Newport Dive shop air fill cards not honored

[RIOceanographer]

Only 5 Dive Shops left here in RI......We at Giant Stride want your business, we have the biggest selection and the largest inventory in RI, we fill e grade air, nitrox, trimix and argon. We run charters, trips and we actually dive locally......a lot! On top of that we like our customers, appreciate thier business and have old school customer service practices. www.giantstridediveshop.com

Definitely one of the best shops in New England. Red loves the sport and it shows.

I'll second John though, I sure wish Red had a branch in South County! Big vaccuum down here in the southern end of the state with OSS, Scuba Too and now Pier Dive Shop gone.

 

[AfterDark]

Definitely one of the best shops in New England. Red loves the sport and it shows.

I'll second John though, I sure wish Red had a branch in South County! Big vaccuum down here in the southern end of the state with OSS, Scuba Too and now Pier Dive Shop gone.

South County, ironicly where a large % of the diving in RI is done.

 

[theduckguru]

Fill cards are no more than IOUs issued by dive shop owners. I don't beleive many on this board would honor an IOU presented to them for payment issued by someone else. To honor these cards, the new owner must give away $18k in product and potentially give up $18k in future receipts.

I believe the new owner was foolish for keeping the Newport name. Would have been a lot easier to tell Customers the the old owner is out of business, in prison, I am a new shop and not responsible for his obligations.

Consumers have been hung out with gift cards from companies going belly up a lot bigger than a dive shop, but people keep buying them.

 

[flots am]

Fill cards are no more than IOUs issued by dive shop owners. I don't beleive many on this board would honor an IOU presented to them for payment issued by someone else. To honor these cards, the new owner must give away $18k in product and potentially give up $18k in future receipts.

It was still a dumb move. The fill passes would likely have been spread out over the next year or two, and I'd be surprised if more than half of the fills ever got used. Also, since the shop presumably has a compressor, the only actual costs involved would be energy, maintenance and employee time, and if the employees are worth anything, he would have been way ahead of the game just in profits made from selling other stuff. At the end of the day, I'd be surprised if the passes he tossed had an actual cost (to him) of more than a few thousand dollars, or about the same as a small package of useless radio spots or a short Google adwords campaign.

Although I've slowed way down over the past few years, when I was new, I don't think I ever walked out of the diver shop without at least $50 worth of "stuff", and often much more.

if he was smart, he would have traded out all the old passes at 2:1 (handed double whatever they had in free air fills). Air fills are the one thing that you just can't get online, and getting divers into the store is worth every penny they cost him. a good business person would pay way more than the cost of the fills to get a customer through the doors a dozen times.

My previous prediction stands: "He'll be out of business within a year."

There are a few businesses where you can get away with treating your customers like dirt, but SCUBA isn't one of them.

flots.

 

[AfterDark]

It was still a dumb move. The fill passes would likely have been spread out over the next year or two, and I'd be surprised if more than half of the fills ever got used. Also, since the shop presumably has a compressor, the only actual costs involved would be energy, maintenance and employee time, and if the employees are worth anything, he would have been way ahead of the game just in profits made from selling other stuff. At the end of the day, I'd be surprised if the passes he tossed had an actual cost (to him) of more than a few thousand dollars, or about the same as a small package of useless radio spots or a short Google adwords campaign.

Although I've slowed way down over the past few years, when I was new, I don't think I ever walked out of the diver shop without at least $50 worth of "stuff", and often much more.

if he was smart, he would have traded out all the old passes at 2:1 (handed double whatever they had in free air fills). Air fills are the one thing that you just can't get online, and getting divers into the store is worth every penny they cost him. a good business person would pay way more than the cost of the fills to get a customer through the doors a dozen times.

My previous prediction stands: "He'll be out of business within a year."

There are a few businesses where you can get away with treating your customers like dirt, but SCUBA isn't one of them.

flots.

There was a time I would have agreed with your predicition. We lived in a sane world with mostly sane people. These days with the polarity reversed on the universe I'm not so sure that even the OP will not go back at some point for a "good" reason. I was never a patron of Newport Dive but would stop for air fills and maybe some impulse buying from time to time when was the Tom owner. I've been to Newport a few dozen times or more since the store changed ownership not once have I stopped there because of the things I'd been hearing. It'll be a shame losing another LDS but if it's one run by an A-hole guess we'll just have to do without. I've been getting by without it. Maybe he'll offer a sweet deal on his air station! I'll start Afterdark's Travlin' Gas Service. "If you can afford the fill I'll bring it to you"! Travlin' fills ain't cheap.

 

[CT-Rich]

Kind of funny, in college (URI, '87) we used to joke about RI being the indictment state. I never thought much about dive shops being a pathway to prison, but the Jamestown shop closed after the owner murdered his wife and now this one is gone to prison. That is 28% of the diveshops relocated to the department of corrections. May be the new guy was pissed you WEREN'T buying drugs....

I think considering that much of the best diving in the area is located in Newport and Jamestown, it would be a sharp move for one of the existing shops to open a satellite shop(s) in the area and offer discounts to diver with unused fills. say $2 off a $5 charge. If the guy was smart he would have changed the name and announced that although he could not afford to honor the existing cards, he would offer discounts for the fills that remain. He must know that when we have an hour surface interval, we are either going to praise him or badmouth him.

 

[AfterDark]

Kind of funny, in college (URI, '87) we used to joke about RI being the indictment state. I never thought much about dive shops being a pathway to prison, but the Jamestown shop closed after the owner murdered his wife and now this one is gone to prison. That is 28% of the diveshops relocated to the department of corrections. May be the new guy was pissed you WEREN'T buying drugs....

I think considering that much of the best diving in the area is located in Newport and Jamestown, it would be a sharp move for one of the existing shops to open a satellite shop(s) in the area and offer discounts to diver with unused fills. say $2 off a $5 charge. If the guy was smart he would have changed the name and announced that although he could not afford to honor the existing cards, he would offer discounts for the fills that remain. He must know that when we have an hour surface interval, we are either going to praise him or badmouth him.

The Jamestown store closed because the owner was unjustly imprisoned for the death of his wife. He has since been cleared and released. His wife wasn't murdered. Chances are very good that within the next decade there will be no dive shops in RI.

 

[Thalassamania]

I would contact the Attorney General's office. I'd guess that air cards might be seen as "gift certificates" which are covered under Rhode Island State law.

 

[CT-Rich]

The Jamestown store closed because the owner was unjustly imprisoned for the death of his wife. He has since been cleared and released. His wife wasn't murdered. Chances are very good that within the next decade there will be no dive shops in RI.

I apologize and stand corrected.... my information was out of date. I hope that dive shops in RI thrive, diving here is a major attraction to visit the state (RI actually has many wonderful characteristics. The bay is beautiful and the public access laws are far more generous than other states.)

---------- Post Merged at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:31 PM ----------

do you have a particular reason for your pessimism? Is there a particular cause?

 

[AfterDark]

I would contact the Attorney General's office. I'd guess that air cards might be seen as "gift certificates" which are covered under Rhode Island State law.

Your are probably correct, of course legal action will likely accelerate the closing of the store, sooner rather than later

---------- Post Merged at 11:51 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:35 PM ----------

I apologize and stand corrected.... my information was out of date. I hope that dive shops in RI thrive, diving here is a major attraction to visit the state (RI actually has many wonderful characteristics. The bay is beautiful and the public access laws are far more generous than other states.)

---------- Post Merged at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:31 PM ----------

do you have a particular reason for your pessimism? Is there a particular cause?

No problem, corrections to the news are never as will publizied as the original bogus story.
IMO there are too few divers to support the dive shops here now. Also too few diver continue to dive. How many divers do you know that have been diving regularly for more then 10 years? I don’t know anybody that operates a dive shop that is making a lot money. IMO the LDS’s we have are mostly owned by people that dive and seek to promote diving and try to make monet at it. The owners I know either own other businesses or are multi-sport, ski, snow etc . Which is how they make their money.