Hi
. The case for my wife and I, when pursuing Open Water certification, was probably similar to a lot of folks. We didn't know anything about diving, didn't know different agencies existed, and simply ended up getting open water certified with PADI because that happened to be the agency affiliated with the only dive shop we were aware of.
As it turns out - we have ditched PADI in favor of SSI for our Advance Open Water certification. We were dis-satisfied with PADI on a few levels. The first being that we were not happy with our PADI dive shop, Chattahoochee Scuba, in Columbus, GA. The shop is a very small place, and likely continues to exists from the number of regular swimming lessons which it provides for kids and adults. My wife and I were very excited about getting certified and knew we were going to continue diving, so rather than purchase equipment from the dive shop, which was very, very limited, we sought out a larger retailer and found Diver's Supply in Macon, GA, which is like the Walmart of diving equipment. We were able to view and try on equipment we hadn't seen before and the shop helped educate us on our purchases.
Excited to try out our new stuff we went back to Chattahoochee scuba to rent air tanks and use their pool. No sooner than we walked in, were we accusingly asked, "Where did you get that stuff?" We told them where, but the employees had an attitude with us. I'm guessing their behavior was because we didn't order through them so they could get a cut of the purchase. Our previous experience ordering through them was that a set of fins ordered for my wife will take more than two weeks to arrive. We received the same attitude from them when I mentioned that I got an underwater camera for my wife for her degree completion gift. They were sore that I bought it on the internet and not from them.
In the mean time we signed up for a deep class through SSI, as we had found the other scuba shop in Columbus, GA, Planet Ocean Scuba, which was professional and which we felt comfortable with right away. We understood that PADI, SSI, and other dive agencies all subscribe to international standards for class requirements, and told our local PADI shop that we wanted the SSI deep class to count for our advanced open water cert. The shop owner at Chattahoochee scuba refused, so we called PADI's national phone number. The person which we talked with there also said that they wouldn't credit us with the deep dive class taken through SSI. We were done with PADI at that point. We returned to SSI and are one dive now from Advance Open Water Certification.
The last gripe with PADI is that their requirements for, "Adventure Dives", seems to be just a way to milk students out of extra money.
All in all though, we are happy with the problems we experienced with PADI, as without that grief we never would have found a much more professional, SSI, dive center and the shop owner there who makes you feel like part of the family as soon as you walk in the door.