Well duh John! Lol. Whoever that person is, let me repeat myself, such a level of delusion blows my mind!Do you understand that I am reporting what someone else said and not what I believe?
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
Well duh John! Lol. Whoever that person is, let me repeat myself, such a level of delusion blows my mind!Do you understand that I am reporting what someone else said and not what I believe?
I was afraid you were talking about me.Well duh John! Lol. Whoever that person is, let me repeat myself, such a level of delusion blows my mind!
Nope. I'm no psychiatrist, but that's an interesting personality disorder that person has.I was afraid you were talking about me.
Just based on my personal experience at holiday dive centres and what I hear at my BSAC club and other local clubs. May well be different in the USAInteresting claim... I'm curious about the source. My experience is not consistent with this claim.
When the dive shop that employed me switched from PADI to SSI (before the sale to Mares), I sat through a week-long workshop presentation given by the SSI owner, Doug McNeese. The primary focus of that workshop was the importance of instruction as means of selling gear. When students signed up for the class, the person signing them up was supposed to try to get them to buy gear before the class began. As the class progressed, the instructor was supposed to use persuasive techniques to get the students to buy all their gear before the certification dives began. He also stressed the importance of having all instructors be seen at all times in the same gear--their "instructor uniform." The shop was to identify specific models of each piece of equipment for that uniform. Instructors were to purchase them (at a discount) and use them any time they were with students, telling them that as instructors they wanted to use only the very best equipment, so they had personally chosen all the gear they wore. The real reason for the gear choices was that by focusing on those models for sales, the shop increased its profit margins considerably.Since then SSI has been bought by Mares and they have also stipulated that their instructors must be affiliated with a shop. The result of this is, in my observation, is that there is a heavy push to get open water students to by a full accompaniment of dive kit sooner than later and often the push is for them to buy Mares. The problem for this is that it is high pressure sales for equipment at a time when the prospective diver does not really know enough about what they want/need and to me that is a bit predatory. Other than that, there should be little difference between SSI and PADI with regards to the material covered in the classroom, pool, and open water environments.
When the shop at which I was teaching switched over to SSI, I met the regional rep along with the manager.There are accounts where SSI instructors were given direction to come up with vague reasons to drop students without refund who refused ti purchase gear from the sponsoring/supervising/associated shop.
I too have heard/read about the campaign/seminars that Doug McNeese gave directing shoos and instructors to use high pressure sales tactics to push for gear sales.
PADI on the other hand makes there money on the educational material they develop and publish...the material is required for the related course work and it goes in becomes ones reference library if they hang onto the material after the class it was purchase/use for. No predatory equipment sales.
-Z