Fact: I have never been offered an OW checkout opportunity by either the shop or the instructor.
Fact: I have made multiple requests for checkout dives and have provided at least 10 possible weekends over four months.
Fact: The dive shop stated in this thread that they offered you dates that there are OW checkout opportunities.
Ergo one of you two is lying.
Fact: Their website states the dates they do checkout dives, ergo I'm inclined to side with them when it comes to whether an opportunity was offered.
Just because you offer 10 possible weekends over four months does NOT mean they can work with that schedule if their checkout dives are at the end of each month and your demands are for one of 10 weekends that don't fall on the end of the month. Why did you pay for a class not knowing WHEN they did checkout dives if you knew they would be required?
Fact: I paid the shop $260.
Fact: This fee did not include open water dive costs, but did include tuition and materials.
Which you received. Your thread title says the LDS failed to deliver the OW portion of PADI Rescue. You never paid for the OW portion of Padi Rescue, ergo the LDS did NOT fail to deliver anything.
Fact: The instructor no longer works with the shop.
Fact: The shop says I should arrange OW dives with the instructor.
Fact: The shop says they have met their obligation to me.
If you want to finish with the instructor and the instructor is no longer working for the dive shop, then yes you should arrange dives with the instructor.
The shop HAS met their obligations to you UNLESS they refuse to give you a referral form.
Speculation: The shop chose to use instruction staff for the more numerous and thus more lucrative open water students rather than the rescue students on the dates they had trips scheduled.
Do you have proof they're doing checkout dives on the trips they have scheduled? To me it sounds like they offer one time a month where they certify rescue students, they aren't required to offer checkout dives on ALL of their trips.
Speculation: The shop feels the economic pinch and wants to hang on to the $260 in hand rather than any possible future income from a satisfied customer.
Sometimes it's not worth it to "satisfy" a customer that might not be satisfied no matter what, you want a refund for services already rendered. According to the dive shop's post they DID offer you dates they do certification, you want them to refund you or set up a dive to meet YOUR schedule.
Speculation: You probably should have gotten the dates they do rescue OW checkouts before paying for the class, or arranged to get the referral form and OW checkouts done with another instructor/dive shop before paying for the class.
Opinion: The open water dives are part of the course; the fact that I hadn't paid for them yet didn't mean they weren't part of the course; I hadn't been given a date to pay for.
But they aren't part of the course, just like when you go to get your drivers license you might do drivers ed long before you do the driving classes, they aren't required to hand you a license just because you pass drivers ed.
Opinion: I should not have to be responsible for finding my own instructor for the OW portion should the original instructor be unavailable.
That's your opinion, I had to find an instructor when I couldn't make the dive shop's classes.
Opinion: A professionally run operation would have offered a sincere apology for their failure to be able to deliver a complete course and offered a full refund in cash or in store credit applied to an alternative course (i.e. SSI stress and rescue).
They did complete what you paid for, a refund would be in order if they had been contracted for the entire course and they failed to deliver.
I'm sorry, but if the dive shop is anything like the "professionally run" dive shops I've been to, the OW checkouts are clearly stated to be separate from the classroom/poolwork portion.
But really, you have very little room to call out their lack of professionalism when you run to forums to complain that they broke contract and labeling them outright. The thing about airing your dirty laundry is that you need to make sure you are actually in the right, not just that you think you're in the right. It's libelous to say they did not deliver on what you paid for when they DID deliver on what you paid for.
It also doesn't sound like they said tough luck, unless you have emails that show they didn't offer any sort of apology and took your plight indifferently the dive shop has posted their stance on this thread and it sounds far from them washing their hands of you without having tried.
