Misunderstanding at the dive shop

[David_57]

Dive shops are like Harley dealers you feel raped when you leave the shop one of the reasons I gave up diving around Canada and only dive down south and rent the bottles, the dive shops with few exceptions are a rip off.

 

[boulderjohn]

It's easy to find a worst-case scenario and use it to rationalize why it's therefore justified to charge everyone for the cost of accommodating that one situation ... it's also not good business, not if you expect to stay in business.

I have inspected a fair number of tanks over the years. It's not like it's my regular job, but I am no novice. I am going to describe all but one of them now. Not one had any pitting I have had to measure. in every case, the threads were clean and well cut, with nothing I had to pay special attention to. There was nothing to note on the outsides of the tanks. Doing the vis was a snap. It took me no time at all.

The one exception was a steel tank that someone had had hydroed some months before and had not touched it since. It had not had a VIP after the hydro. I opened it up and the inside was caked with loose rust. That one needed work to make it serviceable, for which the customer was charged extra. It actually took me less time to check that one than the others, because I could not do anything to it until it was cleaned up.

Sp if the next tank I have to service takes a lot of extra time, I figure it will still average out OK with all the rest of them that were so easy. I don't think a customer should be charged on the assumption that it is going to be a major disaster when those disasters are relatively rare.

 

[archer1960]

There's a dive shop here in the Atlanta area that is geared only on making money.

I'm certified to O2 clean and visually inspect tanks.

I had my tanks hydroed. Brought them home, tumbled them, rinsed them, treated and rinsed and did an O2 cleaning on the valves.

Put my inspection sticker on the tanks and took them to this particular shop to be filled.

Because the tanks were empty they wanted to perform VIS on them and charge me for the inspections even though they had already been inspected.

the K

My LDS told me the very first time I took a tank in to be filled that if it was completely empty they would have to do a VIS on it. It wasn't, so they didn't, but I didn't have a problem with it since they told me up front, and I now know that for any future visits. It makes sense to me because if it's empty, they don't know what might have gotten into it since it was inspected.

 

[WarrenZ]

Thats why I own a transfill whip. I just put a couple hundred PSI in my freshly inspected tanks so that they arnt empty and noone has said anything to me.

 

[Angry Turtle]

.....
BTW, I would have guessed that having a tank oxygen cleaned would include the VIP, too. I recently had tanks hydroed, and I asked the hydro company to O2 clean them after they did. The tanks came back with a VIP, as I expected, at no cost beyond the hydro and O2 cleaning.

Not that it changes the OP's situation but a visual inspection is a required part of the hydro test.

I do agree that an O2 cleaning should include a visual inspection without additional charge.

 

[redacted]

I suspect that many shops have a price for a VIS and an add-on price for O2 cleaning. But when a customer orders an O2 cleaning and does not mention a VIS, even the intern tank monkey needs to be able to figure out what is going on.

The shop in question did right with the apology and refund. Now they just need to get real with their prices.