hands down the worst online retail experience I've ever had.
when I say this was my worst online retail experience ever, I don't mean strictly related to scuba equipment, I mean EVER! what will follow is a lengthy, detailed description of my personal experience, but they take home points are as follow:
-i am a dive professional who has also worked in scuba retail
-i STRONGLY reccomend use of another retailer
-terrible customer service
i recently had all of my dive gear stolen. this experience, to which many of you can relate, can be an ordeal to rectify. to compound the inconvenience of this tragedy, it was discovered days before i flew out for my next dive trip. upon discovering that my gear had gone missing, i began piecing together a new set, and some of my gear is difficult to find online. i ended up having to place orders with six different online retailers to assemble the set-up that I'd formerly possessed. naturally i was thrilled to find Dive Right In Scuba as they had some gear that was virtually unavailable elsewhere online. they also had expedient shipping options, so i thought i would receive my order before i flew out days later.
the following day i received an email telling me my order had been cancelled due to its failure to meet the stringent requirements of their "security check". after calling their store, speaking to a customer service representative, and being placed on hold several times for very long durations, i was finally put in contact with someone who seemed to be in a managerial position. Mike, maybe? he informed me that several details of my order raised "red flags" for security in their system. i was on the phone with him for over 30 minutes clarifying information that other retailers with whom i've dealt(including leisurepro.com, scuba.com, amazon.com, diveseekers.com, and the hundreds of non-scuba related establishments I've patronized since the inception of online retail) had no issue, he requested additional information which I'd almost consider an invasion of privacy(my current living situation, diver cert. number, etc.). i was accused of fabricating false addresses that couldn't be located via google maps, to which i responded by walking the representative on the phone through what can only be described as a step-by-step google maps tutorial. i was told that my phone number of sixteen years did not belong to me after a google search, and was told that my order could not be shipped to an address that was not the billing address(definitely do not try to buy a gift), after which i requested that they do send it to the billing address, but was refused. in fact i was told that they had elected not to process my order altogether. if they are this insanely paranoid of fraudulent credit card use, that's fine, but ulitimately, these people wasted invaluable shipping time, my time on the telephone, and overstepped boundaries by requesting too much information. by the end of the entire transaction, i had grown skeptical as to the legitimacy of this business as a whole. as someone who has worked in dive retail, and has been professionally diving for several years, i STRONGLY recommend NOT using this company. very cumbersome process that only yielded frustration and inconvenience.