Hard to believe!!!!!!

[Scubadawg]

I was surfing through some of the "Your Favorite LDS" posts, when I stumbled across a LDS that is charging $564.00 for LEVEL 1 OPEN WATER CERTIFICATION this does not include the cost of the required equipment of (mask, snorkel, booties, fins, weights weight belt and "SSI DiveLog" (which is not included in the home study package)

Correct me if Iam wrong.

Lets say you go out and buy you required equipment. (estimated)
MASK...$50.00
SNORKEL...$15.00
FINS...$80.00
BOOTIES...$30.00
WEIGHTS AND WEIGHT BELT....$40.00
SSI DIVE LOG ...$30.00
Total for personal Gear=$245.00

OW course............... $564.00
Personal Gear...........$245.00

Call me crazy but i think $809.00 is a little much!


By the way if you have not purchased your own BC, Wetsuit and Reg setup by the the time you go to do your Open water dives. You can rent that for an additional $25.00 a weekend ,which will add another $75.00 if you did your six open water dives over three seperate weekends. for the grand total of...$884.00

OW and pers.gear.....$809.00
BC,REG,Wetsuit, x 3= $25.00
----------
$884.00


"I was under the assumption that you should wait till you get your C-Card and get some experience before you buy your own gear." (correct me i i am wrong on this )

Just to let y'all know i did mine for $212.00 plus about $180.00 for my personal gear (ie. mask, snorkel, fins, booties). and The SSI divelog came with the home study package ,The weights and weight belt was not part of the personal gear that was to be purchased by me but rather was included with the gear that my instuctor let us use to do our open water dives and pool sessions

So with a diifference of $492.00 I would like to know why they charge so much! I can see why now some people can't afford Scuba diving with prices like this.

P.S I havent included the TAX due to the fact of differnet sales tax % in individual states

Scubaddawg......

 

[scuba_freek2000]

thats rediculous, and not to mention the cost of an checkout dive in florida or whatever.just my 2 cents though.

 

[jetblast00]

I did my OW south 'o the boarder for $175 everything included!
The cheap cost at the time was one of the reasons I did it (read: the reason) (And fortunatly, I got a GREAT instructor too!)

However, I know that at some shops here that after all is said and done, students can drop in excess of 1K for OW.

 

[Rooster1]

That is absolutey rediculous.
you can get your course done here in Canada for $300+ tax=$345 dollars Canadian. That is about $220 U.S funds.
Snorkel mask and fins $175 tax included Canadian funds or about $110 U.S funds. To sum it up you can get certified here for $520 Canadian with regs, bc, tanks, provided by the dive shop whic works out to about $330 U.S Which I find a fair price considering you get a good mask, snorkel , and fins to keep. NOt that robbery deal that scubadawg was talking about.

 

[Scubadawg]

If you really want to know the culprit of these horrendous prices let me know...


I just dont want them coming after me for killing their bussiness.

in their website the want $100.00 or more for the FISH ID course....give me a break.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

I've charged more than that, but it was a private course to meet the demands of one executive. Typically, he would call on short notice at 11am to see if I could meet him for one of the confined water dives at 2pm. I'd estimate that the $700 I charged him (including materials and gear) netted me about $10 per hour - not exactly outrageous.

I guess it depends upon the time input that the instructor puts into the class. It's not just time in front of the student, but also the assorted logistics that make the course work. It's all work.

 

[JamesK]

My class cost me $175 for the book work and the pool dives. I had to purchase a wetsuit and booties. All other equipment was provided.

For the checkout dives it was $400. This was covered in one weekend down in Florida. The $400 covered everything I needed while diving except food. This included the hotel room for two nights, entry into the springs, 2 fun dives after certification, air, bc, weights, etc etc.

I did not think this was a bad price considering it was a 2 person class.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Today most dive shops still make their money on equipmant sales. Courses are loss-leaders or break-even affairs. As I'm sure most of you calling the price these folks want "ridiculous" know, those days are drawing to a close. After all, why buy your equipment from a knowledgeable staff at a local dive store when you can just pump them for information and then get it from the stockboy at Leisurepro without a company warranty for half price?
If the shop's going to stay in business, the customers have to pay the rent, the utilities, and a decent wage to the employees. This guy's just a little ahead of his time.
The alternative is, of course, no shop - buy all your gear online and get an independent instructor, rent yourself a pool, and have at it. Oh, and get an instructor who's independently wealthy or has some other way to make a living, 'cause if he has to depend on what y'all think is reasonable for his time he won't be able to buy groceries for himself, much less his family.
The scuba industry is in transition, and the end result will be thousand dollar open water classes. Or no scuba industry at all.
If you think I'm going overboard then quit your job and have at it. Make yourself rich in the scuba industry.
-------------------
True story. I have a private class going right now, a mother and son. They showed up with their bags of mail-order gear, which they used for pool session one. It was so ill fitting and uncomfortable that pool session was the last I've seen of that gear - they're now using their old snorkeling gear. Don't know what's become of the mail order stuff. They haven't asked to see any of our shop's high priced gear yet...
Rick

 

[MikeFerrara]

Rick,
Good post. If I would price a OW class with a worthwhile margin for a class of six it comes to over 525/person. The only costs I considered is pool, use of equipment, books and instructor salary. I did not amertise the following:
insurance
DM perks or pay
building
advertising
air
ongoing staff training.
lots of other buisiness costs

What it boils down to is that without lots of equipment sales OW class will come in at between 700 and 1000. We currently charge 275. That is less than break even if I work for free. If everyone buys mask snorkel and fins from us it helps pay the light bill. I only make money if part of the class keeps diving and buys all their equipment from me. These are facts. The online store are cheap because we are their free sales people. I have to teach a 30+ hour class (not including travel) to sell three pairs of fins. I have owned a dive shop for two years. Our second year our gross increased by 41%. The first year $27,000.00 more went out than came in. We work long hours and 7 days a week and have yet to take a pay check. I still have another job. And we get accused of overcharging! I guess we have our reasons for risking our life savings trying to eek out an existance this way but most of you will never have a clue. We are here for the others.

 

[CuriousMe]

I've read through all of your posts, and they make sense, but I am the only one who spent considerably less than this for my PADI OW class?

I went through a LDS, had a wonderful instructor, whose bottom line was....do we have the skills we need to dive safely and happily, we got NO pressure to buy equiptment. There were 5 of us in the class, and none of us had even our own mask, fins or snorkel...we rented them throughout the class as we did with the rest of the equiptment (this was included in the cost of the course). I have since bought one piece of my own equiptment (I already own a mask, fins and snorkel...just don't have them with me right now) from them, but I researched it not only with my instructor and the LDS folks, but also on the internet in general. I paid more for it from the LDS, but for me getting things shipped is complicated, and as long as I can afford it...I always try to support local merchants.

Honestly, if they had come on strong to pressure me to buy stuff right away....I would have found another situation, because I would never know if they were helping me stay as safe and comfortable as possible while diving, or whether they just needed to move that merchandise that week. Truthfully, I want to take some time and really figure out what gear is going to serve my needs best. And there's no way I could have justified spending the kind of money mentioned above, no matter how much I wanted to learn to dive.

My .02 (as a brand new diver)