Your thoughts on our PADI ow cert dives

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You would have a much better feel for this than I, of course, but it is possible that it was the individual instructor who was the problem more than the shop. Last week I took a group of divers for the weekend for their OW dives, and there was no one else from the shop involved. If I had for some reason decided to cut out some of the standards, no one in the shop ownership would have had any idea unless a student told them. I think you ought to make a very clear and well described complaint to the shop as well, being sure to include the fact that you sent the information to PADI as well.
 
Ouch. Bad experience all around. Aside from the standards issues, already discussed, the fat you were charged for rental gear you did not want or use was totally bogus. Bad location, big crowd, instructor and DM not in control, bad scene. Sometime I feel bad when the viz where we train gets down to 6 feet. No more. Also, we limit class size for open water to 8 even with certified assistants. More common in 6 per group doing the dives. Please note that your experience is NOT typical. I would not deal with that shop or those personnel again. As a PADI Pro, I thank the op for his report.
DivemasterDennis
 
You would have a much better feel for this than I, of course, but it is possible that it was the individual instructor who was the problem more than the shop. Last week I took a group of divers for the weekend for their OW dives, and there was no one else from the shop involved. If I had for some reason decided to cut out some of the standards, no one in the shop ownership would have had any idea unless a student told them. I think you ought to make a very clear and well described complaint to the shop as well, being sure to include the fact that you sent the information to PADI as well.

You make a good point there as well, honestly, I get the vibe from the dive shop here that its "show me the money" but i could be wrong (uh hum, until i had an ex wife i was never wrong:D
)
I know Florida is like dive heaven, However one must wonder why it also "by far" is the deadliest state to dive in. Is it simply the amount of divers here? or is it lack of training, Heck after my ow cert dive im half way to my cave diving crt. (where did i put that roll of kite string??)

---------- Post added May 2nd, 2012 at 06:58 PM ----------

I would be too. However, as they have the survey results (and presumably from the others in the class also) my point earlier was that they may not follow up with this diver. I'd be very surprised if they do not follow up with the instructor.

To the OP, it's now unclear to me what you actually SAID in your survey. It sounds like you did not complete it immediately following your course, but held on to it for a few weeks, then submitted it recently? is that right?

Yes that is correct, I sent it in about a week ago, maybe week and a half? And it really said pretty much exactly as my origional post reads. (hey we have our cards now :))
And as far as the others in the class, their survey, well hopefully they as well waited to get their cardsand then replied, because had i sent it in when i recieved it i would not have sent what i did. So i chose to wait til after my/our cards arrived. If any PADI big peeps read this then may i add that if you want an honest critqe of the class then send the survey out after you have sent the member their cards, or make it CLEAR in the survey that your answers will not effect your card coming.

Personally (by no means take this the wrong way, like im an expert or anything) but we have dive equipment, we have a boat and we have been ow diving for years without a single "bad dive" other than weather or viz on occasion. I have read, and read and we have practiced a lot in the pool (we really like diving but dont want to make the 6pm news) and for what we enjoy "ow" at max of 70' we really have no worries as far as that goes and if you want to go deeper and into caves or wrecks thats great, but if anyone is going to do any of the formentioned then they need to be trained. Not HALF trained, but trained. And any new divers coming into the realm of diving don't need to be trained the way we were "trained" the other month. ow is the absolute most basics there are.
 
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If any PADI big peeps read this then may i add that if you want an honest critqe of the class then send the survey out after you have sent the member their cards, or make it CLEAR in the survey that your answers will not effect your card coming.

I guess you're right in that they don't make that clear, but I can assure you that it is impossible for that to have any effect on your getting that card. Once you have the stuff signed by a PADI instructor, then you are certified. Nothing can change that, outside of outright fraud.
 
The thing is, they way they get your email address so they can send you the survey is by having your PIC completed. that means that by the time you get the survey you're official. It's a good suggestion that they mention that when they send you the survey. I'm just one voice, but I can certainly raise that point with my PADI contacts.
 
The thing is, they way they get your email address so they can send you the survey is by having your PIC completed. that means that by the time you get the survey you're official. It's a good suggestion that they mention that when they send you the survey. I'm just one voice, but I can certainly raise that point with my PADI contacts.

Thats good to know now :) but at the time we didn't know that they wouldn't say, hey wait a minute....

I just wanted to share our experience with you out there and see if we was way off base as to what should be expected. ( not that we didn't really know that because my best friend who went through the books and confined water with us is still in SC and did do his cert dives there with sean) before we done ours here and what he says he did and performed is NOTHING what we did here.
Even though it most likely wil make no difference at all, we did speak up to PADI and if something should happen down the road with one of their students they "trained" with the same program we had here, well, shame on them.
 
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I am not sure why you included the "didnt enclose a check" comment, as it does nothing but detracts from your credibility

Yes I maybe shouldn't have added that little sarcasm in there, But there again I really don't see why we had to pay the rental fee for equipment we didn't want to nor did use, including the 10 dollar each compass rental we paid to simply go over it briefly while we was sitting by the cars (never looked at it in the water)
Here is the site, would you do your ow certs here?Google Image Result for http://www.scubabluegrotto.com/images/bluegrottouwmap.jpg
during the ow dives you are supposed to do a surface swim with the compass and an uw swim with it .Again if you did not that is another standard violation by the instructor.
 
during the ow dives you are supposed to do a surface swim with the compass and an uw swim with it .Again if you did not that is another standard violation by the instructor.

Really? I've done two OW courses and neither of them even remotely touched upon compass use.
 
Really? I've done two OW courses and neither of them even remotely touched upon compass use.

Way off topic, but I'd say the standards violations, appalling organisation and rip-off mentality of the dive shop have been pretty well covered...

You did TWO Open Water courses?

Were you THAT bad? :D

As already stated, PADI OW standards require that students complete a surface swim with a compass, and also follow a compass course for a prescribed distance and then return on the reciprocal heading. Ideally, they even arrive back where they started...

Mind you, it would be hard to see whether your students are using compasses properly if they're in a cave with no lights, so you can see why the instructor in question might skip the skill. </sarcasm>

To the OP, from my own experience PADI do investigate stuff like this. My partner got a mild telling-off from PADI Asia Pacific for not reporting something she'd only heard second-hand about another instructor.
 
I'm really sorry to hear that your cert dives were conducted so poorly.

It doesn't have to be that way. We had our cert dives at Devil's Den and Blue Grotto. But we were at Devil's Den on a Friday, and we were practically the only people there. We wrote the visibility down as 50ft. (I will, however, agree that the walk down there is a little crazy with all of your gear on. Going back up when you're tired is even more difficult.)

We dove Blue Grotto on a Saturday, and it was crowded. (That's quite a walk down and back up too.) But we never went into the cavern area; the farthest we went was the deep platform and a little bit off of there for the CESA. We put the visibility there at 25ft. And we checked off every single one of the skills. Our instructor told us not to go into the overhead area, and not to go to Peace Rock or the air bell because they're under the ledge. (In fact, he specifically said that was to avoid violating PADI standards.) And the lights were on.

It sounds like you had a bad combination of overcrowding, terrible visibility, and a bad/overwhelmed instructor.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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