Dive shop bait and switch Cozumel

[airbornediver]

I came to Mexico to do a side mount cave course and explore cool caves. Had a blast with Third Dimension. First class shop, folks and instructors.

After the caves I decided to go do some drift diving in Cozumel. I love Santa Rosa Wall and Deep Palencar. Been there 3 times in past.

I was recommended Deep Exposure. I told them I’m full Trimix, Cave and RB certified. I asked to do some cool dives on the walls. They said no problem to ask the boat captain what I wanted to do. So cool!

Day of dive there are 8 divers and most of them are only open water certified. So I wind up doing boring dives in 60 and 30 feet of water. Mostly sand dives. I complain they said next day they will do better dives. Next day same crap.

So beware. Some of my friends have used them in the past and had great experience. The Cave shop also recommended them. So not sure why I was treated this way. I speak Spanish and even heard one of guides tell captain to just stay close not to go fat because he wanted to get back early.

Live and learn. I would have rather stayed cave diving to to waste my time, money and effort for 2 days of **** diving.

 

[Centrals]

The dive shop should had given you the answer rather than the captain unless they do not owe the boat.
There is such a thing as 'schedule'. Of course various reasons might interfere with it.

 

[airbornediver]

The dive shop should had given you the answer rather than the captain unless they do not owe the boat.
There is such a thing as 'schedule'. Of course various reasons might interfere with it.

The shop actually supports rebreathers, they do Trimix fills, rent doubles. Luis told me they own the boat. When I was getting the rental gear I asked again that I wanted to do Santa Rosa wall and deeper walls within recreational limits. So I was more than upset when they did this to me. It cost a lot of money in hotels, changing flights etc. More importantly my time. I am not sure what the reason they screwed me over. The answer was sorry maybe next time I can do technical dives with them.

 

[macado]

I thought about not responding to this thread but my experience last year with Deep Exposure sort of annoyed me and your post reminded me of a similar situation.

This is the reality of diving with Deep Exposure. I experienced what you described a few years ago diving with them and as a result I don't recommend them I don't have any issues with the staff or crew. I just prefer smaller and faster boats.

While they are indeed the "only tech shop in Cozumel" (as the owner likes to point out) if they don't have a full dedicated tech trip (or you pay a technical guide) you are effectively limited to recreational dives / profiles. I suspect on dedicated technical trips this might be different but I have no idea. In my situation the divemaster did say I could stay longer or go deeper and just shoot a bag when I was done but it would have been kind of rude to everyone else when I was the only rebreather on the boat and everyone else was doing 60 minute dives.

I wont get into specifics but I occasionally bring my rebreather to Cozumel and at the time (this may not be true now) Deep Exposure was the only place that had sorb, rented 3L bottles and boosted oxygen. Unfortunately you have to dive with them to take advantage of this. They really have no interest in renting gear or supporting divers outside their shop.

He did begrudgingly sell me sorb at one point but I got a very stern lecture about how I really should be diving with him and he was doing me a huge favor by selling me sorb. I did not like that attitude but it's his shop and his rules.

I realize he invested a lot of money to bring this stuff to Cozumel but at the same time I feel like he is missing an opportunity. I'm not going to argue with him but I also don't have to agree with his business decision. My money is now spent elsewhere.

I buy sorb from Playa del Carmen and bring it over if I need it and bring my own 3L bottles. The irony is here is I would have been very happy to give him money to rent and buy these items.

I tried to give them another chance last year and support their shop when I was cave diving at Aerolito. My wife and I are both cave divers and I know Aerolito well enough as I did some of my original cave training there in 2012. This was not really a planned cave diving trip so we didn't have extra stage regs, stage rigging with us. Just the bare minimum.

We wanted to rent a few stage bottles and stage regulators so I was really hoping Deep Exposure would come through. It would have been a decent amount of money for them for virtually no work or effort at all since they have and advertise all these things. e.g., 4 x AL80 stage bottles, 4 x stage regulators, 4x nitrox fills for 3-4 days.

Instead they refused to rent us stage bottles unless we hired/paid one of their guides. Honestly that is pretty b*llshit to me. I was literally trying to give them money. I'm sorry but I don't need a guide.

Now I realize they don't know us. They don't know our abilities but at the same time if I asked this simple request at ANY of the tech/cave shops in Playa or Tulum they wouldn't even bat an eye. This is pretty standard request for every other tech shop but not for Deep Exposure.

FYI: The owner (Don) does post and read these forums so maybe he will see this thread. I don't think it will change anything but I figure this should be a warning to others.

 

[mcohen1021]

Sounds to me like someone needs a private charter if they want something more than the regular diver is certified for.

 

[boulderjohn]

If you want to be sure to do recreational dives that call for more advanced skills in cozumel, you have to choose a dive operation that has multiple boats and does a good job sorting their customers by ability.Your dive will be determined by the least capable diver on the boat, so you want to be on a boat with divers of similar ability.

It's been years since I dived Cozumel, but the last time I did, I split time with Deep Exposure and another operator I won't name. I started with the recreational dive operator, which had one boat and came highly recommended by someone on ScubaBoard. On my first day with them, I was one of only two divers, and the other guy was pretty good. We had two excellent dives. The next day we were joined by another couple, and the wife was, frankly, terrible. That was apparent immediately on the first dive, and the DM/operation owner started the dive by giving her a 5 minute buoyancy lesson while we watched. Then the DM literally held her hand throughout that dive and the one that followed, leading to the most boring dives I have ever done in Cozumel.

I then did technical dives with Deep Exposure, and I thoroughly enjoyed those dives. However, if I had been one of the recreational dives on the boat, I would have been furious. All the attention was on the technical divers, and we literally had full days of diving (not just mornings), with the recreational divers doing two dives and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting around doing nothing.

 

[mcohen1021]

Sounds to me like someone needs a private charter if they want something more than the regular diver is certified for.

nd the DM/operation owner started the dive by giving her a 5 minute buoyancy lesson while we watched

LOL - reminds me of when I got my wife certified. I led her by the hand on dives for several seasons. Now I barely have to watch her.

 

[airbornediver]

Sounds to me like someone needs a private charter if they want something more than the regular diver is certified for.

I was not trying to do anything other than recreational dive. I made that clear to them. I also made it clear that I did not want to do a 60 foot dive with new divers. They understood and said I will be doing the dives I asked for. The Captain would choose sites Im interested in. That obviously did not happen. .

 

[macado]

@boulderjohn hit the nail on the head. The issue is a lot of dive operators only have one or two boats at their disposable. It's often hard to separate people by experience when they only have one boat. This is not a unique problem to Deep Exposure but I believe they have two boats but I could be mistaken.

Unfortunately you are at the whim of other diver's experience levels on the boat unless you pay for a private guide or the group is split by experience levels. I do think Deep Exposure should have been more upfront to you about this if they weren't. I know there are two sides to each story but they ultimately should have told you that the boat was scheduled for recreational dives. Sometimes that call doesn't get made until the same day. They might have gotten some walk-ins who were newer divers or perhaps the DM had a bad experience with the divers the previous day and they decided to do a less advanced site the next day.

It's one of the reasons I use the operator I do because they have multiple boats and can truly split people by experience level.

EDIT: I didn't realize you were simply just trying to do a normal "advanced" recreational dive and not a technical dive so I responded below and made some edits to my post.

 

[airbornediver]

@boulderjohn hit the nail on the head. The issue is a lot of dive operators only have one or two boats at their disposable. It's often hard to separate people by experience when they only have one boat. This is not a unique problem to Deep Exposure but I believe they have two boats but I could be mistaken.

Unfortunately you are at the whim of other diver's experience levels on the boat unless you pay for a technical guide or the group is split by experience levels. I do think Deep Exposure should have been more upset to you about this if they weren't. I know there are two sides to each story but they ultimately should have told you that the boat was scheduled for recreational dives.

It's one of the reasons I use the operator I do because they have multiple boats can split people by experience.

When I got my gear Luis the guy I was dealing with pretty much told me they will take me to do the type of dive I wanted. Your right they should have told me they had new divers on the boat and they would not accommodate me. I would have went elsewhere. Seemed they just wanted to fill the boat and get paid.

Who do you use in Cozumel?