Does Peggy work at your LDS?

[melanie.]

How do you get the message across to your LDS so that this doesn't have to end like this? What can you do to ensure success and not failure?

It is not your responsibility to ensure that someone elses business thrives. As a consumer, you stated your needs and didn't get them. You gave them a chance to rectify it, and they still didn't have the job done. It doesn't matter if the big boss is there or not, he should be building a shop that can run daily operations without him. It is not up to you to make them succeed

Whether you are friends or not, it should not have taken almost 2 months for them to not even touch the tanks! If it will make you feel better give the owner a call when he is back, or discuss it over beers

 

[The Chairman]

Lack of organization lol

If you had suggested that the location was the biggest clue, I would have re thought having this here. If you are right about who it is, then its obvious that the problem is as obvious as it is endemic. You can be sure that I will be pointing them to this thread at some time so they can learn what the general consensus is on their style of shop mismanagement. Obviously, they aren't listening to ME when I am trying to reason with them in person. Perhaps seeing it in black and white will cause them to take some action.

I often state that you can't reason with an unreasonable person. Never accepting fault for problems is nothing less than being unreasonable. You won't change if you don't see a problem. You can't see the problem if you are actively trying not to. Whenever I teach a class or provide a service I ask a few questions:

• Did this meet or exceed your expectations? If "no", then how did I miss it?
• Is there anything, good or bad, that really stuck out.
• What can I do to improve?

I rarely make these sound so formal, but I am always truly interested in improving. The answers, especially when I miss, stick with me until I figure out how to overcome my shortcomings.

 

[Jax]

. . . He filled it, rust and all. I was trying to not be upset when I asked the owner why he didn't follow through. WOW. The excuses he kept making made my blood simply boil and that's hard to do. It was Mexico's fault, it was this guy's fault or it was that guy's fault. I stopped him and said we needed to talk this out as I had a few other issues over missing tanks. Nope, he just kept up with his excuses and passing the buck. I was so upset I was shaking as I left the place. I was talking to a real live Peggy and he worked at an LDS.

Now, I purposely did not identify this shop. Sure, its a bit of a vent, but I really want your input. How patient should I have been? What could I have done to avoid this situation? You can be sure that I won't be darkening their door again, so I don't care if they ID themselves here. If they are brave enough, they might even try to justify themselves here. No, I couldn't go to sleep without writing this down. Give me your thoughts.


[/LEFT]

When you find yourself in a hole, the first step is STOP DIGGING! Defensiveness ruins customer faith, no matter what. In polite terms, the apology should be equal to egregiousness of the offense. In this case, they should have given you two steels to use while they fixed stupidity, and then VIP'd, tumbled, and filled yours for free. Maybe even offered shipping.

That said, they F'd up and are making excuses. Is it fair to the rest of the Florida divers to learn this lesson the hard way? This is why the Better Business Bureau was formed. This shop should be reported to the BBB, and their name should be called out in public.


LDS don't HAVE to be perfect, just up-front and honest. We have ONE here. It's part time. He tells us when he'll get the work done, he'll let us know if it will be delayed before we drop it. Sometimes I can't get 80% deco gas because he doesn't have an O2 booster pump . . . We all work together with what we have. Excuses are never acceptable.

 

[pafindr]

I have to say Pete that you were a bit more patient then I would have been and I'm a patient person.
I went to a local shop for an air fill. They had a few student tanks to fill and being that I didn't need the tank till the next day I agreed to pick it up the next morning.
I showed up the next morning and my tank wasn't ready so I asked the co-owner why it wasn't filled, I needed the tank for a dive and now I would be late to the dive site. He was mad that his guy didn't fill the tank as he was supposed to and began to fill my tank. He said the guy has been doing this on and off and wasn't sure if the guy was going to be working for him much longer.
A few weeks later I bring my tank in for a fill and this same guy was there.
When I ask him to fill my tank he tells me that he can only fill the tank to 3000 (My tank is a HP 100 3500psi). I tell him that the owner fills my tank to 3400 so what was the issue that he couldn't fill it to the same. He says that he's not the owner and the banks only fill to 3000. I looked at him funny then said "turn on the compressor" which he wasn't willing to do.
I grabbed my tank and left. I called the owner a couple of days later and told him about it. He told me that the guy knows how to fill my tank and there wasn't an excuse for him not filling my tanks again. I told him when he finally finds a staff member that is willing to do his job to call me and I will begin to use his services again, until then I will take my business elsewhere. It's been over a year and I'm still waiting for the phone call. Actually I'm not waiting for a phone call there are plenty of places to get a fill.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

I have found many shops disappoint. A shop here has great rental gear but doesn't put mouthpieces on, you have to buy them, for about $8 each. Another shop you know of has very poor rental gear but a low low price. One of my favorite shops had one employee who literally had no clue how to fill tanks so I had to do it myself while another employee charged me for 50/50 when I bought 50% and I had to tell her how to partial pressure the mix, and she got it about 7% off, yet I still consider her a friend and have no plans at all to stop going there.

Give me your tanks Netdoc, I have several to tumble and it would give me the incentive I need to get my tumbler finished!

 

[Dive-aholic]

I use one shop for fills and one for hydro's and vis. This winter I'll be doing my own vis and just got the motor for a tumbler of my own. Then I can get hydros as through two of the places that supply our company's welding gas without going through a shop. The one I use for fills is great for that. He gets mixes within a 1% consistently and will give me whatever I want in them. "Good" fills are the norm. But he does not hydro and will wait to get a bunch of tanks to take em to the hydro place so I now use the shop that will take them as he gets them. Hydro and vis on two sets of doubles, two singles, and a stage took a week and half. They were ready when he said they would be and that happened while he was moving his shop! He's also a tech and PSD team instructor and does not like to have a bunch of tanks setting around the shop. He gets htem in and gets them done. And done right more importantly. I would have been pissed and named the place that gave the that kind of run around and the friendship may be one reason they allowed it to happen. Friends don't get pissed at friends so why hurry, Pete will be cool with it. Wookie had the best advice.

Why not just take your tanks directly to the hydro shop? That's what I do. Just skip the middle man. I've been doing that for years, including when I lived in Arizona. It will also save you the fees added on by the shops.

 

[TSandM]

This isn't just a problem with dive shops. Customer service is spotty everywhere, and there is NOTHING that earns my customer loyalty like good service.

And it is also very true that it isn't a problem that drives you away from a business, it's how it is handled. For the last four or five months, I have been dealing with a business which agreed to perform a service for me. As it turned out, they were unable to do it. But they have dealt with the situation in such a way as not only not to anger me, but to create a vocal and loyal customer. It undoubtedly cost them some money in the short run, but in the long run?

Pete, if you can't just let it go, I would find out the name of the owner of the shop, and write him a polite letter, describing the events in a dispassionate way, and explaining very clearly what it was about his employees' actions that drove you out of the shop. If he cares, he may try to do something about it. If he is in the situation a lot of dive shops are in up here, where they need shop help and can't afford to pay very much at all for it, he may decide that retaining the staff he has, with all their warts, is better than losing them. It's a bad long-term solution, but dive shop owners often don't have a lot of good long-term solutions, which is why we have lost several of them in just the last couple of years.

 

[Lobzilla]

You think you know which shop this is. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. You'll never really know and I'm not saying. I spread my money around quite a bit and am friends with many shops. What gives them away here? The lack of service? The excuses? The inability to accept fault?

You see, I was almost willing just to swallow the whole thing and go on. I have since found two places in the Keys and South Florida that can and will do excellent service. But when the owner simply refused to take ANY of the blame and kept shifting it on everyone else (including me) that became the tipping point for this thread. He was kind of abusive about it. Bad call.

I know how you feel. Since I started diving a little over a year ago I was (!) dealing with a LDS that has a different definition of customer service than I do. In his mind I owe him the purchase of high margin products (like drysuits) because I paid him already for instruction and other services. The kicker is that instead of admitting his business model (another sucker is born every day) he comes up with more and more bizarre theories why he should not provide the services I need and would gladly pay for.

Now, is his perspective on economic realities and his inability to deal with facts instead of creating a heap of bovine excrement my problem? Hell no.

How about the money I spent there? That already pales in comparison to what I spent elsewhere. I was actually contemplating to send him a thank you note for steering me towards better value for training and purchases. But even that would be a waste of time.

Rule number two also applies to merchants. I violated that rule for far too long with this guy. I also have to come to terms with the realization that I tried to "fix" the relationship to avoid pleading guilty to dealing with the wrong people.

 

[Lobzilla]

This isn't just a problem with dive shops. Customer service is spotty everywhere, and there is NOTHING that earns my customer loyalty like good service.

I have walked this planet for a couple of decades in several countries and find that the amount of disrespect and sometimes even abuse you get in dive shops really takes the cake compared to every other industry.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

There's these two shops in our area that are in a symbiotic relationship. Each is the other's best salesperson ... whenever someone gets PO'ed at one shop, they tend to go to the other. Unfortunately, it's a short-term solution ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)