Dixie Divers in Deerfield Groupon

[mselenaous]

To the OP, here a few links of great info to keep in mind as a new diver:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne.../166469-what-consider-new-student-diving.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ng/287780-how-find-excellent-scuba-class.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ering-diving/283566-who-responsible-what.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...35-pet-peeves-safety-concerns-new-divers.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...514-what-if-what-do-when-things-go-wrong.html

By coming to Scubaboard to research, you are well ahead of the curve on any class. A good education comes from blending information from a variety of sources. Get certified and go dive!

Now, for the Groupon part...here's how those work. Groupon wants to offer a great deal, usually at least 50% of retail and Groupon keeps half of that. So remember that the shop is doing this at about $0.25 cents on the dollar. The only entities that are making money on these deals are Groupon, and the certification agency, like PADI. The shop/instructor still has to purchase training materials and those are not discounted by the agency to the shop just because it is a Groupon Sale.

You may get a great instructor, or an OK instructor. The amount of time someone has been an instructor isn't as big a factor if he/she is a very experienced diver and can share that knowledge with their students. What you get out of the class is not just dependent on the instructor, but is also on what you bring to the class as well.

OW certification is like a learner's permit. Find some good mentors and experienced dive buddies and go diving. Hopefully each dive will be a learning experience. I've got over 900 dives and still learn something on each dive.

Please let us know how your class goes.

Happy Diving!

 

[sotgecho]

Groupon perpetuates people looking for the cheap and easy route. However, Groupon is used to drive the machine of owning a business not limited to the dive industry in these times.

The BHB is a catch 22; it is the perfect training spot for students and the best shore dive site in Palm Beach but it can be easily ruined and damaged with instances like this. Once I saw the video I instantly recognized what shop and who this was; I am a current DM for them. I am glad that our shop made the correct decision. If we, as divers, want to continue to use the BHB as a dive site and have it for future use; these incidents should motivate us to find a better training site for classes or come up with better solutions.

 

[divetag]

To the OP, here a few links of great info to keep in mind as a new diver:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne.../166469-what-consider-new-student-diving.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ng/287780-how-find-excellent-scuba-class.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...ering-diving/283566-who-responsible-what.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...35-pet-peeves-safety-concerns-new-divers.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...514-what-if-what-do-when-things-go-wrong.html

By coming to Scubaboard to research, you are well ahead of the curve on any class. A good education comes from blending information from a variety of sources. Get certified and go dive!

Now, for the Groupon part...here's how those work. Groupon wants to offer a great deal, usually at least 50% of retail and Groupon keeps half of that. So remember that the shop is doing this at about $0.25 cents on the dollar. The only entities that are making money on these deals are Groupon, and the certification agency, like PADI. The shop/instructor still has to purchase training materials and those are not discounted by the agency to the shop just because it is a Groupon Sale.

You may get a great instructor, or an OK instructor. The amount of time someone has been an instructor isn't as big a factor if he/she is a very experienced diver and can share that knowledge with their students. What you get out of the class is not just dependent on the instructor, but is also on what you bring to the class as well.

OW certification is like a learner's permit. Find some good mentors and experienced dive buddies and go diving. Hopefully each dive will be a learning experience. I've got over 900 dives and still learn something on each dive.

Please let us know how your class goes.

Happy Diving!

You also have to remember that Groupon works on the gift certificate idea that part of the return comes from those that do not redeem them.

 

[danvolker]

A friend of mine just sent me an email, asking me why I was making posts that would hurt dive shops…This kind of threw me for a loop, because that is not what I was in this thread for.

Taking a step back from this Groupon thread, and thinking about it, I feel it is important to point out that ANY Dive Shop could be sold into trying Groupon, and it is not the Shop being a bad shop, that has the shop trying Groupon....

Dixie Divers is not in my area of concern (Palm Beach Diving). They are not in SFDJ.com , and never could have been. However, they do not deserve the tone of my posts....I was not trying to disparage them....This was a "mission" for me, to make sure that new divers do not get sucked in to a class that has impossible odds stacked against it, from the get go.

I am not spending my time on Scubaboard, to attempt to injure good dive shops. I am spending my time to attempt to get more out of good dive shops, more out of instructors, more out of manufacturers, and more out of charter operations.

This is all about helping divers to get more out of diving….


And so while this is a thread about Dixie Divers having experimented with a groupon use, this is NOT an indication that they don't care about dive instruction, or that they are anything other than a good shop....I don't know if they will ever read or care about what we talk about in threads like this, but if they do, there is a good message this discussion can bring.

They need to know that even if they were among the top 1 % of all shops in Florida for training quality, that the effect of Groupon would be much greater than just the increase in student sign ups they could get. They need to know that the bulk of divers feel that Groupon lessens the quality of instruction that people expect from any given shop or instructor. They need to know that this is not a Groupon dinner special, and divers do not think of it this way....non-divers that are thinking of diving may very well think about Groupon like a dinner special, and this concerns the bulk of us here on Scubaboard...at least this is what I get from the Zeitgeist of postings here. I wanted to try and put this spirit into a more coherent expression.

Probably there is some way that some shop "could" do a good job with Groupon....maybe they would pay full instruction fees to the instructors, maybe they have some way to pull in these Groupon people for business which becomes very long term, rather than the short term model we have seen in most of the examples. What we do know is many shops have not enjoyed the results they achieved with Groupon.

Any of the larger shops in South Florida, have to put out quality instruction as their primary goal, or suffer devastating feedback from the local charter operations. IF I was to put in the time and effort to run a dive shop, I would want to be aware of all the downsides Groupon may offer to my business, and if I was to play with Groupon, I would certainly have a method in place to make certain my students got quality instruction..and I would need to publicize this Add-On to my shop's use of Groupon..maybe call it Groupon Plus, or something....Whatever we called it, it would tell the students that we are NOT going to allow the discount to effect the quality of the instruction....Groupon by itself, with no such thought or additional protection mechanisms, just sounds like too much of a discount to be good for anyone. Like if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

The thread was about the way Groupon "could" effect dive instruction for first time students. It is much more than a "loss leader". The OP should think about this as the course progresses...Hopefully, he will post heavily about the experiences in the class, either re-inforcing what I had warned about, or totally re-butting it, with a description of how it was implemented intelligently. If Dixie divers has no knowledge of this thread, and has no plan in effect to protect against the obvious issues Groupon can introduce, then I expect the OP will have some real horror stories for us soon.
If Dixie DOES have some special plan in place, and the Groupon class is full of quality instruction, I will be the first to applaud them.

 

[Superlyte27]

I have used groupon to get deals on restaurants. What I have found out nearly every time is that merchants using groupon are struggling to stay afloat. It's a last ditch effort to save a failing business (at least in the restaurant arena). After all, why would ANYONE give away anything if they were so busy they didn't have to give it away.

For the most part, the restaurants i've seen offering groupon are out of business within 6 months. I think that if a dive shop is resorting to using groupon it's because they are not remaining afloat. It's a last ditch effort to save a failing shop.

You get what you pay for.

And there is NO WAY you should be paying anything for the instruction shown in that video.

 

[danvolker]

Maybe what is needed is some videos that show exactly what an Open water class should look like when the first get in the water, when they begin drills, and how each diver looks after themselves, their buddy( if assigned one), and the connection obvious between instructor and class.

If new students could see what they should be striving for themselves, this will make their first open water sessions easier/calmer, and they will also recognize the difference between a good instructor and class, and a bad one...this is probably a good direction for us....rather than a whine and cheese exercise, we do something that can help.

I do have access to some very good instructors, and some very good shops...it would be quite easy to showcase the way a class "should look".

 

[sotgecho]

Maybe what is needed is some videos that show exactly what an Open water class should look like when the first get in the water, when they begin drills, and how each diver looks after themselves, their buddy( if assigned one), and the connection obvious between instructor and class.

If new students could see what they should be striving for themselves, this will make their first open water sessions easier/calmer, and they will also recognize the difference between a good instructor and class, and a bad one...this is probably a good direction for us....rather than a whine and cheese exercise, we do something that can help.

This is a documentary called "Testing New Waters." It showcases the GUE Rec1 course which is equivalent to an open water course. It is a very well produced documentary on three students going through the course showing them from day one to their final checkout dives.

https://vimeo.com/34392738

 

[danvolker]

This is a documentary called "Testing New Waters." It showcases the GUE Rec1 course which is equivalent to an open water course. It is a very well produced documentary on three students going through the course showing them from day one to their final checkout dives.

https://vimeo.com/34392738

I watched it. Very impressive open water class! Of course I like the GUE direction. I wish I could push for a class this involved here in South Florida, but I don't think the majority of potential dive students in America, would be willing to make this level of commitment.
I think this might be good to add to a video series, to represent the GUE perspective. But I also think we need very good PADI or NAUI instructors showing the way an Open Water Class should be run at the Blue Heron Bridge. This is a model that could be reasonable for all classes in South Florida to have as a "Reference Point".
As of now, my "action plan" for this, is to ask Force E, Pura Vida, and Jupiter Dive Center to let me video some optimal Open Water Classes that can serve as reference for future students, on what to expect of yourself and others. It needs to include all the little things like how the class starts, and how the instructor makes sure each student is comfortable, and able to learn effectively.
I have seen each of these 3 shops field very professional classes at the BHB, so I can easily shoot the kind of scenes I think we want people interested in learning how to dive--to see. Probably this should NOT identify each shop in each video....it is not a tool to market one shop against another...it is a tool to help new students, regardless of agency or affiliation.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I think this thread IS pretty much an attack on a dive shop. A dive shop is supposed to hire PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTORS who are required to meet each and every criteria spelled out in the class curiculum by the certifying agency. To assume that they will do a sub-standard job, just because the course itself was sold as a loss leader, is certainly questioning the shop's ethics.

Do we really think that a dive shop is going to turn out a much diferent product if they simply charge an extra $100 or something?

Why wouldn't they be teaching to the same standard, regardless of what they charge?

 

[HowardE]

I think this thread IS pretty much an attack on a dive shop. A dive shop is supposed to hire PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTORS who are required to meet each and every criteria spelled out in the class curiculum by the certifying agency. To assume that they will do a sub-standard job, just because the course itself was sold as a loss leader, is certainly questioning the shop's ethics.

Do we really think that a dive shop is going to turn out a much diferent product if they simply charge an extra $100 or something?

Why wouldn't they be teaching to the same standard, regardless of what they charge?

Actually... If you asked me... I see this thread as being about a guy who was psyched to become a diver and a member of ScubaBoard, and got totally bashed for trying to get a good deal on Groupon. The rest of the thread is just a hijack and POV about groupon and how groupon fosters sub-standard instruction in general.