Worst trend in Scuba Diving instruction many of us have ever seen...Avoid Groupon!

[danvolker]

Groupon has apparently begun churning many hundreds of students throught the price mill, ensuring that the actual classes are huge, AND that the experiences and training level they receive is about as low as a student could ever get.

Hundreds have been herded to the Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park over the last 2 months, where the lack of boat costs or pool costs is appealing to the Groupon mentality.

The fact that these students really need actual pool time, does not appear to matter.

The fact that they are not able to learn bouyancy skills in such large uncontrolled groups, does not seem to matter.

The fact that the hundreds of students are being essentially bussed in to a delicate marine nursery ground, where they proceed to silt every square inch of the underwater park they are able to swim over ( or crawl, pogo, or drag themselves over) does not seem to bother the Groupon people.

Take a look at a small group typical of the Groupon invasion of dangerously undertaught students: YouTube - ‪silting-instruction‬‏ and for a look at student typical when a horrific lack of teaching takes place, watch this 20 second video showing a guy who does not have a clue about how to swim, yet he is out kicking the heck out of the bottom where all the nudibranch, frogfish, and other rare species are found. YouTube - ‪Diver with skills that split fins were created for...If you swim like this, GET HELP!‬‏ .

As a local, I see this as a wrongdoing being committed by the worst form of advertising practice...they are collecting people in mass who care about nothing but the lowest prices, and then proceed to jam them into classes which will ensure that they will never become good divers ( unless they take a real class afterward) and which will ensure that serious damage will occur to a marine resource like the BHB marine park.
Photographers come here from all over the world now, but on weekends, they really can't use the BHB park---so many groupon students that it feels like a mad house in the maelstrom of students thrashing around everywhere around you, and the visibility goes from clear as air, to less than 8 feet within a few minutes of the entrance of the student hordes.
What is the effect on the delicate marine life in the park? While the life at BHB is oriented to tidal flow, and of course can tolerate some silting, this is still a stress. Each organism here can tolerate conditions in the estuary that most species in the open ocean would be at a greater disadvantage at--would be more highly stressed. However, as this manmade silting is exponentially worse than that from tidal flows, it is a stress level that is going to overstress some of these rare species....it is just bad for the ecology here for us to have huge hordes of students exploding silt bbombs all over the BHB.

My desire is that this issue gets alot of divers discussing it, and how Groupon should be given status of Pariah, in the area of dive instruction and marketing for it....I also think the dive shops that agree to take the groupon students need to seriously re-think their choices, and quickly remove groupon from future use.

 

[Zen1300]

It seems to me that this is not the fault of Groupon, but those providing the instruction.

 

[Insta-Gator]

Groupon can't offer what the Scuba center doesn't allow. Perhaps a conversation with the teaching dive center might 'enlighten' them to the egregiousness of their behavior.

If that doesn't work, perhaps a public posting of their company name and the suggestion to local qualified divers that they may consider avoiding this dive center. It's all about the money.

 

[oly5050user]

we have done the groupon thing here in NY for discover scuba experience in our pool..worked out ok..out of 55 "coupons" sold about 20 actually showed up and out of that 12 signed up for ow classes..

 

[danvolker]

Groupon can't offer what the Scuba center doesn't allow. Perhaps a conversation with the teaching dive center might 'enlighten' them to the egregiousness of their behavior.

If that doesn't work, perhaps a public posting of their company name and the suggestion to local qualified divers that they may consider avoiding this dive center. It's all about the money.

At least one of the dive shops processing these groupon students is good for the Palm Beach area with many of it's other contributions....I don't know what caused them to take this groupon blight on, but your right, I need to sit down with the owner and discuss this.
I can tell you the shops local to the BHB marine park do NOT run to BHB with huge classes, and they do not silt up the area ever. The people doing it do not care about the ramifications. I doubt the owner of the shop{s} has knowledge of how bad the silting and upsetting of the balance actually is....Again, I will have to find out

 

[danvolker]

we have done the groupon thing here in NY for discover scuba experience in our pool..worked out ok..out of 55 "coupons" sold about 20 actually showed up and out of that 12 signed up for ow classes..

You know, for a pool session discover scuba, it sounds just fine......Unfortunately here, we have Groupon being misused to overwhelm a delicate marine nursery ground....I would call it an abuse of a public resource .. a resource in need of protection.

 

[danvolker]

To continue with the drug anology I was using in the deep air thread .... Hundreds of Groupon students are kind of like "Crack Cocaine" to a dive shop in need of more business ( most dive shops ARE in need of more business). The temptation to try this new form of student/crack is going to be enormous....Potentially, the dive shops may have no real knowledge of the dangers of using such a product, and so the dreams of huge masses milling around their dive shops will have a powerful effect.

We need to help them to understand the damages this can do to diving.....
"bad experiences in huge low end courses"
"too many in class for learning to take place, meaning fear and/ or dissatisfaction may turn students off to diving forever"
"shop makes so little on each student, that they can work themselves to death, and be going broke at the same time"
" the bad image their shop could garner as being responsible for very bad behaviors at the the BHB marine park."
" http://youtu.be/LGcGU-I2jK4 can't be good for anybody !!!!!! "

 

[deeper thoughts]

interesting

 

[Wah]

Groupon is just a tool for businesses to get customers through the door. What they do with them is completely up to the dive shop. It's a little unfair to blame groupon for poorly trained student divers.

 

[TheOldGuy]

I think Dan is right about the Groupon situation. Using it for Discover Scuba is fine as long as no open water is included. Groupon markets to their members who are looking for "a deal". They have yet to learn that the "sweetness of cheapness is not long remembered". When you combine a large number of students with disgruntled instructors and often uninsured Dive Masters, you are asking for problems and disappointing outcomes.

It is true that a shop from Jupiter is taking a huge number of students to the eco-sensitive Blue Heron Bridge for both confined water and open water training dives. It's a cluster Fxx. The site suffers. The students suffer. The instructors suffer. Diving suffers and ultimately, the shop suffers.

The sponsoring shop only earns 25% or it's normal fee. Groupon earns the other 25% for pressing send. The sponsoring shop has a PR problem. Because the Groupon is told that the course includes materials or that the shop will buy them back, the shop is forced to violate contractual standards with the certification agency.