At the risk of duplicating other responses...I am very unhappy with the "new PADI". When I did my OW in 2012. I received a student pack which included the OW manual and RDP.
Now my GF did the OW she received nothing and I did the AOW and received nothing.
I had to fight with the dive centre afterwards and they eventually sent a code for AOW but it is not even printable or in .pdf format so I can't read it at home. My GF still has no material for refreshing or further study .
I feel there is too much cost cutting now and it's producing unsafe divers. Divers are completing courses having only completed half of the total possible sections and have no way of refreshing their knowledge or completing the other sections.
I was rushed through 5 review sections in 3 days including 2 dives a day and only learnt 2 sections fully. This is why I feel we should still get student packs including manuals with each course.
What are your thoughts ?
As described in the original post, it sounds like at the least PADI standards were not met, and quite possibly the quality/completion of the training was compromised, depending on how (if?) the academic requirements were met.
There are so many PADI options making the class options flexible that no doubt many shops pick just one or two options and don't ever mention/offer the others. Notes on that:
- ANY class offered via eLearning is also available in traditional book form.
- Owning your own course material is a standard, but does not include the video. It is not uncommon for shops to have students watch the videos as a group while owning their own books. That meets standards, as does "owning" the eLearning course.
- eLearning is ALWAYS available to the student to review after completing the course. I believe what is available is a digital version of the most recent book, but not the original slides, and perhaps not the original videos. Someone correct me on that if I am mistaken about the availability of the video content.
- There are crewpacks for both eLearning and for book versions of courses, priced accordingly as one would expect. The book crewpacks even have different stock numbers depending on whether or not the DVD is included. For OW courses, each of those variations are also available in 3 more different versions, including either a standard RDP slate, a digital eRDPml, or a Dive Computer simulator.