Hello guy's and gal's. I have read everything I could on the LDS verses online purchasing here at ScubaBoard and I learned quite a bit about the many pros and cons of each place. Today I bought my first ever regulator which is a Apeks ATX50 at the LDS. It was stickered at $500 and I asked for and recieved the 10% discount. I also took the advice of many of you and discussed the possability of other things he could do for me to sweeten the deal. He was more then willing to do so and I will get my advanced certification class for free and a break on my tanks and possibly more. The moral of the story is, good dive shops will work with you and want your business and they are constrained by price limits imposed on them. So I paid $475 for a good regulator with a advanced cert. class and probably more. Since the best ATX50 price I found was $394 at LP which is not a licenced dealer I think I did pretty good. You never know what you can get until you ask. Now I just need an octo and a console of some sort. Happy diving and purchasing all. Bye.