LONG post about a dispute with my LDS

[Manogr]

I will agree with the majority of posters and blame only your LDS. You ask if they can follow your needs by offering a flexible program and the accepted! They charged you a price for the deal and they had to keep their word! They have to be flexible and accomodate you.

I am in the service sector and I am sure that this LDS will not stay in the business for a long time! If I analyse all the other issues you raised (about your equipment, lack of communication, the "no-no-no" attitude etc) I am sure that they should close - or be closed- NOW !!!

Anyway... take the 130...inform their agency (PADI etc etc)...and move all your future business to someone else...

Since my company is a real customer oriented one I can't stand example like the one you mention...

Take the money and run...(although you should take more it just not worth your time and effort)...

Manogr

 

[MikeFerrara]

We certify more people getting ready for honeymoons than any other group. They always wait to the last min. to start. They always and I mean this without exception require scheduling changes. We do the best we can to provide the service that they need. It doesn't always work. Last weekend out of a class of five I actually dove with two. Two didn't show up and never called. One of them did this for the second time. One had something else come up at the last min. My costs remain the same. The weekend cost me several hundred dollars. All these other people will still want to dive so I have to do it all again. Guess what, the two that didn't show and didn't call must pay more. I can reschedule and salvage the situation only if I have some warning. They just stuck me. This is the norm. For a class of six I will have to do the pool twice and classroom three times. Now..When we are rescheduling our lives and business every 20 min to try to keep several dozen people (and their schedules) happy I'll bet things get looking real unorganized. We even forget things or fail to get them done for some reason. I would need a staff of 20 to keep track of all this and look organized. We have a staff of two. I could use one person full time just to stay in phone contact with everyone to keep up with last minute changes. Our only crime here is taking on to much in an effort to make everyone happy. Your shop could have let you rent equipment elsewhere. They could have done a number of things better. When the tanks were not filled was it because they were used in the pool the night before. The people I have diving in open water this weekend can,t pick up equipment this Wednesday because I have a class in the pool on Thursday. They may not be able to pick up a tank on Friday morning because they won't be filled until Friday afternoon after being emptied Thursday night. If someone can't pick up their equipment when they agreed to (Late Friday) I will not be able to bring it for them or open the shop the day of the dives. The shop is one hour (one way) out of my way and there isn't room in the truck. They know from the beginning when the equipment is to be picked up. If they can't manage it we may or maynot have an alternative depending on how much warning we have. Of course we have some extra equipment and we do sometimes make special arrangments for people If we can. But...the more the plan changes the greater the chance it will not work.

 

[padiscubapro]

There are a few things that are not clear but it sounds as if you signed up for a semi-private class, the costs associated with such are much higher than a group class.. If time was allocated specifically for you, that instructor has to be paid since he/she probably put the time aside for you and didn't schedule anything else. Another thing to think about is does the LDS have a pool on premise or are they renting time from someone else.. In many case they have to pay regardless if a diver shows up or not.. I think the store should have been a bit more flexible about the gear issue but should not have given you the tank prior to certification. assuming a paltry $12.50 per hour(which I wouldn't teach for that rate)for the instructor, your $700 fee is closer to $40/hr , your missed class should have cost you at least $100 (I would have charged at least $250 since its now private instruction) plus any pool fees , and the cancelled dive another $100 (assuming the store isn't getting charged for the cancellation)(the final dives weren't scheduled so we can forget them)
$700+200=$900 less $100 for not scheduled dives is $800 seems you are $50 plus the $130 refund... If it was planned as a referral from the beginning I would say $400 for the classes plus the penalty of at least $100 = $500 which is only $70 less than you actually paid would have been reasonable..

I believe the store was right in cancelling the dives without picking up the equipment, before you got to the boat it should have been tried on prior to diving not at the dive site.

I would have allowed the renting of gear(if it was the same you trained on), if the other store was willing to give a tank to an uncertified diver (which I wouldn't). Another question to think about is the gear you trained in was it the same as what you purchased or similiar... thats a valid reason for not allowing rented gear if its substantially different than what you were trained on, a new diver has enough on his/her mind than to deal with different gear..
example learning on a jacket style bc and doing OW dives on a wing style, many wings will float you face down, not a pleasant surprise for a new diver

 

[large_diver]

Like others on this thread, it looks like there is a shared responsibility for this mess.......expectations on both sides were probably not aligned from the start, leading to problems....

I'm on your side for the most part -- crappy customer service is unacceptable to me in any form. In a case like this, the shop owner is shooting himself in the foot. New divers are a obviously a key potential source of revenue to him...and by treating you like this he has now ensured that he will never see another $0.01 from you.

That being said -- it sounds like you were pretty busy before the wedding.....probably not the best time to try and squeeze in the stress and information overlaod associated with BOW traiing...;-)

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by large_diver
by treating you like this he has now ensured that he will never see another $0.01 from you.

...this might be considered strategic...

 

[Crrink]

If they don't want my business, I'll be happy to not give them ANY of it.

WreckWriter:
I dont' think I made a bad deal in Hawaii - the referral cert was $400 for both of us - i.e. $200 a piece. Most of the sites I looked at on the PADI website were pretty competetively priced.
In any event, I don' t think the LDS necesarilly should compensate me for having to finish my certification at tourist prices - that's the way the cookie crumbled.
It would have been nice if they'd referred me to a dive shop that they had heard good things about - they didn't, and I did expect that they make some effort to do so.
As a result, I picked the one that was closest to the hotel I was staying at and got lucky as we enjoyed our teacher and class a great deal.
$200 isn't much more expensive than a referral would've cost in my home area.
I arrived at the $300 figure by roughly judging the price difference shops charge for full versus referral certs - usually just under 50% of the cost of a full cert., at least in my area.

The shop is small, and while I'm not positive, I don't think they have a fill station to fill their own tanks.
I hadn't even thought about the liability issue that many of you raised about sending their customers home with tanks that have air in them. I agree, it's not a good idea.

As far as not being able to commit myself 100% to the OW cert., forgive me, but I think some of you guys are a bit off base on this one. They told me it would take two weekends, and we did commit ourselves 100% for two weekends.
Yes, trying to get this done before the honeymoon made scheduling changes difficult to handle, and I did not expect the LDS to do anything out of the ordinary to handle my wife's inability to dive due to illness.
I feel like I'm about 10% responsible for not being able to dive on the weekend I was scheduled. You may disagree, and that's fine.
Unexpected events happen to everyone whether they're in the midst of getting married or not. We had 3 weekends blocked out during which we had no commitments - the rough part was that none of them were consecutive. With better luck we would've been able to complete the course without a problem.
With better planning and responsibility the LDS would've been able to at least get me certified with no problem.

The LDS owes me money because I paid for services that they did not render. They owe me more than $130 because I'm pretty sure that the costs of those services (boat, tanks, rentals,instructor) cost more than that. The LDS didn't have to pay for these things for me, but I paid them to provide them.
Hope that makes the situation a little clearer.

One final thing - Mr SubMariner, why on earth does wanting to buy grey fins make me a difficult customer? My wife and I bought the same fins - the most expensive pair in the shop. The shop stocked only blue. When they sent me home with the Scubapro catalog I thumbed through it, realized that my fins were available in a different color (which matched my mask, and would make telling my wife's Medium sized fins apart from my Large sized fins much easier), I called to find out if I could exchange them.
After having the LDS employee tell me that I was wrong for five minutes, I politely informed him that I was staring at the very fins in the catalog. He persisted in telling me I was wrong, and in exasperation grabbed a catalog for himself, said 'uh.....oh...I guess they are available in grey.'
....and this makes M E the difficult one....WTF?????

I guess none of Submariner's gear matches, unless he was lucky and the dive shop had all the colors/styles available for him

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by Crrink
If they don't want my business, I'll be happy to not give them ANY of it.

Hey Crrink,

Realistically, since you moved a hours drive away from this particular shop that would have probably been the case in any event...

And don't forget... you asked for our unbaised opinions... not our nodding affirmations...

 

[Crrink]

It might be me, but I'm not following your math.
To make things a bit clearer:

When I called to inquire about prices/scheduling, I was told that the dive shop coincidentally had another student with the same scheduling constraints that we had. Sounded like good luck, so I told them I'd think about signing up with them (wanted to call another place for comparison).
When I said that, they told me the course already had 4 people in it, and that they limit them to 6. I wasn't scared, so I told them I'd call back.
The next day I called back, gave them a credit card number over the phone (they required a $200 deposit to hold the spots), and made arrangements to come in and pick up the books.

The cost quoted to me was $350 per person. I was told that ALL expenses were included, that there would be NOTHING additional required.

We went to the shop, paid the balance of $500 for the classes, then proceeded to buy about $350 worth of equipment each - another $700 total.

The following week we arrived to begin our classroom/confined water diving. At that time we got all of our equipment and did fittings, etc.

It was then that we discovered that there were only 4 of us in the class. I wondered what happened to the other 2, but wasn't too worried about it. The LDS made no mention of prices needing to change, schedules no longer being flexible, etc.

We completed all classroom and confined water diving without a problem, and were quite satisfied - we were very happy with our instructor. However, one of the students didn't like being in the pool, and she subsequently dropped out without completing her second day of confined water diving.

I understand that having only 3 students may have put the shop in a difficult spot, but that is a risk that should be borne by them, not me. In any event, the proper time to try to change the terms of our classes would've been after the student dropped, not two weeks later, as happened.

So, to recap, we paid $350 per person for a full OW cert., for a total of $700 in certification fees.
We purchased our own mask/snorkel/fins/boots.
We rented everything else from the LDS (fees included in the cost of the class).

My wife was unable to make it on the scheduled day of ther OW dive. It is absolutely appropriate for us to bear the cost of rescheduling her.

I did not make it on the scheduled day of my OW dive because the LDS did not make my equipment available to me. It is appropriate for the LDS to bear the majority of the cost to reschedule me.

 

[Crrink]

There are only so many places to dive around here, planning trips with any group, near or far would be pretty simple.
Furthermore, I do spend a couple of days a month in the area of that LDS, and I'd gladly make the drive to support a shop that I was comfortable at and happy with, rather than driving the two minutes to the Sport Chalet that is half a mile from my house where some kid with a bone through his nose will tell me 'um...this bc thing is cool - it comes in purple!'

I do want your unbiased opinions, I'd just prefer them presented with a bit more civility, but hey, to each his own.

EDIT: eh, just reread some of your posts, looks like I'm being too sensitive. That Wreckwriter guy's comment that I'm a 'nightmare customer' bugged me more than it should've

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by Crrink
There are only so many places to dive around here

Where is here Chris?