Been lurking for months, finally registered for this thread.
My wife was certified with a now defunct agency fifteen years ago, and finally convinced me to get certified this last summer. We both did the PADI OW course through Pan Aqua (she wanted to take the course to get refreshed and to stop all the "what agency is this?" questions with her old C card).
We did the pool dives in NYC and the OW dives at Jack's Diving Locker in Hawaii (2 weeks of mostly diving in August). We bought all the equipment through Pan Aqua, so we just rent tanks and weights. Both shops were very good about a computer malfunction my wife had on a checkout dive - we both have Oceanic Pro Plus IIs. Hers just stopped working half way through each checkout dive (hanging on each safety stop mine was counting down the 3 monutes as it should and hers was timing a surface interval). That night the two shops communicated and the next day my wife had a brand new comupter, all equipment has worked flawlessly since then.
Anyway, we're doing Pan Aqua's Bonnaire trip in January and getting AOW and Nitrox through them on that trip.
Been very happy with Pan Aqua all around, they are nice people and even with the NYC cost of living and sales tax issues their prices were competitive, even with the internet, and the incident with my wife's computer showed me that buying stuff through a place you have a relationship with is worth it.
BTW, Hawaii was incredible, all the dives were great, especially the manta ray night dive, and a dive where a sea turtle took a real interest, it seems, in my wife's blond hair. She got chased around a bit.
