Diver Training Rip-off - Divers Beware!

[Se7en]

Not sure that there is any legal relationship established in Australia between instructor and student, so not really an issue. The papers were definately 'fudged' - from memory I had lost something, and the origional instructor wasn't around any more, so another signed me off... from memory he needed to have done a course to remain current, so it was a win / win situation

This is all a good ten years ago, and I had some 50 plus dives with the LDS manager, who was also an instructor, in all sorts of conditions ( 6 degrees water, night, 40m etc)so I image he vouched for me... A couple of years of physics at uni meant I had a decent grasp of the theory as well.

For what it's worth, more was covered in that course 10 years ago than in the 'advanced' course I did recently. Don't think I'll be putting another dollar in...

ciao
Mike

 

[Mario S Caner]

Mike, please don't think that I am knocking your diving ability, I'm not. What I'm saying is that once an instructor just Signs Off someone they haven't even met, that opens up a can of worms that can be very dangerous. It's wrong regardless of the reasoning. Now if that instructor would have at least called you and did a check-out dive with you I would have understood... but that didn't happen... so perhaps in this particular case, everyone won... but surely you see the danger in this type of scenario!?!
Sooner or later, someone is going to lose... just who is that someone going to be?

 

[Se7en]

Mario SC

Oh - I didn't take it as any disrespect to me at all - I was just trying to defend the indefensible

Yes - I can see that it is a can of worms, and to be honest _I_ would not have done it either. However I felt some defence of someone who had done me a favour was justified...

I was just setting the circumstances for what could be construed an extremely dubious act - if taken in isolation.

And I guess, making the point that stuff like this does happen. In my case, I don't think it was an issue, but in some circumstances it would be. Then again, I've seen plenty of correctly trained people I don't want to dive with, so who knows. The concept of being a PADI master diver without ever diving without an instructor present simply astounds me... 10+ years of recreational diving, and I wouldn't call myself master anything...

Off for a mid winter night dive to play with new gear
Mike

 

[Butch103]

Hey all ... a lot of good points brought up in this thread. I agree with a couple of posters here. Ask for help with the matter and if you are going to leave the actual name of a shop/instructor etc one should hav ethe courage to not hide behind our online alias if we have them.

Butch