And @Marie13 you are pretty well known to both shop a & b, no? It's not like you are a complete stranger walking in with tanks to fill. Heck, didn't you even buy the tanks at shop a?
So not too much off topic of the current flow of the thread but i recently called a different dive shop to get in some pool time to get a little refresher ahead of a trip with my JOW diving daughter. There was a modest charge for the use of the pool but they did want to have an instructor in the water with us.
We are both certified so I did think why do I need an instructor in the water with us but I figured the cost was the same either way so no big deal.
We get there and brought all of our own equipment and tanks - already filled. The instructor then inspected our gear, to him a little too techy unless we are cave divers, which we are not, but still ok to dive with. Long hose only good in caves, blah, blah. No ****, I know that.
When he got to the hydro date and VIP date he had a pause. VIP was out by a year or so but I fill my own tanks and came there with them full. He wasn't sure if we would be able to dive our already full tanks as they were out of VIP. He checked and they did allow us to dive
I mentioned that I brought my drysuit and wanted to try it as I recently put dry gloves on it and haven't used it since. He asked if I was drysuit certified; I am not but do have dozens of dives in this suit. I did not dive the drysuit that day.
So, we did get in the water, with our out of VIP tanks, but no drysuit allowed. At least in the Philippines things are a bit more relaxed. Not sure which one is better, though...
Thinking of taking a drysuit certification course so I can get pool time on it... might be about as valuable as a tank inspection course.
Half of my tanks were bought new at shop a. The other half are used but mostly pretty new. Freshwater seems to be kinder to tanks. The owner at shop b always wows over my dedicated cold water diving.
Take the drysuit course. Something similar happened to me at another shop’s pool the winter after I was certified. Good thing I had my drysuit card on me. I didn’t own a wetsuit at the time and it was a practice session with a buddy. Would have sucked if I couldn’t have dived that day.