PADI AOW cost

[yle]

If I'm picking up my PADI AOW along with actually doing the specialties (PPB, Drift, Night), do I still pay full price for AOW or should it be discount? Or should I get discounts on the specialties?

Simple answer: every shop and instructor has their own pricing policy, so there is no universal policy that would apply to your situation.

Just seems odd to pay full price for each of them, even though I'm doing dives for the specialties on the AOW dives. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

You're not missing something: as many people here have already responded, if the shop will try to "package" your specialties with your AOW (i.e. cut down on the total number of dives, and cut down on the work they have to do for you) then it is reasonable that you should be able to ask for an appropriate "package" price.

 

[TMHeimer]

I hate it when shops act like this.
It is totally up to the shop and the instructor, but if you've got the same instructor for the AOW and the three specialties, they are screwing you over if you are charged full price for everything. You need to do 5 dives for AOW, and 7 more for the three specialties, unless you want to do those three specialties as part of your AOW, in which case you are only doing the 5 for AOW, plus one more each for PPB and Drift, and 2 more for Night, or a total of just 9 dives. You need to negotiate this. If they insist on full price for all 4 classes, then demand that the five dives for AOW NOT include PPB, Drift, or Night. Find three others that interest you. Make them work for their damn money. Several you might consider are Search and Recovery, Drysuit, DPV, Digital Underwater Imaging, Wreck, DSMB, and Cavern. Not all PADI instructors can teach all those, but it is worth asking. Also, as another negotiating point, tell them since you are overpaying, they should throw in Nitrox and an Equipment class as freebees; they don't even take a dive. Finally, do the full PPB before any of the other dives.

Yeah all that makes sense. I took AOW in Florida, then Rescue back home. A year after the AOW I was back at the FL shop and took a bunch of specialties and got MSD. I believe the instructor threw in Equipment Specialist at no charge. Either way, I never thought of asking for a discount on the specialties because I did AOW with them a year before.

 

[vagabondexpedition]

Thanks for all the responses! Shop is trying to package a few dives together as they're done on a dive trip and nobody wants to spend entire trip all doing courses. Will definitely be discussing further with them about discounting - or getting ALL my dives being paid for if that isn't the case.

Will be doing Drift & Night certs for certain (already paid for). And now just have to figure out AOW specialty dives. Already have Dry and Nitrox certs too.

 

[oly5050user]

I hate it when shops act like this.
It is totally up to the shop and the instructor, but if you've got the same instructor for the AOW and the three specialties, they are screwing you over if you are charged full price for everything. You need to do 5 dives for AOW, and 7 more for the three specialties, unless you want to do those three specialties as part of your AOW, in which case you are only doing the 5 for AOW, plus one more each for PPB and Drift, and 2 more for Night, or a total of just 9 dives. You need to negotiate this. If they insist on full price for all 4 classes, then demand that the five dives for AOW NOT include PPB, Drift, or Night. Find three others that interest you. Make them work for their damn money. Several you might consider are Search and Recovery, Drysuit, DPV, Digital Underwater Imaging, Wreck, DSMB, and Cavern. Not all PADI instructors can teach all those, but it is worth asking. Also, as another negotiating point, tell them since you are overpaying, they should throw in Nitrox and an Equipment class as freebees; they don't even take a dive. Finally, do the full PPB before any of the other dives.

Yes it is up to the instr, facility if they package adv and specialities. But to ask for electives for advance such as dry suit, which requires pool time before use in ow and additional cost of renting a dry suit, DPV , again cost of rental, wreck can add to cost if a boat needs to be involved, nitrox adds to cost when Elearning maybe involved, digital imaging add in cost of rental camera, good. Point on make them "work for their money" but realize choosing certain electives will increase cost of relatively inexpensive advance course can double or triple the fee. Many instructors and facilities may have a simple plan of certain dives to keep students costs down to keep cost of advance inexpensive. We conduct advance at a shore location, Dutch Springs, and offer the core dives and electives of peak performance buoyancy, night, search recovery, wreck at a cost of $200. Other electives can be requested, but they may involve additional costs to the student.

 

[tursiops]

Yes it is up to the instr, facility if they package adv and specialities. But to ask for electives for advance such as dry suit, which requires pool time before use in ow and additional cost of renting a dry suit, DPV , again cost of rental, wreck can add to cost if a boat needs to be involved, nitrox adds to cost when Elearning maybe involved, digital imaging add in cost of rental camera, good. Point on make them "work for their money" but realize choosing certain electives will increase cost of relatively inexpensive advance course can double or triple the fee. Many instructors and facilities may have a simple plan of certain dives to keep students costs down to keep cost of advance inexpensive. We conduct advance at a shore location, Dutch Springs, and offer the core dives and electives of peak performance buoyancy, night, search recovery, wreck at a cost of $200. Other electives can be requested, but they may involve additional costs to the student.

I've always tried to let the students be part of choosing the three "electives." Yes, some may cost more....or even be logistically impossible (ice, cavern, night, for example)....but the alternative is spending more anyway to get less.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My AOW is 6 dives. Advanced skills, UW Nav, Night/Low Vis, Deep, Search and Recovery or Wreck, and Advanced Buddy Skills and Assists. Students choose S&R or Wreck. The others are mandatory. The cost is 425.00 including books and cert processing. Students need to provide all their own gear except for the reels. I will supply those and rent them the 30 or 40 cu ft pony bottle and reg that are required for all the dives.
As far as specialties go UW Nav is 6 dives.
Deep is a minimum of 4.
Night/Low Vis is 5.
Search and Recovery is 4.
Wreck is 6.
The Adv. Skills doesn't have it's own specialty per se. For that, the specialty if you want to call it that is Intro to Tech. Which is a pool session, 6 hrs of classroom, and 4-5 dives.
Adv Buddy Skills and Assists would be Rescue.
It wouldn't matter to me if the person took AOW the weekend before. They will still do all the dives for the full specialties.
That's because there will be additional skills and tasks as well as knowledge that are not on the AOW dives.

 

[dcg69]

Discount policies are different for each dive shops and I do not interfere with that.
From instructor point of new, when students have already some specialty or the've planned to take some, I encourage them to chose different adventure dives in their Advanced OW course to get a different specialty flavour.
For the mandatory ones ( Navigation and Deep ), I encourage them to do the extra dive and to gain additional experience rather than take the shortcut to reach the extra card one hour sooner.

 

[Efka76]

Everything depends on a diving shop pricing policy. If you will be doing 3 specialties were you elect the same specialty dives in you AOW class theoretically speaking you should get some discounts or specialty classes should be cheaper (as you will need to to have 1 dive less during specialty class). When I did my AOW and specialties it was clearly written in dive shop price list 2 prices for each specialty (with AOW in the same dive shop and without).

 

[TMHeimer]

Everything depends on a diving shop pricing policy. If you will be doing 3 specialties were you elect the same specialty dives in you AOW class theoretically speaking you should get some discounts or specialty classes should be cheaper (as you will need to to have 1 dive less during specialty class). When I did my AOW and specialties it was clearly written in dive shop price list 2 prices for each specialty (with AOW in the same dive shop and without).

That makes sense. Obviously you have to do all these courses with the same shop, though theoretically you shouldn't have to.