Choosing a Local Dive Shop

[boulderjohn]

Go with your gut. A dive shop would be stupid to make you feel unwelcome if you bought gear and training elsewhere and later walked in their door.

Exactly. You can change affiliations at any time you want for any reason you want, and the new shop willwelcome you with open arms.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Non-profit clubs do exist--or at least used to not long ago. In each case I know, however, legal issues were involved that limited their ability to function.

• I met members of a dive club in Cozumel years ago, and they were trying to figure out their status. They had been loosely associated with a dive shop, holding meetings in the shop, etc. That came to an end when the dive shop's attorneys told them not to allow any sign of a connection. If there was any sign of a connection and the dive shop ran into legal trouble, they could become inolved in that trouble. (In a similar situation, I worked in a high school, and a local youth hockey team composed of students from that high school took the name and logo of the school, implying that they were the school's official hockey team. Attorneys told the school not to even hint of a connection--they could not be mentioned in the school newspaper. The wisdom of that was shown when the team became involved in an ugly brawl with police called and the coach shouting and gesturing obsenities to the crowd.)
• A dive club chartered a boat for a 3-tank dive. Two of their members who happened to be certified DMs called roll before and after dives, and they somehow missed a diver named Dan Carlock after the first dive. The boat headed off to another site for the next dives, and the two DMs missed Dan on those roll calls, too. Dan floated around for a while before being rescued by another boat, anf the lawsuit went well into the millions. They even successfully sued PADI because the two DMs were certified by PADI. I don't know if the club stayed in existence.

Do you have a link or a name for either?

 

[quietlife4me]

SSI business model is based on selling you as much gear as possible.

Ouch. That doesn’t describe my SSI LDS at all. From the moment I stepped in the shop the owner patiently answered every one of my questions and never once gave me the hard sell. Offering to do all the things you say they won’t or dislike and telling me all the things you told me they wouldn’t say.

Super glad I lucked out I guess…your description sounds horrible.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Ouch. That doesn’t describe my SSI LDS at all. From the moment I stepped in the shop the owner patiently answered every one of my questions and never once gave me the hard sell. Offering to do all the things you say they won’t or dislike and telling me all the things you told me they wouldn’t say.

Super glad I lucked out I guess…your description sounds horrible.

When SSI was added at a shop where I taught, it was unlike what others have described here on scubaboard. All agencies have tools/suggestions for selling gear, which isn't a bad thing as people who invest in gear tend to keep diving.

Obviously how shops implement their policies can vary dramatically.

SSI was pretty hands off in my experience of one shop. That is just one datum.

 

[feldomatic]

Now I'm thinking about Sofa King with low prices. How low? Sofa King low!

Slaps BC Jacket. You can fit so many ditchable weights in these pockets

Ouch. That doesn’t describe my SSI LDS at all.

Yeah, my experience was 50/50. But considering the respective owners of PADI, SSI and NAUI, it does seem intuitive that between training and gear, one is the razor and the other is the blade, if you know the Gilette saying. I was actually surprised neither SSI shop actually seemed to sell any Mares gear.

The one shop guy (definitely senior staff of some kind) answered questions, and at one point I stopped asking anything because he kept walking through everything I was going to ask) and made a point of giving me a tour of the pool and training spaces. (this is the shop that offers bundles and his explanation was more like "and I have to tell you this part, but I know you're after a different class of gear, and I care more that you choose my shop as your training source")

The other one, was just weird. I was definitely interacting with someone who was primarily sales staff, she gave me the spiel on their OW program, I asked for a moment to look at the gear in the showroom and got asked 2 more times in 5 minutes if they could help me with anything. The 2nd time I just asked if they sold BP/W to keep them from asking again. Apparently that question required Level 2 assistance and one of the techs came out and showed me a setup they had ordered in for a customer to pick up later. I get that most shops can't stock inventories of all that stuff, but weird to use someone else's bought and paid for gear as a demo.

The whole time I was getting this vibe that said "spend money or get out" which was weird, because there were definitely people there who appeared to just be hanging out, and the other shops both gave the opposite vibe, like "come in and hang out, you'll buy my stuff eventually". Maybe I just got the wrong staff member?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Yeah, my experience was 50/50. But considering the respective owners of PADI, SSI and NAUI, it does seem intuitive that between training and gear, one is the razor and the other is the blade, if you know the Gilette saying. I was actually surprised neither SSI shop actually seemed to sell any Mares gear.

The one shop guy (definitely senior staff of some kind) answered questions, and at one point I stopped asking anything because he kept walking through everything I was going to ask) and made a point of giving me a tour of the pool and training spaces. (this is the shop that offers bundles and his explanation was more like "and I have to tell you this part, but I know you're after a different class of gear, and I care more that you choose my shop as your training source")

The other one, was just weird. I was definitely interacting with someone who was primarily sales staff, she gave me the spiel on their OW program, I asked for a moment to look at the gear in the showroom and got asked 2 more times in 5 minutes if they could help me with anything. The 2nd time I just asked if they sold BP/W to keep them from asking again. Apparently that question required Level 2 assistance and one of the techs came out and showed me a setup they had ordered in for a customer to pick up later. I get that most shops can't stock inventories of all that stuff, but weird to use someone else's bought and paid for gear as a demo.

The whole time I was getting this vibe that said "spend money or get out" which was weird, because there were definitely people there who appeared to just be hanging out, and the other shops both gave the opposite vibe, like "come in and hang out, you'll buy my stuff eventually". Maybe I just got the wrong staff member?

Hard to say, but go with your gut with what you are comfortable with/prefer. It is your time, your money, your hobby.

 

[gmerick]

Finding a shop that actually teaches neutral buoyancy and level trim is much harder than just asking. See if the LDS has social media pages, or video galleries of their OW class participants. My OW and AOW LDS classes were good, but I was taught kneeling on the pool floor, kneeling on the dive platform, etc. Because the lakes were cold enough to mandate 7mm suits, I stirred up a lot of muck after being "certified". My first time through the diamond reef the DM's had to reset every one of the buoys. Fortunately I kept going back, but with different instructors, and things got much better. I took my dry suit class in a lake with a foot of organic muck on the bottom, and only a double garage sized sand patch at 8 ft depth at the entry. The whole class we didn't lose any more of the little visibility we started with. Bottom line, watch the LDS videos - they put their best stuff on the web. Classes will be no better than that.

 

[Belzelbub]

Ouch. That doesn’t describe my SSI LDS at all. From the moment I stepped in the shop the owner patiently answered every one of my questions and never once gave me the hard sell. Offering to do all the things you say they won’t or dislike and telling me all the things you told me they wouldn’t say.

Super glad I lucked out I guess…your description sounds horrible.

Yeah. Your description sounds similar to mine. My LDS is SSI and I’ve never been pressured to buy a single piece of gear from them. As a result, I’ve bought several items from them. They know me by name and always greet me when I walk in.

Despite Mares owning SSI, I’ve never been pushed toward Mares over other brands.

Can’t say the same about a ScubaPro shop I’ve used in the past. They were high pressure, and also SSI. The amount of pressure seems to have more to do with shop management than agency affiliation.

 

[SlugLife]

The premise of your question assumes you should have a way of picking one dive-shop and excluding the others, before you have any dive-experience or experience with those shops. Obviously, you have to pick one for your Open Water class, however, otherwise I would absolutely not jump straight into being loyal to any dive-shop.

Personally, I've been treated much better by online retailers than my local dive-shops. I've also had generally good experiences with one dive-shop, while another not so much.

Read reviews online for these shops, if you're trying to get a good idea of which ones are probably a little better or worse. There's very little we could tell you on ScubaBoard based on your descriptions about any of these shops. Online reviews on the other hand might reveal things about each shop. The rating isn't what you'll want to look at, since people might be paid or incentivized to leave positive reviews, but rather you'll want to look at the text to see if there's a common theme, such as light-fills, bad training, or bad customer service.

 

[L13]

Yeah. Your description sounds similar to mine. My LDS is SSI and I’ve never been pressured to buy a single piece of gear from them. As a result, I’ve bought several items from them. They know me by name and always greet me when I walk in.

Despite Mares owning SSI, I’ve never been pushed toward Mares over other brands.

Can’t say the same about a ScubaPro shop I’ve used in the past. They were high pressure, and also SSI. The amount of pressure seems to have more to do with shop management than agency affiliation.

My LDS is PADI/ScubaPro, and they treat me just as good as you describe your SSI/Mares store treats you.

Don't get hung up on the brand. A good owner will make a good store independent of the brand.

All the brands are solid enough. All the agencies are good enough. Focus on picking Good People! Whether it is in your LDS pick or your instructor pick.