Just finished my PADI Cert - you have GOT to be kidding me

[oly5050user]

Yeah and a $160,000 in spring hill tenessee will get you a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1500sq ft. condo. In NY that's easily a 1.5-$2,000,000 venture. If you go by that markup the certification class should be $1,000+ for that cost of living difference........

If the class included all the dives and the rental gear then he got a great deal here in NY. If that was JUST the instruction and he had to pay extra for the gear and dives then it was probably not the best deal to be had, but still not "Shocking" for NY.

Yeah, a parking spot in NYC for your car just sold for $250,000. in the city..

 

[oly5050user]

$550 included classtime, pooltime, book, dvd's, forms, binder, rental of gear (bc, regs, wetsuit), ow dives. I had to supply fins, boots, weights, belt, mask and snorkel. And if I didn't have that, it was available to rent.

Sounds very reasonable.You probably paid $250. for the ow course academics/confined water dives.Then purchased a crew pack for $60.You had the choice to do the ow training dives locally(for a price of $150.)or take a refferal form,which I do not charge for,but some facilities I understand do.
So we are up to $460.Rentals for the weekend should be $50. to $60. per day.
Total $550/$560.
Instructor probably only made total of $60.(per person) teaching you how to keep yourself alive over a period of 20-30 hours..He made $2. to $3.00 per hour to teach you.I hope you at least gave him a $50. tip if you were so pleased with them.

 

[jsado]

Sounds very reasonable.You probably paid $250. for the ow course academics/confined water dives.Then purchased a crew pack for $60.You had the choice to do the ow training dives locally(for a price of $150.)or take a refferal form,which I do not charge for,but some facilities I understand do.
So we are up to $460.Rentals for the weekend should be $50. to $60. per day.
Total $550/$560.
Instructor probably only made total of $60.(per person) teaching you how to keep yourself alive over a period of 20-30 hours..He made $2. to $3.00 per hour to teach you.I hope you at least gave him a $50. tip if you were so pleased with them.

I would have tipped if......instead of air pouring out of my BC, it was leaking money all over the place.

 

[PlayaCountryBoy]

For 550 USD, you could've come down here and done it with me in the Caribbean!:huh: With nice, new up to date equipment. I run a private diving service here in Mexico and we have the same type of low-grade operators here. They are usually Mexican owned and employ :shakehead less-than-highly-trained employees/instructors/guides. Better luck with your future courses!

 

[3-Ring Octopus]

Where was the air leaking from in the BC? An OPV? The inflator hose? The blladder? The AIR2? (shops rent BC's with AIR2's? That's out of the ordinary around here...) Just wondering...some of those are big concerns...some are just the use and abuse that students put gear through.

As to the quality of rental gear...it would be nice if it were all perfect. However, when you don't own something...well...you know how it gets treated. That's why you never buy used cars that used to be rentals....

As to the local quality of both gear and instruction, I think H20DOG nailed it...ours, I think, is the exception and not the rule. (By the way, H20...U of O or OSU? Both good programs, both great instructional crews. Oh...and do you care to head out for a dive sometime? ) As someone who assists around the shop, I can say our rental gear (while not all new...especially the pool gear...but I can understand that...it never sees open water...) is in solid, serviceable shape. When instructors or DM's see a problem, we try to notify the shop that that piece of gear needs servicing. That being said...sometimes students are overly-concerned about something that isn't a "real" problem.

And to the price of instruction...well...it sounds reasonable. Especially for that area (NY Metro..if it's near the city...). I hear people who snub their noses at our shop's $350 price tag for OW (all inclusive), and all I can do is shake my head. It's such a small price to pay to learn the skills that will save your life when doing something that humans simply weren't designed to do naturally. (And as my training progresses, it seems like such an insignificant amount to pay as compared to say...Tech 1...LOL).

Cheers,
Austin

 

[grazie42]

I´m paying half the cost of my OW-course to spend one day learning how to kite-surf. It includes all the gear and such but to me (not having actually taken the kite-surfing class) the OW-course seems far better value-for-money.

I´m a DM and the deal at my local LDS is that we get one "fun dive" for every teaching dive. I spent 6hrs helping with a "boatdive for beginners" last week. Total inwater-time was 40minutes where I got to enjoy "guiding" 2 newly certified divers. It was fun but I don´t see myself doing it all that often as I have a real job and only DM for the reward of helping new divers enjoy themselves more...

 

[tep]

Price does seem high, but I have only mine to compare it to .. $85 + course materials and I know from reading the board that is a very low price (was a 2 for 1 deal at LDS, came to $145 total for my C card .. all OW was shore dives)

And ... Rental gear does not have to be bad gear , none of the gear in my clases did anyone have a problem with, or not work
... From my dive shop ...

Scuba Equipment Rental:
Why rent your scuba gear from us?
• We rotate out the old gear and bring in new gear twice a year.


• We offer top-of-the line rental gear such as:

SeaQuest Pro QD Plus BCD with integrated weight
ScubaPro EverFlex wetsuits
ScubaPro Regulators
ScubaPro Split Fins
Uwatec Computers
Oceanic Computers

​

Yup, and I know who your dive shop is. They have great training at good prices, and their retail shop carries a lot of the financial burden, which helps subsidize the training op. Their classes tend to run larger, say 10+? I've seen their class groups at LJ Shores, and bought a bit of gear from them.

The new kid on the block LDS down the street has slightly higher prices for training, but doesn't have a major retail store for the cash flow. They replace their gear every 12 months (instead of 6 months), and use Atomics regs and Aeris computers on all the training gear. My class size was four (because I wanted to cert fresh with my son), and our open water dives were two students, one instructor and one commercial diver who was halfway through his open water instructor training.

My point isn't that one shop is better than the other, because both have advantages. It's that cash flow is needed to keep the doors open and the staff paid and that has to come from somewhere, and there's more than one business model that will work.

You either pay more for the training, or you pay more for the gear. With internet gear sales, I think we'll see more training at the true cost, and less "subsidized" by reatil operations.

And NONE of this is an excuse for providing poor training, bad rental gear, uncaring instructors, nervous students, and an overall bad experience.

 

[joji]

Maybe your parking fee during the duration of the course was incorporated in the course fee.
just joking.
Welcome aboard...........
happy diving ahead of you..........

 

[Bali Diver]

Sorry ! no excuse for faulty equipment as bad as you stated during your course or maybe being new to diving it was not as bad as you thought,from what you do say if so, total cowboys to me and thankfully there was not any accidents out in open water.

As for your comment regarding some passing course who should not be allowed near a class of water,that would tell me that it was so easy to pass the course and also tell me the training was not that good.

But having the choice in a class between 1.good equipment 2.They were nice people as you stated

I know which one i would choose.

HAPPY(SAFE) DIVING !

 

[DiverBizz]

I am not saying that this is the case but...I do know when I took my OW class a student continued to complain about the equipment and every chance he got he tried to get the shop to give him new equipment to use. The equipment my class was using was not bad and his was just as good if not better then the rest of us. I believe that some people have different standards/ideas of what the rental equipment should be like. Wouldn't it be nice if the classes could afford to issue new equipment each time? But let's live in the real world and know that rental equipment may not be what we want to keep.