dirthead:
I bought a SP Mk25/S600 from my LDS in July, and registered the product on SP's website. Upon entering the serial number on the registration page, the name of my LDS popped up in the "dive shop purchased from" line. I didn't enter that information anywhere. It seems that at least in this case, SP is already tracking serial numbers, since they knew what LDS that reg set went to.
I decided to register my recently acquired regulators on-line last night. When I registered the two MK 17's I purchased in late September, the LDS name popped and I know for a fact that the shop owner did not do anything to register them, so SP is definitely tracking specific regulators. The Scubapro site also asked for the purchase price, so they have the potential for the customer to report any discount pricing that may occur under the MAP.
When I registered an X650 second stage, I purchased about a year ago, the serial number immediately came up as "invalid" and the system prompted me to e-mail Scubapro with specific information to complete the process. I am not sure what happened here, but I supect the 12 month delay between sale and registration has not helped at all and/or the shop owner may have registered the reg on-line. I really doubt it, as I have never seen Mike do that before, but maybe.
And when I registered a discontinued and new old stock Mk 20 D400 I purchased in July, the model number popped up with options to register the first stage, second stage or both, but it also said "dealer unknown". After entering this information, and the less than MAP purchase price (which was dealer cost plus 10% and was in fact allowed by the dealer agreement as the item was discontinued) it then decided this serial number was also invalid and prompted me to e-mail Scubapro. This reg had been sitting in another shop since 2001, so I suspect that SP had not been tracking regs at that time (Dealer Unknown) but that the system also flagged the less than MAP price for the item.
My conclusions from this very limited test are:
1. Scubapro is definitely tracking individual items shipped to specific dealers.
2. They did not do so a few years ago.
3. Their system has some rules in place to flag suspicious registrations.
4. If an authorized dealer is selling under the MAP, they are going to have to take care of the registration for the customer or the customer is going to report the excess discount when they register the product.