I figured that was going to come up from you Jorgen. From what I have heard, there was an agreement with the US distributor and the dealers that they would be able to sell parts to the end users because that policy mentioned above is exactly what drove us away from the brand for the last 15 years. We couldn't buy parts, the authorized dealers were few and far between, the second stages especially are far simpler and easier to service and tune than the "common" style of second stage. Combine that with the consumer protection laws in Europe that forbid you from doing just that in a few countries, and it is a recipe to cause you to lose what little market share you currently have. I stopped diving my jetstreams for quite a few years because a replacement needle valve was almost $100 if you could find one, valve inserts were $50, and IF I could find a qualified Poseidon tech, I'd have to ship them half way across the country and wait up to a month before they MIGHT have parts in, it was complete and utter horsesh!t. Now you have two of the largest shops in the country actively promoting your brand back to the technical divers that you need to have on board supporting you, the prices and availability of parts are back to a reasonable level in line with Apeks, Scubapro, etc. and your buy in prices are around the same. Look at the lost marketshare for Apeks in the last ten years when ODS started copying the ATX50/DST designs and the manufacturers offered rebuild kits to the public, their market share started flying and Apeks lost a ton of market share in the US and we were buying parts kits from the Netherlands and Germany.
If your policy was true, I would have no choice but to go back to the ODS brand regulators because not having parts availability is completely unacceptable for the types of diving I do. I need to be able to rebuild a regulator on a boat or at the cave site if something minor goes wrong, I can't afford to lose those dives. The last one was a simple valve insert started getting stiff and was causing a minor leak. Popped the hose off, popped the guts out, undid one screw, removed the insert, put the new one in, and one whoosh of air and I was back in business. Took literally 2 minutes and you're saying that I should have called that dive, shipped my regulators to a repair tech *closest one to me is over 4 hours drive*, and waited at minimum 2 weeks to get it back? No way mate. I understand that you guys don't want people that don't know what they're doing mucking up the regulators and sending them back for warranty service, but you don't offer a real "lifetime warranty" so after the first 24months you're free. I'm fighting a pair of bodies right now that I just purchased where all 8 screws sheared off inside the body because the previous owner didn't back the screws out regularly as he was doing ocean dives. I'm not going to send them back to you and ask for you to fix it, I'll suck it up and be grateful I got them cheap because I can get used second stages for next to nothing compared to the price of buying the replacement bodies. Your regulators are so cheap on the used market right now because you guys screwed the pooch on distribution for the last 20 years in the US and drove all but a very small handful of loyal technical diving customers away, 18 months ago you got another chance, don't screw it up again.