What the ?#$@ is the deal with LeisurePro?

[ReefHound]

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a dive shop employee. We are competitive, but we don't price match. Valid points were made about LP's business model, but I must say I am getting sick and tired of folks who have bought stuff on the internet and have problems with their purchase and make it my problem . That is, it was delivered broken, or without a warranty, or unassembled and now there is a problem. I am expected to fix their problem, right then, at no charge or they get....upset.

You must be a magnet of another kind. Where do you find all these people? I know dozens and dozens of divers who purchase online and I've never known one who thought the LDS owed them anything on their online gear.

Scubaboard has over 50,000 members and thousands of new posts each day, and I can't recall anyone ever buying something online and getting upset with a LDS for not fixing it for free. Can you point out a few examples here I may have missed? Or do these people only exist in your world for some reason?

 

[ReefHound]

I can see why you are missing an instruction manual...I bought a computer a few years back and had TWO manuals! (and two wrench thingies for opening up the back to change the battery)

Another reason to go to your LDS! (I only bought my computer from LP because my LDS didn't stock them at that point)

Yeah, I guess if a manual is worth a hundred bucks to you that's another reason to go to your LDS.

 

[Cheekymonkey]

Originally Posted by Divenomad
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a dive shop employee. We are competitive, but we don't price match. Valid points were made about LP's business model, but I must say I am getting sick and tired of folks who have bought stuff on the internet and have problems with their purchase and make it my problem . That is, it was delivered broken, or without a warranty, or unassembled and now there is a problem. I am expected to fix their problem, right then, at no charge or they get....upset.
Same here, I spend alot of time at dive shops, I have seen pissed off people who bought something online and had a bad experience, but no more often then people that had bought stuff from one of the many dive shops in Orlando. And never seen anyone expect repairs for free when they didnt buy it at the shop they go to the repairs for.

 

[Cacia]

Oh? And now that I am on a roll...

reg service?

I can drive it to the guy's house (the same repair tech) and save about 30 %! And that way I get to eyeball the repair bench and check him out. One less middle man, one less "lost in translation" confusion.

And his house is closer to me than the LDS. ... I haven't had the nerve to ask him to deliver yet. chutzpah...I don't have enough chutzpah, since the thread is LP.

(Yiddish) unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity

 

[redacted]

An objection has been raised here about jumping through hoops to maintain a warranty. I must respectfully disagree. If you purchased a car, and failed to change the oil for two years, would you expect the dealer to honor the warranty when you blew the engine? Scuba equipment is life support gear. Let me repeat that. Life support. It is a mechanical object subject, like all mechanical objects, to failure due to wear and tear. Proper maintenance is required. Think of the legal liability problems to manufacturers when the families lawyers of a dive accident victim is : "Sue everyone, starting with the ones with the deepest pockets." Warranty and service requirements help protect them. The actual companies operate in a tiny, tiny industry. The outdoor industry dwarfs the dive industry, the and outdoor industry in tiny. The manufactureres could not afford the constant litigation. I think the companies who require regular servicing are both savvy and ethical.
-Divenomad

I think most warrenties conditioned on annual service are little more than a scam to force the average diver to fund the existance of small, inefficient dive shops. And the "life support" flag waving is mostly an attempt to bring fear in as a motivator to get the victims cooperation. I've never seen a regulator that failed because a diver failured to follow the annual service requirement. I have seen a number of regulators fail coming right out of an annual service. I do a good job of inspecting an cleaning my regulators and usually go 5 years or more before I need an "annual service".

BTW, my car dealer has never checked my oil change interval records as a condition to providing warrenty service to correct dificiencies in materials or workmanship.

I agree that you should not be expected to do something for nothing. So how does the manufacture compensate your shop when you perform warrenty or CPSC directed recall service at no cost to the customer?

 

[padiscubapro]

THeres operating costs might not be less, but do they do classes? or other things to tie up money or concentrate on? No, they just sell equipment and in huge volumes...they make a little bit of money on a lot of merchandise, which in turn leads to big gains of profit....THey might have the same or more operating costs, but they sell alot more equipment and make alot more money.....Great business plan that they started numerous years ago and built up to what it is today

I am not sure if this is still true, but they used to offer OW classes.. I doubt that they dropped this..

 

[CaptPaul]

Blah blah blah. Sounds like you better sign up for job displacement training.

Don't blah blah me. Stick around this sport/industry for a while. You'll see.
I've been doing this for a long time and I'm very damn smart.

So a guy calls the shop and asks what kind of back inflation BC's we have. He's told about the four different ones from three different manufacturers. A day passes buy and the guy comes to the shop, tries on each BC, gets product guides, pricing (MSRP - 15%), consumes at least two hours of my time and actually says that he is only checking out the different models and sizes to decide which one to order online. We had a nice, informed conversation about it, and he left. I didn't "GO OFF" on internet sales and all the "support your local dive shop" stuff, but did tell him that we are very competitive and would like his business. As far as I'm concerned, he abused the shop.

 

[CaptPaul]

Oh? And now that I am on a roll...

reg service?

I can drive it to the guy's house (the same repair tech) and save about 30 %! And that way I get to eyeball the repair bench and check him out. One less middle man, one less "lost in translation" confusion.

And his house is closer to me than the LDS. ... I haven't had the nerve to ask him to deliver yet. chutzpah...I don't have enough chutzpah, since the thread is LP.

If one of my employees did this, I'd fire him. Let's see here. Who has incured all the cost of training this tech? Sending him to reg clinics, PSI classes, O2 cleaning classes, gas blending classes cost money, and you want to skip out on the $40 the shop would make servicing a reg. Boy, you're a piece of work.

 

[fire_diver]

If one of my employees did this, I'd fire him. Let's see here. Who has incured all the cost of training this tech? Sending him to reg clinics, PSI classes, O2 cleaning classes, gas blending classes cost money, and you want to skip out on the $40 the shop would make servicing a reg. Boy, you're a piece of work.

Do you actually KNOW what you're talking about here? Did YOU spend the money to train that guy? How you know he didn't have to pay his own way? How do you know if he spent thousands on tools and equip to do this. Sounds to me like he just may have.

Lets see... "Boy, you're a piece of work"
and
"I've been doing this for a long time and I'm very damn smart"
yeah, sure you are buddy

 

[fire_diver]

Boy, you're a piece of work.

BTW- welcome to scubaboard. Love your attitude. Hope you don't stay too long.