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Guest
While a little off the tread topic, I wonder what the economic price point would be on an scuba tank exchange vending similiar to propane exchanges at various hardware and lumber outlets would be?
Check out a tank #454 from bin #12 with your credit card, return tank #454 to bin 12. Don't return the same tank, you get billed for a tank replacement.
Sounds like a solution since the LDS's say they're subjected to a lot of liability and they don't make any money from fills anyway.
You could have say 5 operators serving all south Florida. Seems to be working ok for propane.
They say they don't make any money, yet this idea would just make it worse. Dive shops have a compressor so they can qualify as a "full service" dive shop and provide training and support their own gas needs. the problem is that they try to write off all their compressor related costs against the gas that they sell to customers who bring tanks in for a fill. If they sell 100 fills a month, that's still $500 to $800 more income than they would have had with the real cost delta being only the cost of power, maintenance, and filtration for those fills. The compressor, employee, and building were all going to be there anyway. If diver's with their own tanks started getting fills elsewhere, most shops would just be further in the red for their compressor costs.