I guess we are really lucky here in Silcon Valley. We have a number of dive shops in the area, and most are pretty good. (The one really shaky one closed a couple years ago - what a shocker!)
Each shop has their own pluses and minuses. They each carry some of the same gear, and some relatively unique gear. My buddy and I have bought a variety of items at each of the major stores in the area.
Of course some of it may be related to two major factors:
1) There are at least a half dozen dive shops within 30 minutes of my house, so they have to treat customers well or they will lose them.
2) There are a LOT of divers in the area, so I don't think any of the good ones are struggling too much.
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The Weak Shops:
There is one dive shop that is the second closest to my house that I rarely ever go to because they played the brand bashing game when I was looking for a particular model of a particular brand. Too bad because my buddy was still undecided, and we don't go back to Stan's.
Splash died a long slow painful death, and we could see why. There were a lot of politics involved, and I have heard several versions of why they opened a shop 100 yards away from another established shop. Yeah, really. However, the reason for their demise was more related to the attitudes and prices (IMO). We used to go visit both shops, one right after the other since they were so close together. It was easy to see the price deltas, and the poor attitudes at Splash. I had a friend that worked there, but they never offered anything significant that seemed worth buying (until their going out of business sale). I have dropped several hundred at the other adjacent shop, because they treat us better, and we find things that we like for reasonable prices.
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The Strong Shops:
We did our OW training, and some advanced /specialty training at PODI, the closest shop, and it is a place where we stop by to shoot the breeze, and to see what is new. It is where we bought our tanks, where get our air (or EANX), and where we get our tanks serviced. We have become friends with the owner, and many of the employees. They know that we buy some gear elsewhere, and they never harass us about it. They offer us deals, and they take care of us, and we do buy some things from them.
I ended up buying the majority of my gear at Any Water because they were the only ones that carried the brand BC I wanted, and they put together a package deal for me that was very good. I get my regulators serviced there because they are the local ScubaPro retailer. I have bought a variety of other small things there. We stop by every so often, just to look around and to see what they have that we can't possibly live without. I don't consider any of the employees as friends, and I don't know their names, but they treat me well, and that is all that I could ask.
We stop by Dan's a lot also, because they have some real good stuff. They hosted the InTenCity Tour recently, and that earned more respect. I have bought some significant items from them because they have better prices on some things than Podi. My buddy bought his package from Dan's when Podi couldn't match the deal. We see a lot of the same faces working there over the years, but they aren't friends.
Those are the three main shops that get the majority of our business. None of them give us any pressure and none of them play the games listed above. There are several other shops just a bit further away, but we get most of what we need from the big three.
Wristshot - Happy in Silicon Valley
