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Near Misses and Lessons LearnedHere is a forum to discuss those incidents that ended well but could easily have ended badly, and the lessons learned from them.
Missdirected - I paid the money into his account. I have already written to him stating everything that went wrong and asking for a full refund, but haven't heard anything back from him.
Thanks ligers and tstorm, tstorm apparently the guy IS authentically a PADI instructor! So even with credentials he's extremely dangerous.
In any case I'll keep you all posted on how things develop. I have to thank you all for being so friendly and helpful - what a nice forum! Hopefully soon I can post some pictures of my next dive
Missdirected - I paid the money into his account. I have already written to him stating everything that went wrong and asking for a full refund, but haven't heard anything back from him.
Ah, I was thinking if it was Visa or Amex you would have another avenue to pursue to get your money back. Well good luck.
Missdirected - I paid the money into his account. I have already written to him stating everything that went wrong and asking for a full refund, but haven't heard anything back from him.
Paid directly into his account? Via Paypal? If so, contact them.
Hello everyone - not sure if this is the right place to post this but my boyfriend and I had a really awful experience this weekend and I was hoping to get some advice about what to do next. Also apologies if I lack the proper diving vocabulary in English as I've almost always been diving in Spanish!
Quite a horror story... and well told. But I have one question for you... for something that just happened... and as you mentioned you had no prior experience... you've done a wonderful job of analysing each and every failure of this outfit...
... so... why on earth did you go into the water with them in the first place? TWICE!! (... and prepared to do a third dive??)
I'm actually very curious about why people in such a bad situation (... and you're not the first who have expressed experiences of this sort) wouldn't call it off at an earlier point in the process...
... other than that... as you've been advised. If they're advertising as a PADI course... call PADI... if these guys ARE PADI... I bet PADI would very much like to know about it... and if they *arent'*... PADI would probably like to know even more...
JR I have already emailed PADI, but if you have a phone number it would be really useful as I can't find one anywhere on their website.
To answer your question, it's probably a combination of intimidation by the instructor (very moody guy) and the fact that you're supposed to trust an instructor so I rationalized most things by thinking "he must know what he's doing, I don't, so I have to trust him". Also everything happened very fast and he didn't really give us a chance to ask questions or protest.
However when he sent us out with the boat driver guy I was 90% sure we wouldn't do the dive. The main reason I got into the water was because I felt so sick on the boat! But from the second we left the dock I kept telling my bf; "if you don't feel comfortable, we won't do the dive."
Looking back there's so many things I didn't think to ask him at the time that I should have: why didn't we fill in the medical forms or at least go through the basid theory before getting into the water? But hindsight is 20/20 so there you go - I do feel like an idiot for not stopping this situation sooner but I can tell you I'm very glad we didn't do the third dive!
Also the failure analysis was done the day we got back - the first thing I did was talk to a reputable instructor about the whole thing
Just to give a little update, we did our first theory class today with our new diving instructor - what a difference!
JR I have already emailed PADI, but if you have a phone number it would be really useful as I can't find one anywhere on their website.
PADI Americas
30151 Tomas
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688-2125 USA
Ph: 800 729 7234 (US and Canada)
Ph: +1 949 858 7234
Quote:
To answer your question...
Thank you this... I'm a pretty new "divemaster" and one of the things I'm trying to understand (so that I don't make the same mistakes)... is why and how things get to the point that they start "going bad"... Your explaination is very instructive...
It sounds like you made the best of the situation and I applaude your being willing to give it another shot after that less than sterling introduction...
I'm also from Colombia and I just wanted to comment that my very recent experience getting the certification was very different from the scary experience of tutifruti.
I did the theory and pool practices in Bogotá, and then I went to San Andres to get certified. In Bogotá, a school was recommended to me by a friend, and it turned out great! The instructor we had was very professional, but he also spent a lot of time giving us extra information from he's own experience (thank you Fabio!). I took the course with my girlfriend and we were both very happy because he answered every question we had, and when we finished the course we felt very confident about our knowledge and our skills.
In San Andres we went to the dive center located in the hotel, and it turned out great as well. Besides diving time, we spent a lot of time just talking to the instructors and getting more information about specific safety procedures and about the different diving sites around the island. Our first dive was something they call a fun dive, and we didn't practice any of the PADI skills (removing your mask, sharing air, etc). However, we descended and ascended using a line, we watched closely our ascend speed, and the instructor was never more than 2-3 meters away from us. She also checked us frequently, checked our gauges, and adjusted our buoyancy and our position. I think that was a pretty safe dive: we dove up to 50', in perfectly clear and hot water (30ºC), with no current at all (it just seemed a living pool).
Our other dives were also very good, they felt safe, and we enjoyed them a lot. The rest of the divers were also very nice. Some of them were very experienced and during surface time they also gave of hints and advices. I also noticed that in one of the dives, there was another instructor with an unexperienced diver that was also trying to get certified. However, the diver had problems with her ears and they called off the dive immediately.
As a final remark, on the last day we found out that the guy that drove the boat, and always stood on it waiting for us, was a certified rescue diver. Although that's something you don't want to learn the hard way, in retrospective it was good to have some knowledgeable on the boat in case of trouble.
Tutifruti, I'm sorry you had that rough first experience and I hope you're now enjoying diving!
Fellow SB members,
Due to ongoing legal procedures OP can and will not give names on this.
Please don't ask for them any more.
Info is known to me,and will stay here for as long as need be.
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