ScubaPro not Allowing Testing of Products

[pescador775]

GENESIS
Please contact me at pescador775@hotmail.com
Pesky

 

[pescador775]

GENESIS GONE
I'll miss him from this board but will catch up to him on the new one, hopefully. Look, the dive industry has a slew of dirty little secrets; equipment safety and reliability problems, and aggressive tactics that would make Capone blush; so called experts foisting more courses, more equipment, more restrictions. This Scubaboard is crawling with 'professionals' of various kinds but we never hear a word about any of the crap that is going on. The most common refrain is 'patronize your local dive shop'. I could name names but that would create 'controversy'. Yikes. Regardless, Genesis, who is well informed, would occasionally tell us something of a frank and informative nature such as the low down on the Scubapro regulator and its cheap, plastic parts. In the past, 'rainreg' would help out on this a bit but he is long gone, I believe.

I have provided tutorials on various subjects, notably the ins and outs of putting MIL surplus compressors into operation. I sell nothing and profit not a bit from any of this. No one objected or cancelled my ID because there is no company, like Scubapro, which this information would compete with or embarass. That is my opinion and belief. If I had enough knowledge of regulators, like Genesis, I would have been the first to offer any information that would have been useful and informative (and which was not available otherwise) and without expecting anything in return. That's what Genesis did, IMO.

 

[Quarrior]

I may have said this before but maybe not in so many words. I am a Telecom Engineer and a former professional aircraft and auto mechanic. Ok, so much for credentials as much as they are worth.

Now for my view/$.02 worth on any kind of equipment. If it is mechanical and needs to be fixed before it can be used for the intended purpose, it is worthless. Plain and simple. Reg's either work in cold water without adjustment out of the box or they don't. Yes, just about anything can freeze up under the right conditions, but, some are produced with a built in flaw that the manufacturer has published procedures to their respective repair facilities to action. This is the case with ScubaPro. I was told this fact by my local ScubaPro dealer/repair facility that actually tried to convince me it was ok to buy something that is in need of repair before I could use it.

Brian

 

[aquaoren]

I may have said this before but maybe not in so many words. I am a Telecom Engineer and a former professional aircraft and auto mechanic. Ok, so much for credentials as much as they are worth.

Now for my view/$.02 worth on any kind of equipment. If it is mechanical and needs to be fixed before it can be used for the intended purpose, it is worthless. Plain and simple. Reg's either work in cold water without adjustment out of the box or they don't. Yes, just about anything can freeze up under the right conditions, but, some are produced with a built in flaw that the manufacturer has published procedures to their respective repair facilities to action. This is the case with ScubaPro. I was told this fact by my local ScubaPro dealer/repair facility that actually tried to convince me it was ok to buy something that is in need of repair before I could use it.

Brian

Isn't everything, not only mechanical, you have to fix before using, crapp?

 

[Quarrior]

Isn't everything, not only mechanical, you have to fix before using, crapp?

Pretty valid point. However, I just didn't want people to think I was against making things fit, etc, thus the mechanical reference.

Brian

 

[aquaoren]

Pretty valid point. However, I just didn't want people to think I was against making things fit, etc, thus the mechanical reference.

Brian

I know where you are going with it.
I mean fix and not make fit, which is just fine.

 

[VTernovski]

I agree. I read this hideous halcyon BC review once on some kin dof British dive publication (won't mention the name).. basically the guy who wrote this had no idea why certain things are done the way they are on that BC and pretty much wrote them off as "weird" or plain cons simply because he had no understanding.

Some manufacturers are concerned that they have no control over the test protocols and also that they have no way of insuring the product is used correctly.

I have always marvelled at how scuba products get tested by mainstream scuba magazines. They call the company who then sends them hand picked products for testing if and only if they want them tested.

Magazines for my other hobby (astronomy) for the most part do it better. They buy the telescope or other equipment to be tested using an anyonomous buyer and are ensured of getting the same randomly sampled item any other buyer would get.

In either case though there are limits to how scathing you can be with a review of a product made by a potential advertiser.

What ever happened to Undercurrents? They used to be a non advertising publication that tended to give no punches pulled reviews.

 

[aquaoren]

I agree. I read this hideous halcyon BC review once on some kin dof British dive publication (won't mention the name).. basically the guy who wrote this had no idea why certain things are done the way they are on that BC and pretty much wrote them off as "weird" or plain cons simply because he had no understanding.

I read this article too and considered it to be a fair test for a recreational diving mag that gets a piece of tech gear for test. But I am not a DIR diver, so I don't take everything so passionatly They actually said that this is an excellent piece of gear for its purpose, as far as they understood it
The only con that they had was concerning the price and it is a valid one. This gear is not rocket science and I'm asking myself, what are they charging all the money for?
Image must be a big part of it . But again, this is valid for all dive gear(being overpriced)

 

[VTernovski]

I read this article too and considered it to be a fair test for a recreational diving mag that gets a piece of tech gear for test. But I am not a DIR diver, so I don't take everything so pationatly They actually said that this is an excellent piece of gear for its purpose, as far as they understood it
The only con that they had was concerning the price and it is a valid one. This gear is not rocket science and I'm asking myself, what are they charging all the money for?
Image must be a big part of it . But again, this is valid for all dive gear(being overpriced)

I won't go into pointing out specifics, but this thread was discussing this, in case you're curious.

 

[aquaoren]

I won't go into pointing out specifics, but this thread was discussing this, in case you're curious.

I read the thread and I agree with NetDoc.
Halcyon wanted to widen it's costumenr range into the rec-diver market, so they sent a product to be evaluated by a recreational dive mag. Since rec diver have different demands, it was noticed in the test. Where is the problem?
They didn't say it was a piece of crapp but mentioned what a rec diver would expect from his/hers gear and said that the price is high for such a minimalistic piece of gear.
Since most diver aren't DIR(whether we like or not) and if Halcyon would like them as customers too, they should either adjust their product or their PR and work to improve how the DIR philosophy is being presented to the public.