Years ago I had a disastrous training experience with my LDS. I had bought a complete set of gear from them and had taken several training courses before I knew enough to realize they were cutting a lot of corners. Too many actually, so I bailed out before something went seriously wrong.
I needed to switch to another LDS. My first step was to have a good heart to heart with the owner to begin to develop a personal relationship with him. My second step was to sign up for some more training. My third step was to bring in all of my gear that needed servicing prior to the start of the training class. He knew I had not bought my Titan from him and he serviced it and everything else without question, comment, or hesitation. I learned he actually was servicing my gear better than the old shop and did little extras like adding cert tags with dates to make it easier to remember when service was next due. Since then I have taken a lot of other training and bought a lot of gear from him. Just started the whole routine from scratch with my son who is a new diver. IMO my LDS tries hard to be competitive. They have specials. They have sales. They will work hard to try to make a sale. In the end most dive shops are small, family owned operations and they will never be able to offer WalMart style pricing.
I'm all for saving a dollar when I can. But I am not compulsive about it either. Bottom line for me is that I never, ever loose sight of the fact that my SCUBA gear is life support equipment. If my life depends upon this equipment working flawlessly you can better believe I'm not about to haggle over a couple of dollars. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I have a family to think about.
I also know my LDS inspects and tests all new regs before they go out the door. Were you planning to buy a reg from a dealer you don't know and then use it right out of the box without having a professional inspect and test it for you? If this was your plan or intent I would strongly encourage you to rethink it! Manufacturing defects can and do occur despite stringent quality control processes. Problems can occur from prolonged storage and in shipping or from numerous other causes. A prudent diver who buys any kind of equipment from a buddy, off ebay, this forum, etc will always get it inspected, tested, and serviced by a professional before using it for the first time. It is reasonable to expect there will be a fee for having this work done and that fee is going to erode some of the savings gleaned from using a less expensive vendor. Now after all of this effort, how much money was actually saved? And what is your life worth?
Years ago I was an instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. During the course we would show a pretty graphic video about what happens to your head when it hits the road and you are not wearing a helmet. We always took a break after the video to give everyone a bit of time to think and talk about the video. Students would always come up to me during the break and say they had been thinking about buying a helmet and with so many choices didn't know how much they should spend on one. My answer to them was always the same... "If you have a $10 head buy a $10 helmet. If you have a $100 head buy a $100 helmet."
