OP
LI-er
Contributor
It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, it's simply a matter of policy.
There's nothing wrong with "asking ahead" about policy to avoid problems on the day of the trip, why would you even feel the need to state the obvious?
The dive operator has the final say on their policy and the diver has the final say as to whether he or she will do business with this particular operator. In my case, during my recent experience in Australia when the dive operator declined my request to solo dive, I canceled. They lost about $600 AUD that I would have paid and they did not fill my spot (I checked their schedule right up to the day before).
They won't ever see me as a customer and I will share my negative experience whenever the opportunity arises so it's fair to say they will lose more than just my business. In today's competitive and challenging business world especially as it pertains to diving and the thin margins, it's probably not in the best interests of a business to turn away customers. But hey, they have the final say. Until they realize they're in the red and wonder why they've got gaps in their schedule.
You wrote "Customer is not always right". I figure you've always worked a 9-5 job and taken home a regular paycheck. You don't even begin to understand what that term is supposed to mean.
Let me try to clarify for you. If a business owner treats their customers as if they're the ones in the wrong, the customer is going to go somewhere where they are treated properly and respectfully. Now sometimes there are very unreasonable customers and the business must make the difficult decision to turn them away and face the backlash from doing so. But those are typically extreme cases.
Requesting a dive charter to respect a hard earned and deserved certification isn't "being wrong".
