Opinions on whether LDS is being fair?

[FatCat]

Retract the claws...

Claws weren't even out yet.

I can understand you wanting to do all you can to prevent accidents from happening. I can certainly understand you wanting to fight corner-cutting and sloppiness.

What I can't stand - from anyone - is jumping to conclusions. It's sloppy thinking and sloppy thinking is dangerous.

Besides, I'm beginning to get the impression you're getting worked up over a troll.

Just one more thing though: it's hard enough teaching scuba in a professional and safety conscious way as it is. If every time something goes wrong in a class the finger is pointed at the instructor/LDS/dive operator without even thinking, without examining facts but just by assuming it can't be the student's responsibility, I think I'll be taking the MikeF approach and get out.

Then the hacks and the shifty operators will have won.

 

[opiniongirl]

You have your view, and I have mine.

Every respondant made assumptions, as none of us were there.

And I used to feel the same way as you - until I saw enough injuries. I have absolutely no sympathy for any instructor or operation that has a student injury due to carelessness. I absolutely am guilty of taking a student's side first in an injury that screams diving-related. Books or no books, the student is learning to descend, and thus relies on the instructor to keep him safe

And if everything is done right, the instructor and operation have nothing to worry about, now do they?

I don't know if you've ever seen a student die during training, but it changes your perspective on things, although this experience is nothing I would ever wish any instructor to go through.

Fear of litigation protects the instructor by encouraging strict adherence - and a defense of "he read about desents in the manual" would last you all of 5 seconds in court.

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

When I first read this post, my reaction was the same as Roturners..... BS..

But there are some situations where I could see this being warranted.

If the equipment rental is NOT included in the course fee and David took it out of the store to the dive site, then used or not, he rented the gear, therefore needs to rent it again.

If there is some fee for the dive site that has already been paid even though David didnt dive, it needs to be paid again.

If there is NO extra costs for the LDS, and the rental was included, then there should be no reason to charge extra to complete a course that has been already paid for in full, unless extra or remedial training is added.

I would politely ask the owner to break down the additional expenses for you, if he can give you a rational financial reason, accept it and move on, if not, come to Cancun, and I will finish your course for a hundred bucks in the sunny carribean.

As soon as I read the original post I knew this would be another bash your LDS. Mark hit the nail on the head with his response.

If rental is included, as it is at our shop and you take the rentals for two weekends then who's responsible for that gear not being rented one of those weekends? Even if it's included should you take it for say 4 weekends as you're only able to do one dive a weekend?

 

[DavidHickey]

OK,
I'm the original poster. I really did not mean to bash the LDS. I just wanted to see what policies are at other Dive shops. My entire conversation with the Owner was via email not in person. Here is what her justification for the extra fees was
" I am sorry if there was a misunderstanding about the make up fees for your training dives. This has to do more with the "business part" of diving than the medical or diving part. We have instructor ratios, equipment allotments and fees that happen around the training and I can't ask my staff to work for free when someone has to cancel and make up."
Although I really don't agree with the extra fee, they have treated me good enough so far that I will continue to use them. Basically she said 75.00 for equipment and 25.00 for training. I own my equipment so its really only 25.00, not worth losing sleep over. I will give you the details of the incident since some of you were wanting the facts. First of all the quarry charges 10.00 per day which we were responsible for paying not the LDS. I paid for both days up front and did not ask for or recieve a refund from the quarry for the day I did dive. We did our 1st and 2nd dives on a Saturday, I'm really not sure if I injured my ear on the 1st or 2nd dive. I noticed the hearing problem after the 2nd dive, but after we came up from the 1st dive the dive instructor was staring at me and told me to take off my mask. He came over and said I had a little blood coming out of my nose and wanted to know if I had problems equalizing. I told him I did not think so, that I had no pain. He said no problem it happens sometimes. But I will say that when descending on the 1st dive I found a problem real quick. Its not easy pinching your nose and clearing when your wearing THICK cold water gloves!! Water temp was 57 F. I dove without the gloves on the 2nd dive. On the 2nd dive we were descending without the rope, and I really think I went down to quickly. They set me up with 30 pounds of weight which I think was probably too much. I think I basically just went down a little quicker than I could clear. Although it was not a big pain I definitely had some discomfort when I reached the bottom. I tried clearing some more and I eventually felt fine. I noticed the hearing problem as soon as we surfaced. I did not say anything to the instructor because I've had it happen on planes and it usually goes away quickly. When I got home it seemed to clear up a little but after I went to bed I woke up and it seemed worse than before. I drove the hour to the dive site, got the instructor to the side and asked her what her opinion was on whether I should complete the last dives. She told me that there is always another day to dive and that she could not allow me to finish and that before I return I needed a doctors release. I was disappointed but understood. Anyway I scheduled an appointment with an ear doctor and got in about 5 days later. He did not mention barotrauma, he basically looked at the ears, gave me a hearing test, and said your ears are fine, and wrote a release that said there are no medical reasons that would prevent me from diving. I took that release back to the dive store and she told me the next classes would be in the spring when I could make up the dives. "never mentioned additional fees but I never asked either" I told her I did not want to wait that long, and she said for 100.00 extra I could complete the dives with a private instructor if we got a weekend of decent weather. Well a month later my phone rang on a Saturday and they asked if I wanted to finish my dives the next day on Sunday. She said "I just want you to know its going to be like swimming in ice water and there is going to be zero visibility". Well I looked out and saw that my bird bath was frozen solid and the forecast for in the morning was 15 degrees F to 20 degrees. I wanted to finish but I guess not bad enough to dive in that weather, I told her I would wait till spring. Basically that is what kinda thru me off that she offered the private instructor for 100.00 and now says 100.00 to finish with a scheduled class. But either way its 75.00 for equipment and 25.00 for the training. I own my equipment so 25.00 is not worth even worrying about. BUT owning my own equipment is a different story. My neighbor informed me the other day that while he was at the LDS he joked with the owner about me not being certified but how I had already bought most of my equipment. Well guess what? I did NOT buy the majority of it from the LDS, mainly because they did not carry the brands I was interested in, and I bought some used equipment to save money. So I have a feeling the LDS owner may have got a case of the chapped butt when they heard I did not spend my money with them. But in my defense and other regular poor divers, I signed up for the Class. I did NOT swear allegiance to their store nor did I promise to buy all of my gear from them for all the rest of time. But I really don't know if me buying else where had anything to do with charging additional fees or if she even cares that I bough else where. If nothing else I kinda feel guilty about it even though I should'nt. I'd have to guess they count on sales to their students for a good part of their income. But after all of this long winded typing, I will just state I am not upset with the dive store they have treated me decent from day 1. As she stated it was a misunderstanding I just assumed no additional charges would occur. And 25.00 seems fair to me for their additional time. As Mike said in a previous post "its gonna cost somebody so why should the dive store be the one losing money" HOWEVER if I did need their equipment, we would have had some issues with the 75.00 rental fee. And the point of the post was just to see what the policies of other LDS was and was not meant to bash them. For that matter I would recommend them to anyone wanting to certify in this area. Not going to mention their name but you can PM me if interested.
David

 

[simbrooks]

I am left with one further question: (or rather the way you wrote that left me wondering)
Did the owner want to charge you $100 (75 rental and 25 dive fee) before you had your own equipment, but now wants to charge you 100 (private or as part of a class or both of those?) even though you have your own stuff? If so i would say they are cheezed off, if its only 25 either way its warranted from you not calling off the dives on the sunday before them organising for an instructor to be at the site (sorry i must have missed that in your first post, but i see its there). As has been said, if they sent someone, they had to pay them something, if it was called off, they didnt send anyone and paid nothing, then the claim would be bogus in my mind. Originally i had assumed they were trying to charge you without anyone actually being paid to go to the site - ie shop just making money for monies sake if you had called it off the day before and they cancelled the instructor's day/trip, now i see that someone went and that even though you didnt do the dives, they had to get paid for going out there.

 

[jbd]

He did not mention barotrauma, he basically looked at the ears, gave me a hearing test, and said your ears are fine, and wrote a release that said there are no medical reasons that would prevent me from diving.

Did anyone explain to you what happened to your ears?

 

[DavidHickey]

To reply to the last 2 posts. No nobody ever did explain to me about my ears. I told the doctor what had happened and as soon as I mentioned Scuba diving he kinda chuckled as if it were common. By the time I got to him it was like 5 days later and my hearing was pretty much normal again. He just examined them, gave me a hearing test and said my hearing was great and no visible damage to the ears. But I did do a lot of research on it myself before I went.
As far as the 2nd post and the 100.00 fee. It was 100.00 for private lessons in the late fall, including training and Gear. And now its is 75.00 gear and 25.00 training but I no longer have the option of private check out. Which I understand, in late fall they had no classes scheduled, and now they have them scheduled in early spring. So she probably feels there is no need for private lessons because the weather will probably be too cold until the classes they already have scheduled. And knowing Ohio it will still be freezing in late April when the classes are scheduled!!! But they are trying to talk me into a dive trip to Key Largo to finish so who knows might do it that way.

 

[RonFrank]

Another question that I don't think was answered was how much was the orginal cost of the OW class and checkout dives. If the answer is in the $200 ballpark, then the LDS may need to add the additional charge for the reasons that Mike stated. If the cost was in the $400 range, than that's a rate that should allow for some flexibility on the part of the LDS to allow for makup dives.

Other factors would include if the checkout dives are off a boat, require travel expensive for the DS (like in the case of where I live) and so on.

Mike, four out of six require repeat check out dives?? I have little experience with this, but I did ask our instructor cause I was curious. In our class of nine, EVERYONE passed, and the ONLY drill any of us repeated (during the original CO dives) was the CESA.

The instrucor indicated that failure and repeat does happen, but generally if they get through the pool skills, they do well in OW. If they can not get through the pool (he sited mask clearing as a common problem) then they stay in the pool until they can do the skills without issue.

Just curious....

Ron

I used to do it too and I lost my azz along with all my money.

In a class of 6 4 will inevitable require special scheduling for one reason or the other so I would end up diving (and traveling for three weekends to finish one class while new students (new money) was waiting in line not being taken care of.

I certainly agree with the instructor that the student with the hurt ears shouldn't have continued diving. Whether or not there are additional charges should be agreed on in advance because these things aren't all that uncommon.

I've had students with medical conditions that weren't discovered until they started diving, had troubles and I insisted they see a doc. Unfortunately I donated lots of time and money. The doc would treat the diver, clear them, and I'd go diving again...the student would have trouble, the doc would treat and clear them and I'd go diving again...you get the idea.

Of course sometimes instructors make these problems for themselves by not making sure that the student can control a decent well enough to avoid hurting their ears in the first place.

Whether a business charges enough up front to cover these changes in schedule or they charge extra when it happens doesn't really matter because in the end some one needs to pay for it other wise the business won't be there for long.

 

[RonFrank]

Probably not. It's probably a shop that pays its instructors by the student and they pocketed the money he already paid and now they don't want to pay the out-of-pocket expense to let him finish.

Aren't there any consumer protection laws in the States for things like this? I think in Holland if you tried that they'd call it fraud (a least in teh absence of additional T's & C's). I could be mistaken, I'm not a lawyer but there are laws against double charging people for a service over here....

R..

First the States have so many consumer protection laws they could choke an elephant. But we have just as many Lawyers, so it boils down to contracts, and what is worth persuing.

As for this specific situation, we are really missing a LOT of the important details that would allow us to make a more informed opinion.

First the original contract. Second, the amount that was initially charged. I'm betting the LDS is well within their rights to charge the student the additional expense based on the agreement that the student signed.

Is it good customer releations, good business, a ripp off? Hard to say without knowing more....

Ron

 

[RonFrank]

lets look at it from the LDS view point ...... many times the LDS has to pay a fee to the owner of the lake or spring to take his checkout classes in their water. It can run anywhere from $5 a head to $25 per diver. Equipment rental is not included in the price for the checkout dive. You are expected to provide your own equipment by either purchasing it or renting it (or borrow a dive buddies gear for the weekend). If you figure up the fee for the dive and the all gear rental then $100 is about right.

With much of what you say, equipment rental for OW checkout dives in EVERY LDS I've talked with IS included (minues personal items). I talked with about a dozen LDS's in Denver before choosing, and I looked at a lot of referrals in both COZ, and FL as well, ALL included included scuba equipment.

Now, for the REAL cost. It cost me $150 to do my Checkout AOW dives, and that was AFTER spending $190 on the classroom part (both included equipment). I signed up for AOW in December, and the course ran me $129 INCLUDING materials, but equipment is NOT included with the exception of tanks and weights...

So the LDS is obviously adjusting the pricing so that their equipment rental fee's are included in the OW checkout dives. Also that $129 was a Holiday promotion as in CO most are NOT signing up for winter AOW diving.....

Ron