When should a shop request your C-Card?

[MXGratefulDiver]

So some (most)of you feel as though it is not a dive shops responsibility for what the customer buys because the ''darwin'' saying is so famous around here.

No ... it's because most of us feel that scuba diving is an activity that should only be pursued by people who are capable of taking responsibility for their decisions and actions. A "nanny" mentality ... whether it's about air fills or diving activities ... creates an atmosphere of dependency ... a feeling that someone else is somehow responsible for keeping you safe. That's a great way to develop divers who are incapable of taking care of themselves ... which to my concern will do more to harm people than to protect them.

If you are unwilling to take responsibility for your own actions and decisions, you simply should not be diving.

If scuba shops do not ID because the dumb/weak will die, then why do convienence stores ID for tobacco and alcohol? So only the adults can kill themselves? Let the kids kill themselves also, afterall, darwin wouldn't wait until they're 18...would he?

There are laws regulating the sale of tobacco and alcohol to minors. Adults don't generally get carded ... I certainly don't. By the same token, there are "laws" regulating how old a child must be before they can get certified. Those laws, however, are self-regulated ... they are agency laws, not civil ones ... and as such, it is up to the agency, not the government, to decide what they should be.

There have been a few scuba-related laws passed in the USA ... usually at the municipal or state level. In every single one that I'm aware of, they were either ill-conceived or poorly enforced ... which, in both cases makes them worse than useless. The last thing most divers want is the government telling us how we are allowed to conduct our recreational activities. The best way to prevent that is to self-regulate ... and self-regulation means taking responsibility for yourself.

If you can show me a dive shop that gives $100 fills for an entire year please do. I get tired of hearing shop owners bitch'n'moan about how they don't make any profit on air fills because the compressor is 16k, the yearly boo bah is 4k and thats 234 thousand fills/year which is 4909/day which means they can barely break even. Please quote my math problem as many have done with my fill card. Seriously people, this is a scuba forum, not a signifigant figures forum (yeah, go look it up, because you don't know what signifigant figures are).

I was being a bit flippant, because $260 seems a bit high for an AL80 and a fill card to me ... but if you think it's a fair price, that's fine ... it's your money.

Do I want the dive shop to do my thinking for me? No, and I take offense to such an assumption. Do I foresee lawsuits happening because a dive shop sold air fills to someone who got killed while diving? Yes.

Why? If you fill your car's gas tank and go out and get into an accident on the highway, do you sue the gas station?

How much are your fill cards?

I pay $100 a month for unlimited nitrox fills ... works out to about $4 a fill over the course of a year ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[scubadobadoo]

... and if you truly paid $260 for an AL80 and a fill card, they probably didn't want to press their good fortune ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Too true. That's what I paid for a new HP 100. :shocked2: (I have an AL 80 that's one year old and still shiny black with a boot I will sell for 100 bucks. Any takers??? Recent annual.)

I have rarely been carded and have never been asked for my dive log however there have been a few times I wished the dive op had requested to see some other divers card or log as they were not qualified to be on the boat we were on and doing the dives we were doing and that made for a long and babysitting type of day.

Carded for gear? Never. There are thousands of highly qualified divers in the world who are not certified.

 

[Dirty-Dog]

Okay, where to start:

Some of you post valid points, others, not so much. I will address the more silly comments because the vaild ones are. . . . valid

So some (most)of you feel as though it is not a dive shops responsibility for what the customer buys because the ''darwin'' saying is so famous around here.

No, actually, I think most of us were pretty clear that we don't think it's a dive shops responsibility because we believe in Personal Responsibilty (tm). People who choose to be Darwin Bait are notoriously opposed to Personal Responsibility(tm).

If scuba shops do not ID because the dumb/weak will die, then why do convienence stores ID for tobacco and alcohol? So only the adults can kill themselves? Let the kids kill themselves also, afterall, darwin wouldn't wait until they're 18...would he?

Wow. How about... because there are laws that require them to card? And obviously not everybody gets carded. I haven't been carded in a long long time. If someone tried now, I'd laugh, because they couldn't possibly be serious.

If you can show me a dive shop that gives $100 fills for an entire year please do. I get tired of hearing shop owners bitch'n'moan about how they don't make any profit on air fills because the compressor is 16k, the yearly boo bah is 4k and thats 234 thousand fills/year which is 4909/day which means they can barely break even. Please quote my math problem as many have done with my fill card. Seriously people, this is a scuba forum, not a signifigant figures forum (yeah, go look it up, because you don't know what signifigant figures are).

Wow again. Blatant insults. Is that really how you want this to go?
For the record, I do know what a significant figure is, and it has nothing to do with my wife (although hers is pretty significant too).

Do I want the dive shop to do my thinking for me? No, and I take offense to such an assumption. Do I foresee lawsuits happening because a dive shop sold air fills to someone who got killed while diving? Yes.

As mentioned, this is one of the big problems with the American judicial system. There's no Personal Responsibility(tm). Everything is someone elses fault.
After all, obesity is the fault of fast food restaurants, right? It couldn't be a lack of self control...

 

[Cadillac Diveguy]

Need a fill? C-card please.
Wanna go diving on the boat? C-card Please.

Stores that are members of certain certification agencies require that tanks be current and
that divers requesting the fills be certified.

Prior to certification, you could go to Sears and by dive gear, go out and kill yourself. No one would have cared.

No one that is until the government gets involved in the same manner as they have in the
aviation industry. How much would your air fill cost then?

We all have an obligation to protect our sport, by making sure that only those who are
certified can participate. If not, we'll be regulated by a new bureaucratic agency designed
just for us.

The liability (cost to dive) rests on all of us, to keep that liability as low as possible, we all need to be vigilant on who we allow to participate.

 

[--tom--]

Okay, I am late in the game, but I will add my not so humble opinion.

blacvans: I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. The need to show your card is to protect the vendor or service provider, not the diver. Rent a bcd and a mask? Show a credit card. Rent a scuba unit? Show the cert card (& sign a liability release). Dive a shore? enjoy. Dive a boat? Show a card and sign the liability release.

So my opinion is: if I can get sued, I want a liability release and see your card. Most stores are pretty well protected on purchases--the store can honestly say they don't know if you are using a tank for paintball or scuba. I don't know if your are going to use the new regulator or give it away as a present. I think it would be hard to justify enriched air or tri-mix gas as a work compressor supplement, so an appropriate cert card should probably be shown (or known) in that case, other than that...

Anyway, congrats on getting certified. I hope you have many enjoyable dives.

 

[fjpatrum]

I haven't read any of the other posts yet, but I'd say they should request a card whenever I'm getting on their boat, or renting tanks, unless they know me well enough not to bother. My shop has never asked me to show my card ever. Of course I finished my cert through them and they have a very good customer database with things like last time I got my equipment serviced etc etc. They also send me a birthday gift certificate every year (well twice so far). Of the 3 shops I've been on a boat dive through, all have asked for my cert card when I signed waivers etc. That seems appropriate to me. I've rented tanks from one other shop that didn't ask to see my card at all. I gave the owner a name of someone I was diving with, he gave me tanks and I gave him money. That was that, and I was comfortable with that too.

I don't think a purchase of any kind (other than boat ride or guided dive service) should require any type of proof of certification. Personal integrity should account for something and I don't believe very many non-certified people are going out to drop a lot of money on new gear from a dive shop.

 

[BDSC]

A few years ago I went with five other friends to Cozumel and dove with one of the smaller but highly recommended dive operators. When I arrived I called him and he told me what time he would pick us up the next morning. So he arrives at the dock, we get on, and away we go. He never asked to see a c-card or anything. During one of our surface intervals between dives I asked him why he never asked to see our c-cards to make sure we were indeed all certified. (We usually have to show them) So he tells me something to this effect, "When a person spends a few thousand dollars on dive equipment and then maybe another $1500 or so to come here and dive for a week, the chances of them skipping the training and not getting the card to save maybe a few hundred is slim to none. It just doesn't happen."

That was good enough for me.

 

[Kingpatzer]

For purchases of items, they should never require it. There's no problem with granny buying a reg, tank, dry suit, or anything else as a birthday present for someone.

For purchased services (tank fills, dive trips, etc.) then every person who is involved in using the service must provide not only their certification level, but should also sign a release to indicate they are completely aware of, and agree with, the limits of liability the shop is willing to accept in exchange for the service requested.

For paint ball use, my shop has a sticker that they affix to the tank that indicates that it is not for human consumption and is not to be used for any life-support functions.

 

[Diver0001]

Some of you post valid points, others, not so much.

I think all of the points being made are valid... you may not want to listen to some of it, but that's not because the point isn't valid...

So some (most)of you feel as though it is not a dive shops responsibility for what the customer buys because the ''darwin'' saying is so famous around here.

You completely miss the point. The question is WHO should be made responsible for the personal safety of the person buying a bit of diving gear? Your initial post indicated that you think some (if not all) of that responsibility should be transferred to the dive shop employees. Many people here disagree with that attitude because as soon as you start transferring responsibility for your own personal safety to a 3rd party then you risk not taking responsibility for your own actions. Some people here believe that this attitude is essentially asinine.

It's also a cultural issue that transcends scuba diving... many people evidently like to make other people responsible for their mistakes....and people who *do* take responsibility for their own actions find that kind of thinking very peculiar.

I know you feel insulted by being confronted by this but I invite you to think about it. Do you really honestly think that some dive shop employee is in a better position to take responsibility for your (future) actions than YOU are? I think most people here would say no.

If scuba shops do not ID because the dumb/weak will die, then why do convienence stores ID for tobacco and alcohol? So only the adults can kill themselves? Let the kids kill themselves also, afterall, darwin wouldn't wait until they're 18...would he?

Non sequitur

(yeah, go look it up, because you don't know what signifigant figures are).

generalized ad hominem.... or is it just aggression... I guess it doesn't matter.

. Do I foresee lawsuits happening because a dive shop sold air fills to someone who got killed while diving? Yes.

Is that your problem? Lawyers will try anything but it still doesn't make transference of ones own personal responsibility to a 3rd party the right way to avoid it. A vendor may choose to do it for their own protection against lawyers but that still doesn't mean that they should give a rat's ass about what you do with the gear.

R..

 

[MaxBottomtime]

If scuba shops do not ID because the dumb/weak will die, then why do convienence stores ID for tobacco and alcohol? So only the adults can kill themselves?

There are Federal regulations regarding alcohol and tobacco. Each has been identified as potentially deadly. The only law regarding scuba involves hydros of tanks every five years.

Do I want the dive shop to do my thinking for me? No, and I take offense to such an assumption. Do I foresee lawsuits happening because a dive shop sold air fills to someone who got killed while diving? Yes.

Certified divers die all the time. Check the accidents forum. Should the shops be sued for filling their tanks? There is no need to regulate scuba any more than necessary. Scuba diving itself is not dangerous. Only the mistakes we make while on scuba are dangerous.