I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it... I've, personally never heard of an LDS or independent instructor flaking on a class then charging them to reschedule. I'm simply saying that the odds of being processed through a cookie-cutter system with little regard for quality education is likely proportional to the size of the establishment and inversely proportional to the focus of the business. I mean, the same 20 year old who sizes shoes could feasibly give advice on regulators on his way to organize the case of sun glasses.
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BarrelRoll: If I came off sounding defensive, that wasn't my intention. It just seems to me that you are making
baseless generalizations about the Sport Chalet scuba dept. I have no idea what the special circumstances were for
Grover48. What happened to him does sound unfortunate. Something that I don't quite understand is that his payment for the class was refunded...yet he wanted to be compensated for "time and trouble." Not sure what he was looking for. A discount on gear or subsequent classes, perhaps? If the classroom and confined water portions of the class had been completed, then maybe he could have received a "referral" so that the OW class could have been completed elsewhere.
I would say that, on the whole, the employees in the scuba dept. at my local SC are just as knowledgeable about dive gear as the ones that work at a scuba-specific shop.
Is that definitive? No, but it's far more likely to happen at a place like Sports Chalet than an LDS. If it's a referral to an instructor who happens to work at the place, that's one thing, but just to walk in and grab an OW book of the shelf and sign up for a class seems like a crap shoot, and a new diver likely wouldn't know what to ask a potential instructor.
I would never recommend that a potential student walk into any scuba shop and sign up for a class without first interviewing the instructor (or getting a referral). Please read my posts in this thread.
You live in La Jolla, would you recommend someone go to Sports Chalet over a local dive shop like OEX? (If that's a bad example I apologize, I only dove with Paris once, he seemed an alright guy)
Yes, I'd recommend that someone go to my local SC versus OEX. OEX isn't run very professionally. OEX...good grief! There are times during the summer when I think that it's a kayak shop with a diving problem. The last few times I dropped off my tanks to get filled there, the tanks weren't filled for one reason or another. I've heard every excuse in the book: "Our banks weren't charged, so we couldn't fill your HP tank," "We couldn't find the DIN adapter," and "Your VIP expired" (even though it hadn't). I rarely get a good HP fill there. It's the one scuba shop in my area that I have to actually watch the employee connect the tank to the whip before I leave the shop -- they've forgotten so many times to fill my tank. It's a shame because the shop is the most convenient location to get air fills for a La Jolla Shores diver. To be fair, I'm not familiar with any of the OEX scuba instructors, per se. One or more might be OK.
There might be some great instructors at Sports Chalet, but for a new diver who has no way to gauge their quality why wouldn't you suggest they get a local referral rather than a walk-in and hope for the best?
Once again, I am an advocate of checking out the instructor before signing up for the class. I also don't know what the scuba shop landscape is like for the OP in his local area. For all I know, there might be very few shops to choose from.