| Product: |
Padi Open Water Diver |
| Date: |
10/06/05 (864 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Professional, Kind and Friendly, Best Price
Disadvantages: None
Last year I and my fiancé booked a PADI Open Water Diver Course with a diving centre in Maidstone (Blue Ocean Diving). On the phone they were quite pleasant and I went ahead and booked up at a cost of over £600 for the two of us. The pleasantness however stopped as soon as we had paid out our cash!
On the first day of our course we were told to attend their class rooms for our theory training. This turned out to be a full day of just hard (VERY HARD) sell! – We were captive in their class room in the worst ‘time share’ type nightmare you could imagine! We were told we should buy this or that or had to buy something else. We were the only two in the group that didn’t buy anything on the first day and when it became time to go to the pool to do the practical side of the course didn’t they let us know it! We were practically ignored. My fiancée had problems with her ears and had to descend very slowly, this seemed to aggravate the instructors to such an extent that she ended up in floods of tears. On the third day, before attending to do the Open Water dives at the local lake, we were told that unless we purchased at least a mask, snorkel and pair of flippers we would not be allowed to finish the course, despite the course supposedly being fully inclusive! In the end we simply gave up – needless to say we did not get a refund!
However, all was not lost…… Having related this story many times to various friends, and also having booked a honeymoon in the Maldives, I was recommended to give scuba another go particularly as we were going to the Maldives). We were recommended to try a small family run dive school (also in Maidstone Kent) – Maidstone Scuba School. What a difference! Kind, friendly, totally professional and with them EVERYTHING was not only included but the price was almost £100 cheaper each! There was no rush and no hard sell! We both completed our course which turned out to be fun instead of a slog. It just goes to show that it’s worth going by recommendation! Maidstone Scuba School were brilliant and we could not recommend them more highly!
Summary:
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Last comments:
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- 21/11/08 First of all the Open Water course was not in 2005 "more than £600" with Blue Ocean Diving.
There is no hard sell, I did my Open Water back in 2005 with them and can't imagine them being different with you.
The course doesn't promote itself as fully inclusive, the staff tell you (and always have) that you need to buy mask, fins and snorkel (not, necessarily from them either) This is because everyone's face is different and they want you to have a perfectly fitting mask... you wouldn't want to walk around in hire shoes all day would you?
Maidstone scuba is more expensive for the Open Water course at £298.50 whereas at Blue Ocean it's £275 but even cheaper if there's 2, 3, 4 of you i.e. a family booking.
Blue Ocean DO have classroom lessons but this is by no means a "timeshare" experience. They work through all the theory-aspects and safety concepts of diving with you before they take you down to the pool. You are told about a general range of kit which is available to all divers and the benefits of each, for a broader understanding to help you; but since kit (BCD/Regs/Wetsuit etc) is inclusive in all of their courses you are not encouraged to buy at this early stage in your diving hobby.
Maidstone Scuba, as far as I'm aware have no classroom at all. So theory work is completed on your own (but yet you're paying more for the course.. so surely you should get more?!?!)
I would be sincerely suprised if this review was not written by someone at Maidstone scuba. Infact, please feel free to contact Blue Ocean with your names and roughly when you did the course. All paperwork is kept. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to help you out gratis and apologise for any misunderstandings in your first Open Water experience.
Blue Ocean have over 2000 members of their dive club (FREE dive club.. not £57.95/year as per Maidstone scuba) are all those people wrong?? They've also just become top 3 PADI Dive Centres in the UK, moving up from 5 in the previous years.
At Blue Ocean they're always happy to help. People regulary pop in for a cup of tea and a chat (with no hard sell) Maidstone scuba seems to me just to be an online shop out to get it's bigger and better competitor. |
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- 11/06/05 Hi and a warm welcome to dooyoo. Some super info there in your first, well-written review. I hope you enjoy the dooyoo experience, as I do. Ray
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- 10/06/05 sounds an excellent course
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