The LDS of the future

[Brendon]

If your were referring to me with the $400 for instructions and $2000 for gear, If you have read any other post my instructor is just that instructor, he does not sell gear, I bought my gear on my own.

No, I was not referring to you.

 

[molina67]

I think I disagree. The full time instructor that does nothing but teach all year long and gets a premium for his time won't be in business for very long if he's not worth the money. I guess I don't draw the distinction between instruction and certification because of the way that I choose to spend money on training. I fly to wherever my instructor happens to be, spend the week working on things that I've expressed an interest in and if by the end of the week I've met his standards for performance, I get "certified". If not, we'll pick up where we left off in a few months when I come back for another week.

The cheap courses (no offense to Bob, because I don't think this actually applies to him) are generally a way that LDS lure people in to sell them equipment. Their goal has nothing to do with quality instruction - their goal is to sell equipment and to get the course over as quickly as possible so they can schedule another one and lure in the next group.

The only other way I can see courses being cheap is through instructors not charging what their time is worth. I don't have an opinion on that.

The instructor who does it for a living does it for money that is why they charge so much, where as the part timer does it for the love of the sport and wanting everyone else to enjoy it. I am as you see a newbie and that is my opinion you don't have to agree with me, and I have rented tanks and gone on dive with my buddy on two separate occasions and will be diving the Caymans next month with her, so I think my instructor taught me well. I wish I lived somewhere that I could dive every weekend, I would definitely be out there. For now I'll do my once a month dives and enjoy it to the best of my ability....

 

[mathauck0814]

So what determines an instructors worth in teach the required PADI instructions ?

Hey, if you're cool receiving "what PADI requires" then have at it

 

[Wookie]

WOW Everything is expensive in CA... Air fills here in Southeastern US the most will cost you $20.

21/25 isn't air, but I digress.

I'm going to throw this back at you another way. Lets say I'm looking for stickers. I happen across your website and it says I can get one color stickers in 3x5" for $50/1000. I'm very excited, so I send you my artwork in Adobe Illustrator and with Pantone color. You can then do this 2 ways.

You can tell me that the cut die fee (for my custom shape) will be an additional $75, my Pantone ink will be an additional $150, and a UV resistant ink will be an additional $45. You don't work in Adobe Illustrator, you work with CorelDraw version 14.0, and the artwork fee will be an additional $50. My $50 stickers will now be $370, and I'm miffed, because, you see, I feel you're ripping me off.

OR. You can tell me my stickers will be $350/1000 for 3x5" custom size UV resistant stickers. From that price (you will still have to have your die maker make a die), you can reduce the paint fee because you can talk me out of Pantone, we're already priced for UV resistant, and I happen to have licensed copies of both Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw and can provide the art in whichever format you choose. Now my $350 stickers are going to cost me $150. I feel good that you have saved me money, we've opened a dialogue and I would rather shop with someone I know than someone new, and you've made more than the cut price ad you would've used to get me in the door. We've both won and can feel good about the situation. Now, you have to figure out how to get me to call you in the first place, since your price is higher than the $50 sticker guy. You do that with customer service, by chatting on all of the sticker forums, and by telling everyone you will get their stickers out the door same day and include shipping (or whatever). You do it on customer service and web presence (if you are a web based business).

I compete (loosely) with 2 other liveaboards. We all offer a ride to the same place. We all offer good air and nitrox. We all have a bunk for you to sleep in, and we all feed you. 2 of us charge about the same price, one is a bit less. On the one that is a bit less, you pay extra for nitrox, soda, beer, extras. The other 2 of us include some or all of that. AWAP rides the lower priced boat because he doesn't drink beer or soda and the extra $100 isn't worth it to him. He has made that clear to me, and there are no hard feelings either way. I have made a good business by being "all inclusive". Some folks don't want to be "nickle-dimed" to death for every soda or beer they drink. It's an extra $20 at the end of the trip, but it still feels to some like they got ripped off. I still have to do something the other boat doesn't do. They spearfish, which I don't allow, so we have to emphasize that we dive in a marine sanctuary where spearing isn't allowed. We emphasize that our boat is cleaned with a "girl's touch", which a guy may not care about, but if girls are going to use the same crapper a guy has used, it needs to not have piss all over the seat. The dive shop (or dive boat) of the future needs to market so that you feel good about paying $1150 for an open water class, not so you feel ripped off because you paid $450 and had quarry fees and minimum gear purchase fees and book fees and fills and gear rentals and.....

Yes, there will always be the customer that doesn't care that he's using a PADI manual from 1986, because he doesn't know it's been revised 5 times with 2 of them being major revisions. He may get lucky and get an awesome instructor like Peter or Bob who don't really need the manual and use it as a training aid. More often, the student gets an open water card and decides they want to do some local diving at the Flower Gardens. They get to the boat woefully unprepared for the Boot-Camp like atmosphere of setting gear up, filling out releases, picking a bunk, and all of the stuff that has to be done before the boat leaves the dock which the Captain is pressuring his Divemasters to get done so they can cast off because the earlier they leave the slower they can go saving fuel=saving money= more profits=lower prices or more amenities for the consumer. Then they get seasick. Then they can't dive. Those folks are lost to diving because they had a terrible time. They tell all of their friends how they tried diving but it sucks, how they tried the Flower Gardens but it sucks, how they rode on the Spree but it sucks. What really happened is that they found a lousy instructor who didn't prepare them for the real diving world, and he sucked.

Good luck with that pontoon boat for $25 per head. I'm sure you are quite capable of running the boat, we see lots of folks here in the keys who thought that, too. How are your CPR/First Aid skills. Got your own O2 kit and AED? Do you have a radio operator's license (which isn't really required), or at least know how to operate the radio and EPIRB? Are you competent with the GPS so that you know when you arrive at the dive site? Do you know where the locations are that you can only go to if you have a permit, and how to get through the permit process? The fines can be quite extensive. Do you know how the prevailing currents run, what the moon phase is so you can anchor in the right place to hit the dive site? None of that information is critical unless the kaka hits the air mover, but that's what you pay $250 per day for. Who is going to sit on that pontoon boat while the rest of you are diving? Does he/she know how to start the motor to come back if the anchor slips, or you get washed away in the current? That's always a great story here, us captains just smile and shake our heads. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, what I'm telling you is that a $400 open water card and a military background don't necessarily qualify you to know what you don't know yet. That's what the dive shop of the future should have told you when you signed up for class. But you got a great deal on yours.....

 

[mathauck0814]

The big difference here is that ski, golf, and tennis instruction is designed for folks who want to improve their skils and decided that was the correct route for them. There is not certification involved and there are other means of improvement available if one would rather not buy instruction. In fact, it is possible to become a ski, golf, or tennis professional and never buy a lesson.

Very excellent point.

 

[Brendon]

I've never met anyone that wasn't a part-time instructor. Most of the instructors I know became instructors because they loved diving and wanted more from it than just getting in the water. So they became instructors to introduce others into the hobby they loved so much. I suspect there would be a lot less divers if all we had were full-time instructors.

The world is much larger then wake county... I agree in your area and many others they can be hard to find... Then again your 3hrs from the beach... Emerald isle area has several full-time instructors...

 

[Mike]

When I was looking for a LDS to get certified I saw tremendous price differences. Most of them hid the cost for certification. This shop charged for the books, separate charge for pool session, separate charge for open water. You must have your own equipment because this shop did not rent equipment, but will sell you equipment at a discounted price. You were responsible for your travel to the certification price as well as food and hotel. After all was said and done... we were looking at over 2 grand to get certified. We found a shop that would certify us for $400 each, and this included everything minus travel. When I say everything I mean everything. He had all the equipment for us to borrow for certification. He did not sell equipment he was just an instructor not a store. I thought that would be a better deal... If he did sell equipment I would have been more likely to buy it from him than from someone I didn't know. I put my life in his hands for certification, why wouldn't I trust his recommendations on equipment.

Pricing for a service usually has a lot to do with the level of service provided and the quality of the service provided.

People who are cheap will argue with you all day long how there is no difference between services offered. Young people often have never experienced the differences yet between a sh*tty experience and a truly marvelous one.

Some people simply will try to go through life pretending that businesses that charge high prices do so only to rip off consumers, instead of acknowledge what they are missing.

Some people want the best experience their money can buy and are willing to pay people who are the best what it takes to experience what they have to offer, others will pretend there is no difference, but they are fooling nobody but themselves.

I will never deny someone who has spent a large part of their life becoming an expert at what they do from earning a premium for sharing their expertese.

The most difficult part for me of being a consumer is trying to find the best. The world is full of mediocrity, filled with the Wal-marts of everything. True craftsmen, people who know their sh*t, people on top of their game, finding a real expert is very difficult, but when I find one, I bask in the experience and pay them what they are worth.

I can only hope the LDS of the future resembles Wal-mart and IKEA less and charges enough to allow people to enter the dive profession and support a family instead of having to enter it as a labor of love.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Unfortunately at 0-24 dives the odds of recognizing a good product are slim. You're shopping based on price. While I admit that if someone would have told me what I'd ultimately be investing in diving when I started - I probably wouldn't have started - I think it's an intriguing striation in the industry that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense to me.

If you want to take a private ski lesson - that starts at $80/hr. And the instructor in a lot of cases won't even be certified. If you want a private lesson from someone with real credentials you could pay up to $400/hr. More if you're interested in competitive skiing. Tennis and golf run very similar rates. Why would you expect scuba diving to be so much cheaper? It's not like you place your life (or more importantly, the lives of your loved ones) in the hands of the tennis coach or the golf pro...

Diving costs money.

Skimping on instruction is akin to diving the wrong gas just because it's too expensive. Cheap divers != safe divers in my experience. If $50/hr is too much to pay for quality instruction and you buy based on price, you're making an economic decision - not one based on quality. If the $4 air fill is "good enough" when the $40 21/25 is more appropriate you're not taking a "calculated risk" you're "cheap" and "unsafe" in my book.

Some thoughts ...

- You don't need someone with "real credentials" to teach an OW class ... if by that you mean an instructor who is world-renouned and can charge top dollar for their time. Those instructors typically don't teach at the recreational level ... or they teach the very wealthy who can afford the best of the best. A good recreational instructor needs to be competent in the skills they're teaching, needs adequate knowledge to be able to explain "why" what they are teaching is important, needs patience to work with students who may be struggling to adapt to this new environment, and needs adequate teaching ability to be able to transfer knowledge and evaluate student needs at an individual level.

- I made about the same money per hour as a ski instructor that I'm currently making as a scuba instructor.

- Paying a reasonable rate for a reasonable product isn't "skimping" ... I've paid upwards of $2000 for a scuba class ... but not at the recreational level. Nor would I ... nor would I expect anyone else to.

- A $4 air fill is certainly "good enough" when all you're doing is a recreational-level reef dive. I will gladly pay for that $40 trimix fill when the dive calls for it ... but I would not consider someone at the recreational level either "cheap" or "unsafe" because they chose not to dive trimix. Frankly, at their level it's a waste of money..

One must keep these thoughts in perspective ... if you're training cave or deep wreck divers, by all means stop thinking about cost. If all you want to do is go dive in a quarry, lake or reef somewhere, then use common sense ... find an instructor who meets the criteria I listed in the first bullet, and go have some fun. You don't need private instruction with Jarrod Jablonski in order to dive at the recreational level.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Hold on, starting to feel sick... I don't want to be rude to you Bob... What your doing promotes part-time instruction and almost certainly requires an instructor to have a second job... You're worth what you work for in most cases (monetary terms). That ain't saying much about you. Now I know different, what I see is your a nice guy. In terms of your effect on the value of what we do in the diving community, well you've made me sick to my stomach to say the least. You people, yes I said it "you people" are doing nothing except contributing to the problem that full time instructors have. Which is being underpaid as a whole... Your hobby shop tinkering, decimates the diving proffesion. What you do part time for fun, I do full time for a living. This is just as bad as the LDS price wars on the OW class. All the post I've read that you haven written are nothing more then hypocrisy at it's finest. I think your a nice guy Bob so don't get me wrong, I just do not agree with your business practice at all. I think you should go back and read some of your own posts over say the last few months. Maybe I'm wrong and someone hacked your account.. IDK...

You really should take something for that, Brendon.

Not that I particularly care what you think ... I'm quite happy with what I earn as a scuba instructor. I teach as much as I want to, train reasonably competent divers who have a higher than average tendency to continue diving, and who frequently end up becoming dive buddies. They value me ... I really don't much care whether you do or not.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob, im not going to edit my post, if you can't tell it frustrated me... To clarify and stick with the topic I will say this. "when dive shops are failing or barely treading water it's because the don't put any value on the training" example: training 400.00, gear 2000.00 where is the value- in the tools... What happens to the tools- they get left in the garage collecting dust... Put the value in the training and the tools will get used- it becomes a way of life not soon separated from the diver. Focus on providing a new way to experience life and gear sales will follow- fact.

Roughly four out of every five students I've ever taught are still diving. Quite a few of them dive with me, on a fairly regular basis.

Can you make the same claim?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)