Change Dive Shop / Instructor?

[SlugLife]

Oh my goodness... you know instructors that teach scuba for the money?? I've never met one. And I know a lot of instructors.

From what I gather, about half goes to the dive-agency (SSI, Padi, etc), another cut (??%) goes to the shop, and the instructor gets .... well after expenses, it's basically volunteer work. There are bad instructors, sure, but that's different from being money-driven.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I did my PADI OW with one instructor. 1986

My BSAC Sports diving with another and also dived with many experienced divers in a BSAC Club. 1986 - 1988

Later on did AOW & Nitrox with another instructor in 2014, then rescue with another instructor in 2015
I will do my TD ANDP with the same instructor I did my rescue with later this year. No rush.

 

[yle]

From what I gather, about half goes to the dive-agency (SSI, Padi, etc), another cut (??%) goes to the shop, and the instructor gets .... well after expenses, it's basically volunteer work. There are bad instructors, sure, but that's different from being money-driven.

Yeah... when I was teaching a lot -- had a three year span when I always had at least one active class -- I was pretty much breaking even. What I was paid was enough to pay my dues (I was covered by the shop insurance), for expenses related to getting back and forth to the beach or the dive boat, buying bits of gear for the classes, etc. The perks were nice... the shop had a heated pool I could use anytime, I got great deals on gear and free maintenance and air fills... but none of us were doing it to make money (i.e. we all had regular fulltime jobs, teaching scuba was an evenings & weekends thing.)

 

[Blackcrusader]

Novice divers seldom learn more than the cue card allows. If you believe you are making progress, why would you have doubts? I am an advocate of divers using different instructors. This is the only way you can make comparisons. Ask your current instructor for their opinions on configurations and equipment selection. Complete your AOW course with a different instructor when on vacation.

Many of us here have posted some of our dive logs. Why do you not post some of yours?

 

[boulderjohn]

From what I gather, about half goes to the dive-agency (SSI, Padi, etc), another cut (??%) goes to the shop, and the instructor gets .... well after expenses, it's basically volunteer work. There are bad instructors, sure, but that's different from being money-driven.

The agency only gets a very tiny percentage--the cost of the materials and the certification card. If you are teaching a specialty course with no materials, they only get cost of the certification card. If it's a specialty and the student doesn't want the card, the agency doesn't even know they took the class.

In a typical shop-based class, the shop gets nearly all of it, with the instructor getting only a tiny cut.

 

[BoltSnap]

Many of us here have posted some of our dive logs. Why do you not post some of yours?

I'd like to hear more concrete information from it on equipment configurations, what it uses, why/when/ giving actual information.

 

[Alaskan Scuba Dude]

Oh my goodness... you know instructors that teach scuba for the money?

For the love of money.

 

[SlugLife]

The agency only gets a very tiny percentage--the cost of the materials and the certification card. If you are teaching a specialty course with no materials, they only get cost of the certification card. If it's a specialty and the student doesn't want the card, the agency doesn't even know they took the class.

In a typical shop-based class, the shop gets nearly all of it, with the instructor getting only a tiny cut.

In several cases, I've seen the "online materials" costing about half the price of a course. It probably depends on which course we're talking about, and which agency.

 

[boulderjohn]

In several cases, I've seen the "online materials" costing about half the price of a course. It probably depends on which course we're talking about, and which agency.

Certainly not my agency. I know what I have to pay for course materials, and it could only get to half if I decided to practically give the course away.

 

[SlugLife]

Certainly not my agency. I know what I have to pay for course materials, and it could only get to half if I decided to practically give the course away.

I'll take your word for it.

Just so nobody thinks I'm making stuff up, it looks like a course like Open Water, which costs around $400 to $500 locally. PADI was the easiest to find, and they have a $200 online course fee. Lets say 40%. So far I've done courses with SSI (their online materials are sooooo boring), but I couldn't find their pricing. By comparison, I bought the sidemount course from sidemounting.com, about $200, and their videos are amazing, engaging, and interesting. Anyway, I'm probably driving this a little off-topic.

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Using open-water course might not be a fair comparison to all types of diving, given it's a lot of basic and tedious stuff to learn, and might make sense to have the online portion be a bigger percent of the course, than something like technical-diving.