PADI sells that their C-Card is accepted everywhere. That's the value they have positioned themselves to provide.
I agree, that is the value-add you mentioned before. But that is not all they do. They, like
every other certifying agency, also sell a set of minimum requirements for training; i.e. standards, which when taught appropriately, under approved conditions, by a certified instructor,
may qualify a competent and responsible student to be recognized; i.e. certified, as a diver with a defined set of skills that the now certified diver can employ in relative safety (remember I said taught appropriately) with relative confidence as they build experience through practicing what they learned during every subsequent dive after that training. This is what adds quality to any training program (notice I did not say
defines quality); that there exists a basic set of standards that must be met, a basic philosophy that must be adhered to, before a lay person can be taught the skills required to become a reasonably capable diver by the end of the training program. I therefore do believe that it is indeed possible for a "pure bred" PADI acolyte and certified instructor to teach only PADI course work, promote only the PADI sanctioned philosophy of how to dive, do the secret PADI dance to make it rain, and and as long as he does this with the expectation that his students should have truly mastered every diving skill they were taught to a truly satisfactory degree (that Judge Judy would agree was reasonable if she were asked - does she dive? I wonder...) before he signs them off, the training presented to the student will have some degree of quality to it. Of course it also depends on how vigorously they participated during the PADI rain dance
I don't see how you could look at their marketing/self promotion and disagree, and I certainly don't see how you could take offense at that being pointed out, but if you do that's OK. It isn't the best argument fodder but what the hell, we can make it work.
I am not offended, we're just having a good, clean open discussion about this here, right? I just disagree with your statement of apparent absolute "fact" that if "[q]uality...is present it isn't coming from PADI" as you put it. Sure, PADI, like all other certifying agencies, have arguably produced what some may consider unsafe divers, irresponsible DM's and incompetent instructors. That could be because they, the individual divers, DMs, and instructors, might not have been trained properly themselves to a reasonable measure of care when they attended their own personal training courses originally, or they didn't pay attention and didn't give a rat about getting it right when they did their training and chose to just barely slide through to home base to get a c-card, or they could have just plainly become reckless and irresponsible over time regardless of how well they were taught and initially performed in the beginning. In the end the training they present in turn then continues the horrible cycle of introducing more bad training practices into classrooms. I bet though that that even you would agree that if PADI hears of any of this going on, investigates, tries to rehabilitate the dive professional carrying their logo and still cannot remedy the situation, they would absolutely, undoubtedly, and unwaveringly revoke that DM or instructor's license to protect their reputation and promise of quality training that divers expect to receive when they sign up for a class.
The standards and procedures generally remain the same, albeit with some tweaks here and there as the industry experience and knowledge evolves over time. A diver's quality of training will be measured against this absolute standard that the certifying agency puts forward in its programs when a court hears a case regarding a scuba diving related incident. It won't be oh my instructor is a great guy, he even designs his own diving courses; it is going to be did he train you to at least the standard? Was there quality instruction involved or not, or did he ignore the certifying agency's minimum requirements or violate it's procedures of
quality instruction.
PADI thinks they have the perfect answer for making a good enough souffle and make some extra $$$ on top of it all; so does every other certifying agency to a greater or lesser degree. While the agencies differ in opinion on what the recipe for quality should be, hence the fact that they each have their own, they are nonetheless roughly in general agreement about what an open water diver is, what an advanced open water diver is, what a dive master is and what an instructor is. Could you imagine the legal ramifications if these industry standards did not exist? That is part of the quality dive training in general across all boards of certifying agencies give you - a baseline to which you can be measured against. Unlike the free lunches, the blue vinyl cases, the equipment rentals, and the free air fills, this is not a value add, this goes directly towards the quality that is recognized when you drop any *recognized* c-card on the counter of a dive op when checking in to book your dives. Dive ops generally don't want the liability and hassle of taking unsafe divers out to get themselves bent or killed; it's bad for business if nothing else. That is why they will laugh at Bubba's Red Neck Association of Fishpond Instructors (RNAFI) cert card he printed and laminated at home last night before he left on his trip to the coast for a holiday - they know that it is useless and a liability; they know it has no quality training, of any readily verifiable kind, that backs it up, because there are no industry accepted standards that govern the certification process.
