Instructors who carry multiple agencies certifications ...

Hello: Are there any instructors who carry instructor certifications from more than one agencies? Does it not constitute conflict of interest to be loyal to competing agencies like PADI, PSAI, NAUI etc? Do you teach the same course under PADI, NAUI and give whatever card the student wants or is your training for each organizations different from the beginning? Do you try to sell one C-card over the other? Just curious. Thanks.

The instructor I DM for has instructor cert's from different agencies. She has PADI, SDI. TDI, NAUI, DAN, and can certify handicapped people to dive but I don't know for which agency.

We use PADI about 90% of the time for OW. SDI for advanced and specialties. TDI for technical courses. Dan for O2 courses.

No more a conflict of interest than running a bar that serves Bud, Miller, and Coors.

My cave instructor was (is) NACD, NSS-CDS, PADI, TDI/SDI, and a few others. When we got started he said that he teaches the same things for NACD and NSS-CDS certs and basically asked me which card I wanted.

Ontwreckdiver:

We use PADI about 90% of the time for OW. SDI for advanced and specialties. TDI for technical courses. Dan for O2 courses.

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What is the reasoning behind this particular distribution?

I'm current with PADI and SDI/TDI, have been a PSAI instructor in the past but haven't renewed it in years.

If a student insists on a PADI course - sometimes people just can't get past the brand - they get a PADI course, taught to PADI standards (if I'm teaching Open Water, for example, confined water skills are grouped as per PADI's CW sessions). If I'm teaching SDI, they get a course taught to SDI standards. The differences are mostly administrative, diving is diving after all, but they exist. I don't do PADI Tec, so tec courses are always TDI.

By and large, I try to encourage students towards SDI at entry level. If I'm teaching SDI Open Water, I can structure confined water to suit the student - if they have problems with a specific skill, we can move onto something else so they can achieve something positive, then go back and revisit the skill they're finding hard. With PADI, there are a series of brick walls you run into if you adhere strictly to standards, and you can end up having to keep hammering away at the same skill over and over before you can move on. Doesn't happen often, but it does sometimes happen.

Rumour has it PADI do think it's a conflict of interest. I suspect, at least in Asia and the Pacific, that if they do get hard-line about multiple-agency instructors, it's PADI who'll lose numbers.

CAPTAIN SINBAD:

What is the reasoning behind this particular distribution?

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Lots of people who are new divers come looking for PADI. Once they learn what's what they can be more selective...

Certification costs are pretty significant annually so anyone keeping certifications from multiple agencies must be spending a lot of their income in keeping their certifications updated. Since OW course is more of less the same thing, why keep multiple certifications? Does it make sense from instructor POV? Also, I have met very few instructors who like PADI but all students seem to demand that. From your experience(s) is it hard to convince students to buy anything other than PADI?

CAPTAIN SINBAD:

Certification costs are pretty significant annually so anyone keeping certifications from multiple agencies must be spending a lot of their income in keeping their certifications updated. Since OW course is more of less the same thing, why keep multiple certifications? Does it make sense from instructor POV? Also, I have met very few instructors who like PADI but all students seem to demand that. From your experience(s) is it hard to convince students to buy anything other than PADI?

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In the slightly less than a year since my partner and I did the SDI crossover (we were both already TDI instructors), we've had exactly one student who flat-out insisted on doing PADI OW because she'd heard of PADI but not SDI. Once she'd done the course, she said she realised it didn't matter which agency we taught her through, it was the instruction that counted. Everyone else has happily accepted our recommendation on agency. Mind you, we're not exactly a certification mill... Across the Asian Pacific region as a whole, though, increasing numbers of shops seem to be becoming multi-agency or leaving PADI altogether, which suggests that the brand-power of PADI is waning in some places.

I have never had a problem with students insisting on one agency over the ones I cert through. And costs are not that high. Insurance is the same if with one agency or five. Dues are not bad and if you pay early you get a discount. I cert through the agencies I do in order to serve my students. Each agency has it's strengths. I chose the ones I did on moral and ethical grounds. They agree with mine. And when students ask about diffences I can show them the standards from 8 different agencies that I have in my library.\
Because contrary to popular belief there are significant differences in standards. Especially at the Open Water level.

my favorite shop is a PADI shop and one of the instructors there is PADI, but is also IANTD,NSS-CD, and DSAT Tec Deep. The shop tends to offer for the specialties a dual certification option. But as it's been said on other threads.. a cert is just that.. it comes down to the instructor's teaching. But an informed diver should ask about the differences in the standards and make their decisions on that & the instructor. and if you can get multiple certs for just a nominal bit more at the higher standard.... nuff said.