Where to Buy/Rent?

[dnalevol]

Just got O/W certified last weekend. Only own mask/snorkel/fins/boots. Considering buying the other stuff rather than renting. Would like to dive more...but living in Texas, and not being too fond of murky lakes, I'll probably be lucky to dive 2 times a year on vacations. Still working that out.

Questions: Where to buy should I decide to go that route. LDS was very adamant that online shops are NOT a good route. Equipment not certified, you have to put it together yourself, etc. How much of this was just a marketing scam so that I would buy from them? I have always been an online shopper (love ebay), and frankly do not have a money tree in my backyard to be paying more for gear that I have to. Hubby is certified to, so we now buy everything by the two's.

Where to rent until we make the purchase plunge? Again, LDS was adamant that we never rent from resorts. Their gear is overused and not good quality, not inspected, etc. Advice was to rent from LDS and take it on vacation. Again, I'm thinking this is hype so we rent from them. But, I want the advice of experienced divers on this.

A little more background....We are going on a 10 day sailing trip to BVI in December with friends. We want to get in as many dives in as we can. I'm also a bit worried about lugging all the rental gear on a plane AND having a place to stow it on our sailboat.

(BTW...just joined the board tonight, and have been reading posts voraciously. I want to thank all of you experienced divers for being patient with us newbies. I'm surprised at how nice you are to respond to questions I'm sure you've been asked hundreds of times. I can tell I'm going to like it here.)

 

[Damselfish]

This is a common question here. It's good you're reading old posts - while you're at it search for "Leisure Pro." That's an online place that does a lot of business and sells a lot of things without the manufacturer's warranty or other niceties, though they give their own warrenty. It's not the only place but the most commonly discussed, so it will be mentioned in most of the threads of interest.


It's true, some online shops sell without manufacturers warranty, may not put stuff together and check it out for you, may not give you helpful advice, pretty much just a warehouse. But many others do offer manufacturer's warranty, set things up, and give you much better help and advice than some local shops - along with better selection and prices. One of the big advantages of a local shop is that you can see and try things on easily with no shipping charges, and maybe even have a chance to try some things in the water. (It's possible to take advantage of that with the intention of later buying online cheaper, but most will consider that tacky to unethical as it costs the shop money to provide this service.) Many will say it's a good idea to give your local shop business just to keep them in business so you have a place to get airfills and hang out with other divers.

It's also the case that some brands cannot be sold online according to the manufacturer or have their prices pretty much fixed by the manufacturer, which adds a twist and is another whole debate. A place like Leisure Pro gets a lot of stuff through other channels, basically grey-market, and skirts the rules. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the gear, and most divers aren't too fond of the whole price-fixing restraint-of-trade games of some manufacturers either, but there are pros and cons.

Most online shops are simply regular LDSs that branched out to sell online too. Shops that don't sell on-line, naturally they aren't happy about the ones that do - yours sounds like one of these. Some shops will give you a lot of grief if they know you bought gear online, charge more for service, etc. It's reasonable for shops to give perks/discounts/advantages to their good customers, but you really don't want to deal with shops that are complete jerks about it.

As far as resort gear, some may have rental gear that's worn or not as well maintained as it should be, but many will have newer and nicer gear than your LDS. It all depends where you're going. In a few cases renting from your LDS and taking it along is a good idea. You can ask here about a specific place and someone may be able to tell you. If you're going to rent anyway, I'd be inclined to rent where I was going otherwise you lose one of the few advantages of rental gear and get the worst of both worlds - renting gear but traveling with it. (Though it's not that hard to travel with gear, the majority of us that travel to dive have our own gear and do it all the time. Gets easier with practice.)

A reg you rent, even if it's perfectly safe, will probably not breath nearly as well as a good one you purchase and maintain. A BC you rent, you may not be familiar with and it probably won't fit as well as the one you have carefully selected and purchased for yourself. But these things are as likely to be true of your LDS's rental gear as some resort.

So what your LDS is telling you is true sometimes, but not nearly always. It's obviously not in their interest to give you the whole story.

 

[Dave in PA]

I won't tell you what to do, just share my personal experience and opinion.

I went to Jamaica a few weeks ago, I took my regs and mask with the intent on hitting the water, should the oportunity arise. The resort regs were Sherwoods. One feature of the Sherwoods is that through a dry bleed system, a tiny stream of bubbles comes from the first stage when they are working normally. NONE of the resort regs were producing that stream of bubbles, actually, the only stream of bubbles was coming from the yoke O-ring. One day I used a new Scubapro BC, the next I used an older Sherwood BC. I was glad I had my own regs, although nobody really seemed to notice the problems with the resorts.

 

[TwoBitTxn]

Renting
It depends completely on the resort. Resorts that rent crappy gear get a bad rep very quickly. Not good for business. The biggest advantage of renting from the resort is you don't lug it. You don't worry about it not making it onto the plane with you and arriving when you do. Draw backs... BC may or may not fit it the biggest one. Wet suit may or may not fit, also rental wet suits get peed in, at least with your wet suit you are the only one that has peed in it.

With rental gear you can try out a number of different brands and types and figure out what you do or don't like, then buy.

Lots of good shops around here shop around, ask questions, give them a chance to earn your business. There are a number of shops that do relatively inexpensive long weekend trips to Coz. Put some dives under your belt and make a Flower Gardens trip.

TwoBit

 

[anakin]

great pacific diving in vancouver BC rocks...go there!

 

[bottom seeker]

As you are in the Dallas area, try ScubaToys (in Carrollton). I ordered my stuff through their online site. Great prices and customer service. Had a bit of an issue with how long one of the items took to ship, but they made up for the time delay.

BS

 

[plot]

Anything that requires servicing (like regulators), buy at the shop.

Everything else... I really don't have an opinion on.