Most disturbing phone call I've gotten in a long time

[aikiguy]

"PADI exists to develop programs that encourage and fulfill the public interest in recreational scuba and snorkel diving worldwide"

That is the definition of marketing!!!!!!! Their purpose is not quality assurance it is marketing.

Guy

 

[The Chairman]

There are plenty of reasons to be critical of PADI.

But are there? Most of the criticisms I have seen can be classified as either petty, vindictive or simple jealousy. Too many try to promote themselves at the expense of others just like current American Politics. I am not sure that these people even see it! YMMV.

 

[flots am]

For "PADI" you can read any of the other recreational certifying bodies. What's happening now is a mockery - there are even accredited 5* centers here which don't own a compressor or a single tank.

There are no "4 *" PADI shops. It's either 5 or nothing.

AFAIK, the biggest requirements for 5* are to be PADI exclusive, have an actual physical location, and pay the fee. I don't think they have a lot of specific requirements for tank ownership or compressors.

flots.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

There are plenty of reasons to be critical of PADI. But their QA efforts for their instructors is simply not one of them. They are better at that than any other agency.

I'm not sure that last bit is accurate ... might be better to say that they do, in fact, police their own (most of the time).

Any organization run by humans is gonna (a) make mistakes and (b) find ways to rationalize ways around rules that don't work out in their best interests. And the bigger the organization, the more stuff's gonna fall thru the cracks.

In that respect, PADI isn't any different than any other corporation. And because of that, they probably aren't as good at QA ... on a whole ... as some of their smaller counterparts. The larger you become, the harder it is to achieve any kind of consistency when it comes to policing your own ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[aikiguy]

I am not a dive instructor, I am just the end user of the products.

Having the padi logo on your door, or on the front of a book does not seem and increase in quality, it is an increase in the amount of marketing that is in the book.

They are doing their job, and doing it wonderfully. Everyone knows PADI. It is seen as something necessary for training by a large number of divers.

As a customer, the educational materials by other agencies seem far superior in terms of content. Other agencies materials are more technical, more detail oriented, with better drawings and more science. However if you hand the Jeppson diving manual for instance to a beginner, they are going to see it as a technical subject. This will scare off some people from diving that would be just fine diving a nice reef somewhere with a DM paying money to do so, and having fun... Those people are fine, and they are having FUN.

Padi is about selling you the next piece of gear, the next padi resort vacation.. It is about selling how fun diving is to the masses. They are great at it... They want and those people that are instructors, dive shops, and the like want to make diving look simple, and accessible to everyone... Market to the masses is the way to make money.

Guy

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I am not a dive instructor, I am just the end user of the products.

Having the padi logo on your door, or on the front of a book does not seem and increase in quality, it is an increase in the amount of marketing that is in the book.

They are doing their job, and doing it wonderfully. Everyone knows PADI. It is seen as something necessary for training by a large number of divers.

As a customer, the educational materials by other agencies seem far superior in terms of content. Other agencies materials are more technical, more detail oriented, with better drawings and more science. However if you hand the Jeppson diving manual for instance to a beginner, they are going to see it as a technical subject. This will scare off some people from diving that would be just fine diving a nice reef somewhere with a DM paying money to do so, and having fun... Those people are fine, and they are having FUN.

Padi is about selling you the next piece of gear, the next padi resort vacation.. It is about selling how fun diving is to the masses. They are great at it... They want and those people that are instructors, dive shops, and the like want to make diving look simple, and accessible to everyone... Market to the masses is the way to make money.

Guy

Not sure I can agree with that. I learned scuba diving using Jeppeson's Open Water Sport Diving manual (YMCA) ... and thought it was a pretty good book. But it's "dated" and there are places where I thought it fell short. There are also things in there that as I learned to dive I found completely wrong ... his assertion, for example, that frog-kicking was for swimming, and had little to no practical application to scuba diving.

I've taken classes from several different agencies, and some materials are better than others. My biggest complaint about PADI's materials is that, although they're essentially accurate, they're inane ... like they were created for children or idiots. It's almost embarrassing how simplistic they are. On the other hand, you look at an agency like GUE, who trains at a very high level ... and their training materials look like some engineer wrote them on the back of a napkin, and then sent someone to Kinko's to make copies for the class. SDI's materials read like they were written by a geek with a snarky sense of humor (it appeals to me, BTW) ... and the NAUI materials are all over the map ... some, like their Master Diver manual, are excellent. Others, like their Advanced Scuba Diver manual, are nothing more than a review of what should have been taught in OW. I found that particular one so useless I ended up writing my own material.

I have a bookshelf of training materials from several agencies ... as well as books written by "experts" on quite a number of subjects relating to diving. Some are better than others ... none are perfect. Some of the most informative ones suffer from the lack of a good editor. The slickest, most professional ones often leave me wondering if the author was really a scuba diver. This applies to many of the magazines and journals available as well.

You really can't just state that "agency a" has better material than "agency b" ... because that might be the case for some topics, or some courses, and not so much for others.

In many ways, you remind me of the story of the blind guys trying to describe the elephant ... you're one of the blind guys ... you really need to feel around and get a better idea of what that elephant is really like before trying to describe it. Because the trunk is very different than the ear ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[W8less]

I wonder if the issues in JL's original post are a reflection of trends in the Dive industry or direct result of people making poor decisions while struggling to deal with our economy. I am in the construction industry (electrical contractor) and have definitely been impacted by the downturn. I can relate hundreds of horror stories of unlicensed guys (trying to survive) doing things in the marketplace that are fouling the nest for everyone.

Be interesting to know how tough things are financially in Jim's area.

I am not attempting to justify anyone's behavior, just trying to figure out why!

 

[DevonDiver]

This is like some joke of a conspiracy theory...."Oh! The Marketing Men of PADI...in Area 51, who shot JFK and faked the moon landings whilst orchestating the demolition of the Twin Towers, funded by Afghan Heroin growers who are actually a Saudi royal family....all the while hding behind a cover story of teaching people to scuba dive"....

The point is being missed about the roll of Padi in diving.
Padi is a Marketing organization,.....

Nope, it is very definitely a scuba training organization. Yes, it is profit making. Just like SSI, SDI, IANTD, TDI, NAUI etc etc etc

It is a privately held corporation that is only interested in generating income for it's owners. The more people pay into padi, the more money they make. Why would you eliminate clients from your income stream.

and yet without it, there would be so many less dive instructors, dive centres, dive boats, dive holidays, dive courses......

Lets look at it another way....

Yes...lets do that...

If PADI and all the other 'profit making agencies' were taken away, then the industry shrunk....leading to dramatic price rises. PADI creates 'cheap' instructors. Cheap instructors = cheap courses. Cheap courses = cheap diving.

If the worldwide instructor pool was drastically reduced, then those remaining instructors would have a captured market in which they could dictate costs. Diving would be made more elitist. It would become a retail driven market, rather than the current consumer driven market.

If I was the only dive instructor in town, I would charge what I wanted. If there are a hundred other instructors in town, then I have to compete with them to offer the best value to attract potential customers.

It is hard to be sued when you are the provider of marketing materials.

I don't think they teach this at Harvard Law. Perhaps you should let them know...

Being part of that marketing group is worth the weight of materials they send you in gold.

PADI are pretty up-front about the benefits of membership. Their brand marketing is specifically addressed as one of those benefits.

Every scuba business does marketing....even BSAC (a non-profit, club based diving organization).

However don't expect them to kick anyone out of the club. That would decrease profits, and expose them to risk of other marketing agencies gaining a bigger foothold in the market.

If you want to start an organization that demands that people preform to a certain level of qualifications then you are going to have make that an enforceable system. The only way to do that is to have regulations and enforcement come from the government.

Which is exactly what happens in some other countries. Funnily enough, the diving costs in those countries did not sky rocket.

Nonetheless, what governs cost is supply and demand. More instructors/centres means lower prices.

If that happens then you will have to have some kind of real educational requirements, .... probably some higher education requirements.

wtf?

Right now anyone can teach a scuba class, there are no laws that prevent it.

In the USA....

In other countries, there are laws that govern the need for formal, recognised qualification as an instructor. Same result. Same safety statistics. Same quality of courses. Just no fraudulent instructors peddling home-baked scams.

How much do you want to change the industry? How much more expensive do you want to make the cost of entry into the hobby? How much do you want to pay the government in licensing fees and testing fees. How hard do we want to make it to teach, and or dive.

What happens elsewhere in the world is simply that the government chooses to recognize certain agencies and then limits non-recognized agencies from teaching.

At the most, the devolve authority for monitoring these agencies to a third-party sanctioning agency or watchdog. The RSTC would be a likely candidate, for example.

Very little cost to the government, taxpayer, agency or customer.

They utilise the expertise that exists within the industry and delegate supervision to those that understand it best.

A lot of people on this boards really want to come across as hard ass technical divers. However this is a hobby. A lot of people here that are already divers want to make the cost of entry into the hobby harder? Why? It seems they want the club to be more elite... Why?

The 'elitist' accusations don't fly. Frankly, whenever I hear them they always smell of jealousy.

You really want to make people better divers? Start a club, a real club dedicated to making everyone in it a better diver. Low cost membership, lots of dives available, and lots of free and non judgmental help. Get people that walk through the door diving.... With experienced people that WANT to help new people.

There are such things. BSAC is the largest. It is beset with problems of its own (cliques, non-standardised views, politics...). Their safety statistics match the norm for the scuba industry. Members still pay dues to join and dive. Some clubs are great. Others are terrible. Same for their instructors (of which I am one).

Clubs are great. But yours is a very utopian outlook. Like most utopian theories, it diverges from reality. The reality has an equal share of negative aspects.

It basically boils down to "wouldn't it be great if scuba diving was free". You don't get anything for nothing in this world. Reality.

 

[The Chairman]

As a customer, the educational materials by other agencies seem far superior in terms of content.

I am not a PADI instructor, but I don't think I have heard this complaint before. In fact, a number of PADI's critics go out of their way to praise PADI's materials. I haven't examined them since the turn of the century, but at that time they were excellent. They always appeared to be appropriate for the level they were teaching.

Padi is about selling you the next piece of gear,

PADI doesn't sell gear.

the next padi resort vacation.

While there is some travel offered by PADI, I don't see this as their forte'.

It is about selling how fun diving is to the masses.

You write this as if there is something wrong with this approach? Diving IS fun. Diving IS acceptable for the vast majority of people. Teaching Diving is also fun, albeit problematic on many levels.

I'll stick by my earlier statement: The majority of criticisms leveled at PADI can usually be classified as being petty, vindictive or motivated by jealousy. I see a lot of the same types of criticisms leveled at ScubaBoard only because we are the biggest out there. There's always room for improvement, and if they are anything like me: they are keen to figure that out and evolve to the next level.

 

[tyesai]

There has been some talk about the goverment getting into the SCUBA buisness, I'm not so sure it would happen as there is no real money to be stolen from the people as SCUBA police. Unless there is some major outcry from the general public, I'm not even sure it would be on the Washington radar.

I've heard of things happening at local levels, but that is the way things should work.