Servicing your reg

[Big-t-2538]

Honestly, 150$ for two regs, frst, second, octo is certainly not unreasonable....assuming they did everything correctly.

Genesis is right...DIY-ing the stuff will save you some $$ in the long run...but you have to be comfortable knowing what you're doing. (i.e. do you trust yourself to do this right?)

 

[budgy]

I can't fault the labour charge. However if Scuba Pro and Apex have a free lifetime replacement parts guarantee do the LDS really have a right to charge us for them.

 

[oceancrest67]

I posted a thread some time ago regarding training on equipment maintenance.

I would rather service my own regulators rather than sending them into the black abyss of some local dive shop maintenance dept. One really has to question the training and consideration of some tech working one regulator at a time. This is life supporting equipment!! Is there a standard for techs working on scuba equipment? Is it up to the manufacturer?

I have been diving for ten years now...and I have always used local dive shops to service my Oceanic equipment. I have not had a problem yet...but, I do wonder about the qualifications of some dive shop techs.

Any thoughts out there?

Concerned.

 

[DeepScuba]

Get a grip Genesis. I said plumb your own house, I didn't say fix a pipe or two. I guarantee you, you wouldn't be plumbing your entire house from top to bottom.

I guess I could build my entire house from top to bottom, but I wouldn't dream of wasting the time.

You'd pay the man.

Actually I have done almost that (Did a lot of the work during the build). It was after I spent many many weeks in hard toil, that I realized that even after all that "pride of doing it yourself" thing was over and done with, that it was all basically a waste of my time. I realized I could get over the feeling of pride real quick when it came down to about 2% of the entire cost of paying someone else to do it for me.

Now this is NOT in line when it comes to scuba repair, as Genesis says, the o-rings are baically darn near free.

If he ain't comfortable with doing his own, he's gotta pay the man. I agree that if the kits are supposed to be supplied for free, that they should be.

 

[connellc]

Get a grip Genesis. I said plumb your own house, I didn't say fix a pipe or two. I guarantee you, you wouldn't be plumbing your entire house from top to bottom.

I guess I could build my entire house from top to bottom, but I wouldn't dream of wasting the time.

You'd pay the man.

Ya'll are cracking me up!

 

[DeepScuba]

Oceancrest:

It goes to show just how easy it is to do. Even and idiot like myself can do a very effective job. I don't get hung up on a lot of stuff, so if I don't really know what I'm doing on a job for the first time, it's simple, I learn as I go. Not the most effective way to learn, but when that's all you got, whadya gonna do? And you DO LEARN that way. Every trade under the sun learns by DOING. You can't get it all out of a book. Ya gotta be hands on with as much "book" learning as you can get to aid in the theory.

It's basically moron proof which is why I say that anybody could do it (OK Genesis says it better) if they want to.

If you can't or won't, you can't gripe about paying the man to do it for you. The good news is, his prices won't go any higher than the cost of a reg new in the first place

My guys will still raz me once in a while, I was told I should learn how to do them "Properly" whatever that meant. Everything that was said during that conversation, I already knew, so there was nothing else for me there, but hey, if they just came out and said you knew what you were doing, it wouldn't help their cause now would it!

Some folks are too protective of their business, and it comes off just wrong on so many levels......

I'd better shut up now, they're reading this as I type it

 

[DeepScuba]

Conn:
Yeah I know, what part of my previous post was so hard to understand that G had to make a comment totally unwarranted for the meaning I had placed in obvious view? It's quite annoying and counter-productive.

Sometimes it really pi$$e$ me off that someone has to take a post with a meaning in full understanding and turn it into something it's not.

I'm not impressed that a guy can solder or solvent weld. So what??? Anyone not be able to do that in 3rd grade? I said that already in the initial post! You're still paying the man to do a job you can't or won't do. Yes o-rings are overpriced. Said that too.

Crackin' up over.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I can't fault the labour charge. However if Scuba Pro and Apex have a free lifetime replacement parts guarantee do the LDS really have a right to charge us for them.

With Scubapro, the parts are free as long as the warranty is kept current or is reinstated (costs you parts for that service only to reinstate the warranty). The SP suggested markup on annual service kits runs about 100% and some shops probably actually do that.

The annual service kit idea is also problematic as not all the parts included are normally needed and shops usually accumulate a lot of left overs. Great way to market more parts though. It's not an issue for a reg under warranty but does becomes a potentially abuseable revenue source with divers who have let the warranty expire on their regs.

The middle ground is to be fair to SP and follow the warranty/warranty reinstatement policy and to also be fair to the customer by not screwing them with an excessive markup on non warranty parts. And when possible it makes sense to use the leftover and still unused annual service parts in the bin to complete the non-warranty work as it costs SP nothing and makes it more economical for the diver to reinstate the warranty. Unfortunately, this is not common practice in many dive shops.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Gee, my water heater sprung a leak a couple of weeks ago, and guess what - the torch, pipecutter and other tools came out of the closet. I did not "pay the man."

The replacement heater cost me just over $100 at Lowes. If I had "called the man" that job probably would have run me $300-400, with at least half of that being a pure rape job on the heater itself.

Gotta agree there. I replaced mine last spring and discovered it had slow leaked a while before a noticeable leak occurred with the result that the flooring was soft.

So I bought my own replacement water heater, and replaced both the water heater and the flooring. This saved a big markup on the water heater by the plumber, about $400 in labor to the plumber and probably an equal amount of money that would have other wise been paid to a carpenter to replace the subfloor and flooring. My total DIY cost was under $200 a opposed to around $1000 and I discovered and corrected a mistake in the vent that had been made when the house was built.

 

[nen]

Wow, a lot of thoughts. I don't mind "paying the man" at all--especially because I want it done RIGHT. Just wanted to know if I was "overpaying the man"--which I actually also don't mind if I know it's done RIGHT. Glad to know it's within striking range. Thanks for the feedback.