fault. If you let your guide know when you are half way though your tank, they can get you back to the boat underwater and avoid a surface swim. If you do run out of air...your guide should escort you to the surface and make contact with the boat letting the captain know what is going on. Generally you should be able to swim to the boat in calm seas. If you are injured or extremely exhausted, you should be escorted back to the boat by someone. However, you need some level of fitness to be a diver. After making sure you are ok, the guide should be able to go down and take care of the rest of the group...assuming the captain is watching you as you make your way back to the boat.
As far as getting a refund for the rest of your dives...they probably should have given you a refund. Even if they didn't do anything wrong, if you state you feel unsafe diving with them, they might as well just end the trauma and refund the dives you pre-paid. But please remember that YOU ran out of air.
smellzlikefish
Contributor
I knew the new owners since before they took the reigns of the company and they have always been extremely knowledgable, rabid divers who want nothing more than to please their customers. They are well aware of the shop's problem history and are working very hard to reverse the damage done by the previous owners. They have lots of resources and years of underwater know-how at their fingertips. When my buddy was leaving Hawaii, they took us to deep south Kona (Ule Canyon) and gave us the dives of a lifetime. They have since started offering this dive as a regular thing. If they were the owners at the time of Happy Seattle Girl's story, there was something else at play. I would agree, though, that untying a boat at a mooring with divers in the water is a terrible idea, especially when you should be a proficient swimmer to begin with.
Jeeptrick
Contributor
I just dove with BT and was very happy with them and will be going back to dive with them again
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