Hard to believe!!!!!!

[jetblast00]

Originally posted by CuriousMe
I've read through all of your posts, and they make sense, but I am the only one who spent considerably less than this for my PADI OW class?

I went through a LDS, had a wonderful instructor, whose bottom line was....do we have the skills we need to dive safely and happily, we got NO pressure to buy equiptment. There were 5 of us in the class, and none of us had even our own mask, fins or snorkel...we rented them throughout the class as we did with the rest of the equiptment (this was included in the cost of the course). I have since bought one piece of my own equiptment (I already own a mask, fins and snorkel...just don't have them with me right now) from them, but I researched it not only with my instructor and the LDS folks, but also on the internet in general. I paid more for it from the LDS, but for me getting things shipped is complicated, and as long as I can afford it...I always try to support local merchants.

Honestly, if they had come on strong to pressure me to buy stuff right away....I would have found another situation, because I would never know if they were helping me stay as safe and comfortable as possible while diving, or whether they just needed to move that merchandise that week. Truthfully, I want to take some time and really figure out what gear is going to serve my needs best. And there's no way I could have justified spending the kind of money mentioned above, no matter how much I wanted to learn to dive.

My .02 (as a brand new diver)

I'm not sure of your exact situation, but your bio says the carribbean. I think that the main focus there for the dive shops is tapping into tourism where the repeat buisness might not be as important as being more attractive (price-wise included) than the shop next door. On some islands, every other business is a dive shop.
In the some of the not so heavily traveled tourist beds of the rural US, people tend to only have a very few or maybe only one LDS (sometimes maybe not so local at all!) so the repeat business means the mainstay of a shop. But, the shop still has to be able to get people into the sport before they can depend on their repeat business.

I can belive that the situation you encountered is in fact the case, it's just a matter of the business structure making money off of what is actualy profitable in a given environment.