Student Records...keep or retain at Dive shop

[KMScuba]

Hi All,

I have been working at a PADI shop in Costa Rica for the past 3 months and have a lot of student documentation that I took with me when I left. The shop is now asking for me to leave it with them. My concern is that I just received my MSDT and it explicitly stated that I need to be able to provide that documentation if requested. I won't be staying at that dive shop as I'll be heading back to the US in a few weeks.

Should I keep my student records or should I leave them with the Dive Shop? I understand that if I keep them, I'm responsible for them for a period of 7 years and am confident in my ability to do so.

Any feedback or experience is appreciated.

KM

 

[Nedster]

Hi, we have a scuba diving center in the Philippines and we also are required to keep records for seven years. We just scan all the documents using Scanner Pro. There are many other similar apps out there also. The app automatically uploads to Google Drive and stores the documents there. I have a paid account, but Google Drive gives you 15G for free. That's a lot of space. I hope this helps.

 

[tursiops]

If you were an employee, the records are the shop's. If you were a contractor, the records are yours. That's my understanding.
Either way, you both want copies...so scanning is the way to go. In your position, I'd take the scanned copies and leave the originals with the shop. Let THEM worry about storage!