Personally, we choose not to hose good customers who may skip a year now and then on the annual service. SP does not track the annual service history on individual regs so it is largely a dealer call on how much they want to bend the rules to accomodate a customer. On the one hand you do not want to alienate or hose a regular customer and on the other you do not want to abuse Scubapro and their free parts for life program. So it is a balancing act calling for soem dealer discretion and judgement.
When our local dive shop acquired the SP dealership from an out of business dive shop, we did what amounted to a general amnesty as it was not possible to call the previous shop to determine for sure when the last service was done or even if it had been bought there rather than on-line. Most divers are, believe it or not, not going to be able to hang on to last years service slip or their purchase receipt for a whole year until the annual service is due. We saw no reason to treat the entire customer base like cheaters or criminals so we gav ethem the benefit of the doubt. The response was superb with customers who were otherwise very nervous about having to go to the old SP shop's sworn enemy for service being pleasantly surprised and impressed with both the service and the freindliness.
Most SP dealers I have spoken with, with a few noteable exceptions, indicate a preference to offer warrantly service in slightly to a whole year out of warranty situations for good customers and indicate that they will not deny waranty service on a did-not-buy-it-here reg owned by a regular customer unless they know for sure it was bought on line.
As for an expired warranty, it can be re-instated easily. All that is required is for the diver to cover the parts costs for the next annual service at which point it will again be covered under warranty for future services. Many SP dealers are a bit off on this one as some seem to be unaware that this is even a possibility or at least don't like to admit it.
The recommended SP rate for labor is $25.00 per stage and parts kits run $10 to $15.00 per stage. So for an in warranty reg, you really should not be paying more than $75 for a first/second/octo reg set. If you need to rehabilitate the warranty, parts for that annual service should not run over $30 to $45. SP has no MSRP on parts so dealers can sell them at cost to give you a break. Many however will choose to use parts sales as another revenue source.
SP dealers will get 3 sets of parts per year for each rental reg in the shop and the result is that many shops end up with a lifetime supply of Mk 2 Plus and R190/R390 and sometimes Air 2 kits, so it is not unreasonable for a shop to provide those parts at no charge to a good customer with a warranty problem just as a customer service gesture.
So it all depends on the shop and where they fit on the greed versus customer service continuum. If you have a shop that is maxing out the greed end of the scale, consider sending the reg off for service but first just go in and have a heart to heart with the owner. Explain what you expect and that you would prefer to do busienss locally but that you also have other options. Some SP dealers have noted that many SP customers do not ask for the 10% discount the dealer can give and will pay whatever is charged for service without question. These tend to be long standing SP customers from the old days when SP stuff was in general much better than everything else and the attitude was that you paid more because it was worth more. This also had a lot of snob appeal for many customers. This marketing model does not work anymore given the quality of the current competion, but some dealers are slow learners.
