The true costs in the Certification fee

[MXGratefulDiver]

So, a few points now that I have access to internet again...

1) You may not be told what the plumber makes, but they have an hourly rate plus parts.

2) My AOW, I have all my equipment, and I paid for my tank fills.

3) I do not want free. I want to pay a fee, and get the value out of it. I am paying for your knowledge, I should not be the one teaching YOU... (telling my instructor that there is a high current and him arguing with me. I was right.)

4) Regardless of the course, you should get your money's worth.

5) I respect that there is 'overhead' to pay. I also respect that people's time is worth something. I am willing to pay for your time, as long as the quality is there.

Those are realistic expectations ... and it sounds like you made a poor choice of instructor. But a couple of questions, if I may ...

1) What were your motivations for taking the class?

2) How much did you know about the instructor before you signed up for the class?

I try to train my students to think about diving as an exercise in personal responsibility ... one that relies fundamentally on the ability to make good decisions. One can excuse an OW student from making a poor choice in terms of class or instructor because they lack any context around which to base that choice. However, by AOW, you have adequate context to determine why you want to sign up for the class, and what you expect to get out of it. You have the ability to evaluate the instructor ... particularly if it's the same one you took your OW from. So why do so many people complain about AOW? How much responsibility do you take for not putting adequate effort into researching the quality of the services you expect to get before laying your money down? Would you do put the same effort into any other major purchase you make?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dbulmer]

Bob

A student who opts for continued education under a professional I S exercising a step in personal responsibility.
Nothing you say above is false, I just wish the pros would avoid appearing to blame students for picking the wrong instructor when in my opinion the average instructor should be doing more to flesh out the content in courses such as AOW - I know I'm being a wee bit naive but wouldn't it be nice if everyone could say well I've just done my AOW and wow was it good !?

 

[Diver0001]

"Doing it cheap" Thread made me think of my cert costs and then ask, why?

I have done 3 Certs.
OWC $350
Ice Diver $25
AOW $350

...snip...

So, why go cheap? Why not?

Actually, the more interesting question is what a course would cost if you paid what it's really worth.

I'll use OW as an example and work it out using real numbers from the Netherlands (my local area) so you understand how your course is built up.

- Online learning pack €105
- Books €65
- pool fees (5x €18 = €90)
- Gear rental (usually free in combination with a course)
- Certification fees +/- €15

Together, this is €275. Courses are usually sold here for about €375 that gives the shop €100 to pay for

- Instructor/staff labour (at minimum wage) €483
- fills and maintenance on rental gear €10
- costs of fuel and maintenance for vehicles €50
- Shop overhead (rental, lights, heat etc) €15
- Manufacturer inventory €8 (MUCH more if it doesn't sell... ergo the push to buy)

Some of those costs can be split if the group is larger but if you're taking a "private" 1:1 course, the minimum cost the shop invests in you as a student is round about €900 (about $1200USD).

That's a fact. That's not BS.

Naturally, nobody is going to pay that for OW training so the course gets sold for what people are willing to pay. In industry jargon, this is called a "loss leader". It means you get people in the door by offering a product or service at a loss but you intend to make your money back by selling something *else*..... in most cases, gear.

So how do shops survive?

1) by not paying instructors. Most instructors work for perks. If you actually paid them minimum wage then your shop would go tits-up in 6 months. In other words, most scuba instructors do it because they love the sport. In terms of a job, you would literally make better money and with a LOT less risk, by shaking the oil out of the french fries at McDonalds.

2) By cutting corners. The sooner students are out of the pool, the lower the costs. Keep the tempo high to keep the costs low. The whole quality discussion we keep having on internet comes down to this.... the economics of not going bankrupt!

3) By pushing gear and con-ed. Successful instructors don't only create good divers. They sell. Con-ed, gear, trips, clubs, you name it.... if the student becomes an *active* diver then the shop will recoup its investment. If a student becomes a vacation diver or doesn't dive at all then the shop has effectively thrown away €600 on the gamble that the instructor can turn that student into an active diver.

Yes... this *is* on your instructor's mind...

It takes a very special shop/instructor combination to lead a student through this system in such a way that (a) the shop makes a profit (b) the instructor feels proud of the work he/she has done and (c) the student feels they have gotten their money's worth.

Welcome to the reality of teaching diving.

R..

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob

A student who opts for continued education under a professional I S exercising a step in personal responsibility.
Nothing you say above is false, I just wish the pros would avoid appearing to blame students for picking the wrong instructor when in my opinion the average instructor should be doing more to flesh out the content in courses such as AOW - I know I'm being a wee bit naive but wouldn't it be nice if everyone could say well I've just done my AOW and wow was it good !?

I wish they could too ... but that's not the reality. The reality is that the bar for becoming a scuba instructor is very low, and there are more mediocre or even poor instructors out there than there are good ones. More than most service industries, scuba instruction really requires you to shop around if your goal is to get quality training.

There are a few reasons for that. A major one is because the customer really doesn't want to pay for quality ... more often than not they want the cheapest class they can find. And like most things in life, you generally get what you pay for.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[tplyons]

If they did the same thing with certifications, you might see more people understand the true costs involved.

How much are they paying the instructor per hour?
How much is the pool cost?
How much is the rental gear?
.... How much does it REALLY cost.

The long and short of it is, these don't really matter. The instructor fee is between the instructor and the shop; the pool fee is between the pool and the shop; and the rental gear is dependent on many factors. The long and the short of it, if they're paying the instructor $125 and the pool $25, or if they're paying the instructor $25 and $125 to the pool, it makes no difference. You're still getting the same education and certification. There is no reason the shop needs to list their prices.

The reason you get that breakdown in a service department, is those services can be bought a la carte. And sometimes the numbers provided aren't the actual costs, just what they show you.

Long story short, I know some great instructors that get paid peanuts and some so-so instructors that get paid better. I know pools that charge about $100 a diver for a day, and some that charge $25 a day. Price isn't always indicative of the quality, and the net result is the same regardless of breakdown.

 

[mac.calder]

A couple of points on itemisation...

The bill you get for the plumber - that isn't actual costs. It does not cost a plumber $3.85 for a washer - they pay about $0.38. What that itemised list is, is a feel good exercise to justify charging $125 for 30 minutes of work to fix a leaky tap. If they were to list costs, you would probably laugh, hand them back the bill and ask for the real one.

Also, when you start itemising, people start to nickle and dime you. I have this argument at work all the time - we send out itemised quotes to our clients. Some clients then make us justify every line on the quote - we provide Audio Visual services in 5 star venues - and some of the costs are high - we have a certain quality standard, we buy only reputable name brands etc. We get them coming back wanting to provide critical pieces of equipment with parts they source from ebay etc. My argument is we should be providing an itemised list of inclusions with a package price at the end. The exact model that scuba courses generally follow.

If courses were to itemise prices, chances are that they would have students arguing that they are already members of X pool, so they shouldn't have to pay for the pool session, or that they have their own gear, so why are they paying for the rental gear etc. Instead they say that it costs $A for instruction, complementary gear hire included if required. 1 headache averted.

 

[gekodivebali]

25$ for certification fees?!? I need to relocate!
Seriously, like in a lot of other businesses volume drives costs. Want to join 7 other open water students with one instructor on a cheap course? Be my guest!

 

[kr2y5]

Well, part of my point is, Why do they cost so different.

Itemized cost is a red herring... think itemized cost of Tom Cruise, acting in his latest movie... market price is determined by supply and demand, and in that sense, the only thing that can get in the way of you getting your money's "worth" is a lack of free access to accurate information about the product you are paying for...

What am I paying for.

...and so, the crux of the problem is the universal lack of transparency, which gets in the way of fair comparison of what's being offered, and makes it harder for students to make informed decisions. The reality of scuba training is like buying shoes for your wife, in a sealed box, based on only the store clerk's verbal explanation of what they look like, more or less (no returns policy). Agencies define standards of performance that the students have to meet, but not standards of teaching, or at least not in a way that would mean much in practice. It would be great to know how many hours of instructor's undivided attention, skills demonstration and practice one will get, what skills would be taught and how, what the instructor/student would actually do. Will the student have the opportunity to attempt each skill X times, or for Y minutes, with the instructor diligently watching and correcting every mistake, or will the student spend most of the time swimming around, watching other students, or listening to a person talking in a pool, etc. One can ask those questions, but few people do, it kind of sets a tone of mutual mistrust from the outset that not everyone may be comfortable with, and almost everybody is cutting corners anyway, since there's very little incentive to do otherwise.

Perhaps what would help here would be, to charge separately for student development/training vs. exams/skills evaluation/certification. Confusing the two is bad for everyone: people who are willing to pay for training often get an inferior product, and people who just want to get a c-card complain about the inflated certification fees. Branding certification as "certification", and training as "training", would help to adjust the prices to reflect the relatiive quality of products.

For that $300 I spend about 20 hours class time, minimum 6 hours pool time, minimum 12 hours open water time.

This is extremely generous... where I live, the market price is $75 for an unsupervised pool session.

 

[MrChen]

I love that someone mentioned buying the books on ebay. Why buy the book when I can just buy this? LOL

PADI Rescue Diver Diving Certificate Program Award Scuba Diver | eBay

 

[hroark2112]

A couple of points on itemisation...

The bill you get for the plumber - that isn't actual costs. It does not cost a plumber $3.85 for a washer - they pay about $0.38. What that itemised list is, is a feel good exercise to justify charging $125 for 30 minutes of work to fix a leaky tap. If they were to list costs, you would probably laugh, hand them back the bill and ask for the real one.

Also, when you start itemising, people start to nickle and dime you. I have this argument at work all the time - we send out itemised quotes to our clients. Some clients then make us justify every line on the quote - we provide Audio Visual services in 5 star venues - and some of the costs are high - we have a certain quality standard, we buy only reputable name brands etc. We get them coming back wanting to provide critical pieces of equipment with parts they source from ebay etc. My argument is we should be providing an itemised list of inclusions with a package price at the end. The exact model that scuba courses generally follow.

If courses were to itemise prices, chances are that they would have students arguing that they are already members of X pool, so they shouldn't have to pay for the pool session, or that they have their own gear, so why are they paying for the rental gear etc. Instead they say that it costs $A for instruction, complementary gear hire included if required. 1 headache averted.

That's why when I get someone asks me to itemize my bill, I tell them it costs $150 for me to know how to repair the faucet and the parts are free