IMO direct face to face purchases of high dollar warrantied equipment from a well established LDS will more times than not result in better service all around.
Short of a primary CCR CP, I would suggest honing one's skills to the point that a CP is not considered a life support device.
Yes after I posted that I realized that I chose poor wording, but I think most readers are able to get the point I was trying to make without taking it so literally. And I would jump at the chance to go diving with you today if possible so that you might have an opportunity to advance my skills, or vise versa!
Look, I was as big a fan (maybe bigger) of Aeris/Oceanic as you are, until my compumask flodded in the middle of a dive. It wasn't just that event that shoved me off the bandwagon, it was the way they chose to handle it. Further reading and a dive duddy's experience told me that they had a flooding issue with the early compumasks. However, when I contacted Aeris support, they did not want to investigate at all if mine was one of those masks which I thought would have been reasonable given that my mask did flood through absolutely no fault of mine. But no, it was out of warranty, (1 month) and if I wanted a remanufactured replacement, I was going to have to pay. Case closed.
In the interest of full disclosure I did get a PM from Doug Krause. He indicated that I had a right to post about my experiences with Aeris, he simply asked that I also post that I did not keep my receipt for 2 years. So, I would like to disclose that I did not keep my receipt, and apparently they do require a receipt for warranty service. However I would add that I did register my mask on the equipment locker of their web site, and that was how I knew it was only 1 month out of warranty.
Normally, when you register a piece of equipment with the manufacturer, this precludes any need to keep a receipt for 2 years, which in my opinion is unreasonable anyway. But in this case, I'm not sure why Aeris gives us the opportunity to register our equipment with them. I can only speculate, but perhaps it's only to make us targets for future marketing? I really don't know, but no matter. I would just again like to make it known to all that I did not keep my receipt, and that is why I had to pay.