PADI has been sold to another investment group. Thoughts?

[LGHT]

Once again, I'm sorry you had such a negative experience. If you don't think you're getting safe training, then why on earth are you seeing it through? There are other shops and instructors.

R..

The groupon I got was a heck of a deal and I wasn't expecting to get the world for what I paid. I was simply hoping to get enough exposure to determine if I really want to learn to scuba or not and that goal was met regardless. The deal included 2 shore dives that I upgraded to boat dives along with all gear so I have nothing to loose by continuing and finishing my cert. Once done I will gladly pay for a private instructor to teach me to dive right and dive safe with the few hundred I saved on my groupon deal. I hope that the new owners will acknowledge and realize how much improvement the training process needs and does something about it. Either way having the PADI cert will still be helpful because I can now get air fills from a lot of vacation spots I visit throughout the world.

 

[Scott]

I would first need to know if PADI has any type of class size limit or limit of how many students a single instructor is allowed to teach at once first before I can even determine if a violation has occurred. I checked the website and couldn't find the teaching guidelines if they exist.

In the pool the ratio is 10:1 for a lone instructor, unless there is a 10 or 11 year old. Then the ratio is 4:1

 

[boulderjohn]

I don't blame PADI for the instructor I blame PADI for course material designed for 10 year olds,

A 10 year old is allowed to be certified. Are you saying that PADI should have written their materials so that a 10 year old can't understand them? In education, the goal is usually to have the students understand the material. You are proposing a very different approach here.

laxed testing procedures

I have no idea what a "laxed" testing procedure is. The testing procedure you described in your post was the decision of the shop you used, not PADI. You were advised to contact PADI about it. That advice still stands.

and a plan that's clearly designed to certify anyone willing to pay for the training.

That is, once again, the fault of the shop, not PADI. PADI instructors are not supposed to pass a student who does not meet standards on dive skills. In my last OW dives I conducted, one of the students could not do the skills satisfactorily and did not pass. He can come back later, get more practice, and show me (or another instructor) that he can do them well enough, but he will not be certified until that happens. If something else happened in your experience, then that was an instructor's decision, and he should be reported to PADI.

The impression I got from the class and pool training that PADI is all about numbers and as a result they have laxed their certification methods to accommodate the masses and putting students at risk as a result.

So, based on one instructional session at one dive shop, you have been able to determine what happens in all the thousands of shops around the world.

I read in a post here that in order to be a safety diver you need to pass certain physical test, but those test don't include a "time limit"??? Who's best interest do you think they have in mind by making a test that anyone who's willing to pay can past? It's a matter of credibility and "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

Are you talking about a Public Safety Diver? Are you under the impression that PADI is in charge of that?

 

[Jill from Phoenix]

Not really. It's like when you buy mutual funds or something. You don't have a whole lot of say as an investor where the fund money is invested. You can refuse to invest in funds that have in their portfolios the kinds of businesses you have an objection to (e.g., some investors forced their fund managers to stay away from South Africa holdings during the apartheit years), but the investor-tails of PE companies don't really wag the dog-companies in the PE's portfolio, no.

What about significant price increases? Do you know for how much it sold?

 

[archiebald]

It seems I must be in the minority here or maybe PADI Asia must be a hell of a lot better than PADI USA.

In 2011 I and my 12 y/o daughter signed up for OW at a resort in Malaysia (The Taraas in Redang Island). Due to time and location restraints we took the Open Water eLearning course over about a 2 month period.

We found the eLearning to be excellent, well balanced for beginners and for her at 12 years old, it was just about the perfect level. In fact, some of the points on pressure and gas laws helped her out on her school science work which she did just a few weeks after completing the course.

The video was a little corny but keeping things light hearted makes learning easier. Nothing worse than a boring video where you mentally switch off half way through.

We passed our theory with 100% across the board, then went on our vacation to Malaysia. At the resort we learned that our class size for the course was two persons (i.e. just us two and the instructor). Our instructor was helpful, clear and concise. After the course finished each day, we were also able to approcah him in the dive center for additional questions. On the open water dives, everything was comfortable and because there were only two of us, we had spare time after the tasks to look around. His knowledge of the underwater wildlife was excellent and he was pointing things out to us that we completely missed. This served to make us even more enthusiastic about our diving experiences.

In 2012 we decided to do our AOW with PADI again, this time in Guam with MDA. Once again we had a total course number of three (including our instructor). On top of the required Deep Dive (limited to 21m for my daughter) and the navigation, we did wreck, underwater naturalist and search and recovery. Navigation was challenging because the visibility was less than 4 meters. My daughter had a tough time but our instructor repeated the exercise with her and she got it. Search & recovery was excellent and we felt we could do something useful, other than just looking at stuff.

A day later we did a boat dive where a couple of teenagers were just completing their final OW dive (another class of two).

In both OW and AOW never had a problem and we felt confident in both instructors. C-cards were delivered promptly.

I would have no hesitation in going back to PADI for the next stage or recommending them to a friend.

Oh, and by the way, for the people who might have problems... you know that you will receive a follow-up email from PADI and be invited to fill in a simple questionnaire about the quality of the training you received.

So to anyone feeling unwary, check with the dive shop about the class size before going. If you feel unhappy about the numbers, make a different arrangement before starting the course.

 

[Diver0001]

I think archiebald's post illustrates nicely the point that several of us have been trying to make, which is that PADI supplies a framework and some learning materials and that the important thing is what individual instructors/shops decide to do with that.

R..

 

[Simon-]

I would love some of the "if you pay for the course, you get certified" to come and train with me.

If that is what you think would happen, you'd have a rude awakening

 

[Quero]

What about significant price increases? Do you know for how much it sold?

I don't understand what you're asking, Jill. I'm simply pointing out in response to your view that the investors in the fund that has bought PADI Worldwide are going to become the tail that wags the dog that this is simply not possible. Investors do not have any control at all in regard to management decisions for acquired companies. Investors are not employees of the PE. We typically receive monthly updates by email in regard to the fund in which we've invested--these updates discuss which companies have been acquired with the money in the fund. There is an annual shareholders' meeting at a hotel ballroom somewhere. But investors calling the shots? No. Investors choose a fund based on past performance of the PE, nothing more. Investors are not in a position to micro-manage (wag the dog) any company in the portfolio of their fund.

 

[Jill from Phoenix]

I don't understand what you're asking, Jill. I'm simply pointing out in response to your view that the investors in the fund that has bought PADI Worldwide are going to become the tail that wags the dog that this is simply not possible. Investors do not have any control at all in regard to management decisions for acquired companies. Investors are not employees of the PE. We typically receive monthly updates by email in regard to the fund in which we've invested--these updates discuss which companies have been acquired with the money in the fund. There is an annual shareholders' meeting at a hotel ballroom somewhere. But investors calling the shots? No. Investors choose a fund based on past performance of the PE, nothing more. Investors are not in a position to micro-manage (wag the dog) any company in the portfolio of their fund.

I suppose I'm playing 'The Price is Right' - I loved that show as a little girl ... somewhere between 50-500 million.

But if I was a betting girl (....and I am ... )I would bet that PADI will be increasing their prices next year.

Gosh, I'm ready for Vegas. November will not come soon enough.

 

[djcheburashka]

In my experience as a shareholder in a PE firm, I would say that it's not even a change in management--it's merely a change in ownership. Those are two different things. Now if the PE firm believes that a change in management will enhance revenues, then yes, they may shake things up that way. ... But the notion that the PE will install its own employees to run the company is not the usual or preferred strategy. Even if a member of the PE firm has to temporarily step in to fill a management position, a new manager is always sought as a permanent employee at the newly acquired company. This new employee is not part of the PE at all.

Theres a big exception though, for profit harvesting. PE funds will generally not manage day-to-day operations, but they will manage the capital structure, major transactions, etc., and they routinely cause the companies to pay "management fees" to the fund management firm in exchange for this "service."

It's like when you buy mutual funds or something. You don't have a whole lot of say as an investor where the fund money is invested. ... the investor-tails of PE companies don't really wag the dog-companies in the PE's portfolio, no.

You're talking about the level of control that investors in the fund have over the fund's assets. In that respect you're absolutely right. But the fund *manager* is in a different position, and sometimes the tail does wag the dog.

For example, one popular PE strategy many aeons ago was to comb through sec filings looking for companies with a lot of old real estate on their balance sheets. (The details of why this worked are beside the point right now.) The fund would buy the company, and then harvest profits from the value hidden in the real estate. In a simple transaction, the PE manager might cause the company to mortgage it's real estate and dividend the cash. In a larger transaction, there's a famous structure where the PE manager creates new entities that issue bonds, using the proceeds to buy the real estate from the acquired company, which then leases the real estate back. (Actually really elegant from a tax perspective.)

Anyway, these transactions can leave the acquired company in much weaker financial straits, and of course the "management fees" charged by the PE manager are enormous.



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