Biggest thing killing dive shops?

[HantsDiver]

Then you aren't doing a good job at it or not doing it all properly.




It shows for sure.

So.. Out of interest. For total transparency do you make any money or charge for servicing regulators?

If so please state which brands and I'll post manuals if I can so people can see what's really involved.

 

[cburgert]

I'm not a dive shop owner, but my guess would be online shopping for the most part. Although there's more than one reason.

 

[scubadada]

I concur. Dive gear repair isn't rocket science but it is complex enough, and the variety is large enough, to make it hard for part-time people to develop the expertise and efficiency you really want. Dedicated repair shops are more likely to have the spares needed in inventory, making quick turnarounds more likely. Some manufacturers will service their gear as well. Atomic will service their regulators and verify operation in their ANSTI breathing machine.

ANSTI testing facilities are not common, where and when will Atomic perform these services? What kind of testing do they do? Do they check performance against expected values for the model or test against other standards such as the European conformance standard EN250 or the US Navy Class A test? I find it difficult to believe that my local Atomic repair facility has access to this testing.

 

[Akimbo]

ANSTI testing facilities are not common, where and when will Atomic perform these services?

I was talking to Atomic customer service about another matter and asked while he was looking something up. This was before Huish Outdoors acquired them but I suspect they still do it. Oceanic also did factory service on a regulator for me but didn't routinely run them through their breathing machine. As I understand it, all the big manufacturers that actually do their own regulator R&D have an ANSTI machine. See: Atomic Aquatics Manufacturing - Putting It All Together

 

[boulderjohn]

They told me that considering the cost of the servicing with the extra kit, it made more sense for me to buy new regulators of comparable quality.

People that complain about the cost of servicing a regulator have never seen it done. I don't do my own regularly, but I do it sometimes, and it takes a surprisingly long time to do it well. I think typical servicing fees are a bargain. People are supposed to get most regulators serviced every year, but for most people that is not really necessary. I foresee a time when people who are having trouble getting their gear serviced at reasonable prices locally will simply go without servicing for a few years and then buy new regulators. Doing that is in many cases already cheaper than annual servicing.

Years ago being TV repairman was good and steady employment. Now when a TV is no longer functioning, we can order a new one from Amazon much more easily than getting it fixed. I bet it gets to be that way with regulators. too.

Check this out--A guy jsut wrote about buying a brand new regulator for less than the cost of servicing an old one.

I bought a MK10 g250 for $100 from a divemaster i knew in Cozumel, years ago, and as best i can recall, I never once used it. I just put it away as a spare, and then brought it back stateside with me about 10+ years ago.
Flash forward to now, and I'm gradually assembling some dive gear again, centered around this old MK10.
Well, I dug the thing out this morning, and it is pretty nasty (not unrepairable junk, but definitely needs the full treatment, new HP hose, at least, etc.)
I have a Scubrapro dealer/tech here in town, and he quoted me about $130 to bring it up to speed (about the same as a reputable place down in Florida did).
Meanwhile, last night I'd spotted a brand new ad on ebay, for a very clean MK10 d350, with full guages and BC hose, plus a bevy of other stuff, for $130 + $68 shipping.
The guy was over in Alabama about 90 minutes from me, so I messaged him an offer of $100 FTF, for just the MK10reg, the big zippered dive bag, and the large Cressi open heel fins......and he went for it !!
I just got back from the meet (super-cool guy that even met me halfway!!), and the regulator looks brand new ! It's got Oceanic depth and pressure guages, in the boot.
I know I still have to run this old MK10 through the whirler someday, but for the moment, I saved money by just buying a knew reg, and got some solid fins and dive bag, on top!
Won some, lose some !

 

[scubadada]

I was talking to Atomic customer service about another matter and asked while he was looking something up. This was before Huish Outdoors acquired them but I suspect they still do it. Oceanic also did factory service on a regulator for me but didn't routinely run them through their breathing machine. As I understand it, all the big manufacturers that actually do their own regulator R&D have an ANSTI machine. See: Atomic Aquatics Manufacturing - Putting It All Together

Hi @Akimbo

This very well might be a manufacturing standard, the European conformance standard EN250, not a post servicing testing standard. I would imagine ANSTI testing is not performed after routine service.

 

[scubadada]

@ boulderjohn,

No, this was the cost of servicing a MK10/G250 vs. buying a "clean" MK10/D350, I'll take the former, the latter will also need service. Can I save some money???

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Rather than asking what shop owners “think” is killing their business, maybe the better question is to ask the scuba diving consumer why they’re not going into their LDS to spend their money. I think the industry is thinking about the “problem” from the wrong angle. Hence, the problem persists.

Well, I can tell you why I stopped going into my LDS for a time many years ago.

I first went into this shop to buy a wetsuit only for kayak fishing.
Then I kept returning to get more stuff to ab dive. After many return trips I became interested in scuba diving. At this point I'd been going in there for a couple years already and was building a relationship with them, I knew everyone by name, and I assumed I was kind of getting in to the loop of the customer circle.

Then I took OW and loved it. After that I signed up for AOW since that was what they said was the natural progression in diving. I went to rent some gear for the class and they said everything they had was rented already so it was time for me to buy gear if I wanted to do this class at this time. OK, so I bought a load of gear at full price (didn't know any better) and they really upsold me on everything.
I took the class with all my newest gear plus all the extra little toys they sold me that I absolutely had to have like ankle weights, a tank banger, and some other rotating display gizmo stuff.
Not even a week later the owner puts almost everything I bought (except for the regs) on sale. That kind of pissed me off but the sales clerk (owner was somewhat absentee) tried to assure me that it was a spur of the moment sale, (yeah right).
About the same time I started seeing catalogs of what all this stuff was available for through mail order (LeisurePro at that time). I really got the feeling that I'd been fleeced and they really got me. I spent thousands there.
I went in there a few more times over the years after that but it always seemed akward and unfriendly. The staff was getting crustier and a lot of people I dived with stopped going in there.

One time I had a very bad experience there with trying to get Scubapro to replace a broken face plate on my reg, since they were an "authorized" dealer.
I got a total run around and ended up with nothing, no new face plate, but had to pay the shop money for their "work" in phone calls to SP trying to find a solution to my problem before they would give me my reg back.
I ended up posting something up on a dive message board and had one coming in the mail that day from a fellow diver somewhere on the east coast.

I started shopping at another place that just opened and they seemed better. Then they got this hot shot little miss sales lady that I found to be completely obnoxious. They would hassle me every time I needed things like tank valve O-rings or burst discs telling me their insurance didn't like when they sold parts like that to non proffessionals. So they turned me off and that's when I decided to break free from dive shops.
For a while I had access to a private compressor so I was local dive shop free for several years.

Since that time, the original owner of my first shop sold out, and now I heard that his other shop he had in another city just closed. His right hand man from the local shop here bought it a few years ago and is now trying to resesitate it, it's still somewhat on life support but he seems to have stabilized it. I've since returned to this shop and slowly began to support him since I always thought he was a nice guy. He always seemed to be the one who helped me the most in the early years.
I always still get nervous buying air cards there though because I don't want to go one day and find the place shut down.

So yeah, you might say I could be part of the problem too, but I felt I was mistreated on several occasions so to me it was justified. All that was a long time ago though, and I'm tired of holding a grudge.
Believe it or not, I'm kind of worried about this shop, I'd like to see him stick around. Since they lost abalone diving it's going to be a challenge for all the shops around here. If they go out it will be a much longer drive for me to get air fills.
I was reading a few posts about the club in Alaska and the success they had with pooling divers together into a big club to share expenses for an air compressor. The club structure might just be the thing that saves the sport and participation. At that point if the LDS disappears then so be it. Maybe we'll see the old owner of the LDS at a club meeting!

 

[Sugaree]

I have a tale of two LDSs. When I first started diving, I was lucky enough to live one block from what is still my favorite shop, even though they're no longer local to me. They had/have fantastic instructors (so much so that if/when my kid decides to dive that I'll seriously consider driving the 6 hours every other weekend so that he can take his classes there). They have a great selection of gear, a great service department, and have never tried to hard sell me on anything. As we were located just a few miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, most organized trips were daytrips to the gulf or to the springs of NW Florida. Between that and the fact that they have a pretty active club who get together once a month or so to have cookouts at the shop, there's a good community of divers associated with that shop. It's no wonder they've been around for forty years. I hate that I was young and broke when I lived there.

Where I live now, I don't really have a truly local shop. There's a quarry about 20 minutes from my house. There's no shop on premises, but I can get tank rentals and air fills on site though. There are two very small shops maybe 45 minutes from here. Neither carries the gear I'm looking for and one only takes cash. Coincidentally, I've managed to end up with almost exclusively Huish brands though that was never intentional but it makes life easier when one shop carries them all. The closest Huish dealers are an hour and a half away. I do have a favorite, and I have ordered stuff from them to only have to drive there and back twice to get it. Everyone I've dealt with has been great. They have a quarry too if I get bored with my local one. But it's a hassle, so I'll order online for things that don't have to be tried on or serviced. In the same city is a branch of a chain that has a fairly substantial web presence that I will absolutely not use because they have lied to me and tried very hard to push a BP/W setup even after being told that I'm not interested. So, I don't have nearly the sense of community here, but I suspect that's my geography rather than the shop, especially the shop with the quarry. They seem to do a lot of events which I'm sure helps their business.

 

[Akimbo]

This very well might be a manufacturing standard,...

Definitely a company standard for Atomic only AFAIK. They advertise that they test every new and factory serviced regulator on the ANSTI breathing machine, unless things have changed since the last time I looked.