Adventure diver course (AD)- lets say it costs $150. 3 courses of your choosing. 3 courses are credited toward your Advanced Open Water Certification, right?
Advanced Open Water Course (AOW)- Lets say it costs $150. Have to have 5 courses of your choosing. If I already took my adventure diver course, then why do I have to pay 150 for the other two courses to get my AOW??
Seems like it's a TERRIBLE deal if you're crediting your AD to your AOW.
Makes much better financial sense to pay the 150 ONE time and get all 5 dives rather than pay 300 to have only 3 combine with your other two to make you an AOW.
I'd rather pay 150 to take 5 completely different courses than the three that I had in AD.
First off let's look at terminology:
Adventure Diver is an acknowledgment that you have done 3 Adventure Dives, not 3 Adventure Courses. Specialties are the Courses in which the Adventure Dive is the first of the dives.
You can pay the cert fee for Adventure Diver with any 3 Adventure Dives, but you do not have to pay the cert fee; there is no reason to get the card. If the dives are logged properly, you can just wait until you have enough training dives to get the AOW cert.
AOW is 5 dives, not 5 Courses. The Deep Dive and Navigation Dive are required. You have not done a Deep Course or a Navigation Course, you have only done the first dive of the Deep and Navigation Courses.
If you then chose to do the Deep Specialty, you would only need dives 2, 3 & 4. Navigation Specialty would only require dives 2 & 3. If you did the Photography Adventure Dive as part of the AOW (or AD), you only need the 2nd Photography Dive to get the Photography Specialty. That is where I would say the AOW dives are credited towards the Specialty Courses.
To my knowledge there is no PADI Course with only one dive, although there are some with none.
Now lets look at cost:
$150 for Adventure Diver would be $50 per training dive if the Crew Pack is not included. Did that include a full set of dive gear, everything but M, S & F or just tanks and weights? I'd guess the dives are from shore; 3-tank boat trips would up the price considerably most places.
$50 for training dives is not a high price for any dive shop I know of. In Hawaii not many Instructors will work for less than $80 per 2 training dives. The only way your pricing makes sense for a dive shop is with more than 2 students.
$150 to finish AOW would be $75 per training dive (you already have the Crew Pack). A dive computer and compass might be included in the supplied gear. In many locations the deep dive requires a boat trip, as suitable waters deeper than 60' are not always accessible from shore. The Navigation Dive requires considerable dry training and practice (if done right). A shop would have to pay me at least $100 to make it worth my while.
$300 for AOW is a really good price in many locations. With your own gear in a cold dark quarry it seems on the high side.
Finally, PADI fees:
Each Cert costs the shop (or independent instructor) ~$12-$16 depending on their annual volume; Crew Packs cost ~$30-$55. The Instructor(s) pay(s) ~$150 annually for membership and Dive Shops pay a lot more for annual membership. Depending on the level of membership, PADI might very well make more on a $250 class vs a $100 class, or vise versa if the $100 class was an independent instructor. Volume is the only way PADI makes real profit, gear sales are usually the only way Dive Shops make any profit and tips are usually the only way instructors eat dinner.
If you look closely at the text when you use the green finger shooting smiley, you will see that it's name is lotsalove. This is the smiley I use in situations where I encounter a loser. 
