Scubapro STINKS!

[docmartin]

why all those hard feelings about rodales? you seem to be suggesting their testing is rigged. there is obviously some subjectivity in testing equipment. when i look at the more objective data such as their breathing simulator scores they certainly fall in line with tests by diver magazine in the UK. of course this could be a global conspiracy.
overall i have not found many of their reviews to be completely out of line with my -admittedly limited - experience. they are obviously catering to the beginning and purely recreational diver. therefore, the test criteria may not be the best for more advanced divers and results might vary if different criteria were used. however, they tend to be pretty clear in what they test and how it is weighted so you can draw your own conclusions.
while i certainly find shortcomings with rodales i still would like to ask all the rodale haters: is there a dive magazine with better gear reviews out there? i'd love to hear about it.
as for scubapro i would certainly like to know why exactly they do not want to be reviewed by rodales anymore. if sp deems rodales testing procedures inadequate naive readers like me would appreciate to learn what's wrong with the tests.
finally, maybe this will have some impact on one of the more dubious testing practices i.e. rodales should buy the equipment anonymously and not accept gear supplied by manufacturers.

 

[joens]

recently I ordered a scubapro wetsuit from an LDS I live over an hour from the dive shop so I can't go there everyday .
I ordered it 2 weeks before a trip I was going on and the dive shop said it would be in no problem to get it in time . anyway 2 days before the trip it still had not arrived at the store . the dive shop owner called scubapro and was told there was no record of the order .I don't know if the LDS or scubapro made the mistake but scubapro made it right .scubapro sent the wetsuit out overnight UPS at no additional cost.I had the wetsuit the next day.In my opinion Scubapro is bending over backwards to take care of their customers. I have bought much more scubapro gear and will continue to .
Chris Joens

 

[MechDiver]

docmartin once bubbled...
why all those hard feelings about rodales? you seem to be suggesting their testing is rigged. there is obviously some subjectivity in testing equipment. when i look at the more objective data such as their breathing simulator scores they certainly fall in line with tests by diver magazine in the UK. of course this could be a global conspiracy.

Speaking for myself, Rodales is a collection of dive ads with a "done that 40 times already" story thrown in for separation. Yes, I'll agree, the tests that have a definitive specification, e.g. WOB, appear to be factual and accurate. You can also get those from most of the manufaturer's websites. The subjective tests, which are many (I assume here because I no longer read the mag), are mostly rubbish. Instead of saying a piece of equipment is a POS (can we spell HUB?), they go out of their way to show it as a boon to diving. Every computer they test is a "testers choice" kind of thing.
If nothing else I guess, it gives a basis for comparing apples to apples.

MD

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I am no longer a fan of Rodale's and when my subscription expires I am not going to bother to renew it. Rodales is not the magazine it was or even the mag it started out to be, but it is what it is now and what it is, is a magazine that is not worth reading. In many ways it has picked up many of the same bad habits as Skin Diver and deserves the same fate.

Depite diving for nearly 2 decades, I get a whole lot more out of Dive Training and spend more time reading it than I do Rodales.

Scubapro's customer service is first rate (well...with the exception of the Uwatec computer debacle) and in most cases they go way out of their way to support both customers and dealers. Scubapro maintains items in stock and ships the vast majority of their products within a week. I cannot say the same about Dacor, where a 6 month backorder for an item is not uncommon.

 

[mattengstrom]

I did my classroom and pool dives at home, and then the open-water checkouts on vacation. I asked my instructor for my check-out dives what he thought of ScubaPro, because it's the primary brand carried by my LDS and I wanted an outside opinion. He was not diving ScubaPro equipment but he commented that "it's good stuff, and very durable."

 

[ingreevox]

I OWN NO SCUBA PRO GEAR, BUT TO ME, IN THE BUISNESS I AM IN, I REALIZE THAT GETTING MY PRODUCT OUT THERE IS IMPORTANT, AND BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE.

RODALES, WETHER YOU LIKE EM OR NOT, IS STILL ONE OF THE BIGGEST ZINES OUT THERE, AND THEY DO TEST THIER ITEMS VERY WELL.
SO IN MY OPINION, SP WAS EITHER NOT ASKED TO JOIN IN, OR THE IMPRESSION I GET FROM THE MAGAZINE IS, THEY PULLED THERE PRODUCT FROM THE TESTS.

OH YEAH, AND THE GENT WHO OFFERED THAT RODALES IS A SEEN THAT DONE THAT........WELL ARENT ALL MAGAZINES? THE NAMES JUST CHANGE!

 

[Diver0001]

5615mike once bubbled...


So you are assuming that SP pays $$ under the table for good reviews rather than just spending large $$ for advertising? That's interesting. Why would they have to do that when so many people, especially those on this board, love SP.......not me
but many on this board. I'm just interested in your thought process here.

What point is it that you see has two sides? What game is it that you think you understand is being played here?

I work in another industry where that kind of thing is pretty normal. Wining and dining the editors, giving them all-expenses-payed trips to the Cayman islands for a week, making sure they never miss the Super-bowl etc etc are also a form of "kick back" that's not necessarily going into the pockets of the company but can still "buy" you the results you want. Maybe in scuba-land they don't have such big budgets so free gear to the bosses and all their friends might be the kick-back. I"m not sure but if it works anything like the industry i'm in then I'm sure that it's happening, just not the exact form the kick-back takes.

Don't forget, reviews *are* advertising and most companies want results from their advertising and are willing to pay for those results. For example if the makers of spare-air were to pay enough to Rodales' editors then the next thing you know there would be articles about how much safer it is to dive with spare-air. They might even be able to get Dread Gilligan himself to write it......

Rodales makes no claims that I know of of being "unbasied" and it's a useful tool for manufacturers. It can be a bit of an incestuous relationship too because of the amount of "you-scratch-my-back-and-i'll-scratch-yours" going on. Scuba-pro is playing but so is Aqualung and the game can get pretty intense.

Perhaps the scrap going on between Scuba-pro and Rodales right now has to do with Scuba-pro wanting better reviews from Rodales and Rodales is pressing them for bigger kick-backs. It's negotiation going on. Scuba-pro is probably just raising the stakes with the cold-shoulder tactic. I'd say this has nothing to do with Scuba-pro's confidence in it's gear. I'd say this has to do with the fact that Rodales needs Scuba-pro to make their magazine at least have the appearance of credibility and Scuba-pro knows that it has a following of people who don't want to read reveiws if Scuba-pro isn't represented.

Why now? Maybe there is another big regulator smack-down coming at Rodales and Scuba-pro wants to get a better review than Auqalung. There's a lot at stake if they don't and I bet they're willing to fight for it. What good is a Rodales regulator smack-down if Scuba-pro isn't represented? What good is a first-place review to Aqualung if Scuba-pro wasn't represented?

Let that sink in a bit.

And docmartin don't take this as anti- Rodales. I just find the situation very familiar sounding and I don't have any ill feeling towards the players. It's just a game and those are the rules. It's not my game. I'm just a spectator not the referee.

R..

 

[grouchyturtle]

OK maybe I was a little off on my original post.

And yes I've never had any SP gear.

And no Rodales isn't the be all end all.

But...
between reading this threadhttp://www.scubaboard.com/showthrea...&threadid=34453 and what I keep hearing for other who do or used to use SP.

I'm sticking with at least one part of my original opinion. SP used to be a great company, but has been going down the toilet. And as far as instructors or LDS telling you how great they are, as mentioned earlier, DUH of course it is, their selling it!

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The Mk 10 was and is considered bullet proof and is argued by many as being the best first stage ever made - and the vlume of the argument dies away to a quiet babble if you include all the Mk 10 clones as being Mk 10's.

That's a tough act to follow. SP developed the Mk 15 to accmodate higher service pressures brought on by DIN valves with the added benefit of improved flow rates and a more stabel IP compared to the Mk 10. It can be argued that this performance improvement is overkill, but it is there none the less, and much of this perfromance improvement was made available to Mk 10 owners through the plus kit upgrade. You just don't EVER see any other company doing that and providing that kind of support.

With the Mk 20 they added bushings to make the reg easier to service, with the consequence of making it more dependent on annual servicing to replace the bushings. (which is not a big deal as SP has always recommended annual servicing of their regs.) The real killer was moving to the TIS kit for cold water protection. The TIS kit simplified Nitrox compatibility at a time when everybody said that you needed O2 clean regs for nitrox use and from that standpoint the move made sense. None of this had anything to do with the company getting cheap under Johnson Worldwide, but rather with the company being responsive to changes in the industry.

My concerns of late are that:

SP is not returning to the use f SPEC kits on the Mk 25 as they are guarenteed to work and would not be a problem with enriched air up to 40%. and,

SP has moved to plastic orifices in several regs.

But to be fair, to meet the then new CE requirements that everybody was so hot about, SP had to detune many of it's second stages anyway and the performance loss of using a cheaper to make and replace plastic orifice was really a non issue as the performance advantages of the older brass orifice could not be utilized anyway under the new standards. The only downside has been that technically capable customers can no longer retune the new regs for the same level of perfromance they used to get out of the old regs.

If you want to blame somebody for the decline in performance of some of the newer SP regs, you have to lay a lot of the blame on the folks who developed the CE standards for regs (not exactly what you would call a non political or non biased process) and you also have to lay some of the blame on all the divers who put stock in CE approval. Scubapro just did what it had to do to stay marketable. I don't like it but I understand it.

 

[5615mike]

Diver0001 once bubbled...
.........
Don't forget, reviews *are* advertising and most companies want results from their advertising and are willing to pay for those results........Rodales makes no claims that I know of of being "unbasied" and it's a useful tool for manufacturers. It can be a bit of an incestuous relationship too because of the amount of "you-scratch-my-back-and-i'll-scratch-yours" going on. Scuba-pro is playing but so is Aqualung and the game can get pretty intense.

Perhaps the scrap going on between Scuba-pro and Rodales right now has to do with Scuba-pro wanting better reviews from Rodales and Rodales is pressing them for bigger kick-backs. It's negotiation going on. Scuba-pro is probably just raising the stakes with the cold-shoulder tactic. I'd say this has nothing to do with Scuba-pro's confidence in it's gear. I'd say this has to do with the fact that Rodales needs Scuba-pro to make their magazine at least have the appearance of credibility and Scuba-pro knows that it has a following of people who don't want to read reveiws if Scuba-pro isn't represented.

Why now? Maybe there is another big regulator smack-down coming at Rodales and Scuba-pro wants to get a better review than Auqalung. There's a lot at stake if they don't and I bet they're willing to fight for it. What good is a Rodales regulator smack-down if Scuba-pro isn't represented? What good is a first-place review to Aqualung if Scuba-pro wasn't represented?........

R..

This might make sense if Rodales was the one who pulled the product from their tests. How does this look to SP customers? OUR mfg won't submit their products for the largest testing group in the market. What's wrong? I think SL should test them anyway from the retail market. I guess you have to hope that all SP customers think of Rodales the way you do. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they are the end all rag either it's just that you make this whole thing out to an AL vs. SP fight and I don't buy that.