Northwest Dive Club

I've tried 4 different shops locally so far, and have found good and bad examples of customer service at each. People are just people wherever you go, IMO.

Agreed Capt...

His knee jerk response and somewhat snide response in the first place is what lost my business with them.

I had a similar experience at a different "unnamed shop" somewhere between Olympia and Canada! After a long break in diving, I took my trusty old AL 80's to get hydro and vis, it was explained I had to get a vis + due to a potential problem with the alloy of the tank, no problem. After a long day of diving I decided to visit another shop and get some fills while I was there. When the employee looked at my tanks, he snipped at me that he couldn't fill these tanks, they are time bombs, you can't even have these in here! whatever shop that serviced them is wrong. He followed me to the door as I was carrying them out and offered to sell me new steel tanks that won't blow up on my back!

I was upset and vowed not to return, I later did my own research and scrapped the tanks, I also have returned to that LDS and had similar negative experiences with employees but never the manager. Dive shops like anywhere else are prone to human interaction problems centered around attitude.

there are some places that wont even fill tanks that past a certain # of years old, regardless of hydro, etc. Much as I wouldnt like to have a fill refused, its their life on the line, not mine if they are filling it.

Jeff Pack wrote:there are some places that wont even fill tanks that past a certain # of years old, regardless of hydro, etc. Much as I wouldnt like to have a fill refused, its their life on the line, not mine if they are filling it.

After many ali 6351 explosions on supposedly hydroed, viped and eddy current tested tanks I can't blame them at all. I won't fill tanks of that material either. On the other hand I have 3aa steel tanks in my fleet that are almost as old as me, born dates on them are the early 1970s.

Norris wrote:So there is a shop that is close to me that I have been more and more, not liking...it just seems their tactics on newer divers are shady and their methods of trying to get more money is nothing short of desperation.
Mind you I already have my reasons for avoiding this place but here is my scenario.

These people know me and obviously I am not a mark. I needed a close fill so I decided to head up.
I have a set of double 100s that are less than half spent (just topping off). And I brought in a 120.

While carting them back I asked..."so considering the doubles are over half full and I am filling another tank too, will you be treating my doubles as a single (I even carried them to the fill station.l)?

Without even a thought the answer spilled out as though read from a book..."If I am filling doubles, I am charging for doubles"

I know the SCUBA shop business needs all the help they can get but this seems counter productive to word of mouth advertising.
Because of the snotty response I will not refer people there and cannot say these are good people that will work with you.

Moving forward I will continue to use lighthouse and don't mind driving from Lake Stevens to do so.

If you were a shop owner, would you have answered the same?

So, I am the one who filled your cylinders Norris. You did bring in a set of steel doubles and a HP120 on 03/19/2015. Your post is incorrect and misleading everyone on this forum. I only took two fills off your fill card and specifically informed you of that when you left. Your card was marked off in my computer system when you were leaving at 2:06pm, and your post was several minutes before that (2:04pm was it?). Which means that while you were waiting for your cylinders to be filled you were sitting in our classroom badmouthing our store on your cell phone before you were even charged for the fills.
This April will mark 10 years for me of working full time in the diving industry and never once have I had a customer bring in two single cylinders that are half empty and complain that they were paying for two fills. This is only a complaint that I receive from people diving doubles. In the end you only paid for two single air fills.
I suggest in the future that you do not publicly lie and badmouth a company on this forum, as it is just tacky.

CaptnJack wrote:

Jeff Pack wrote:there are some places that wont even fill tanks that past a certain # of years old, regardless of hydro, etc. Much as I wouldnt like to have a fill refused, its their life on the line, not mine if they are filling it.

After many ali 6351 explosions on supposedly hydroed, viped and eddy current tested tanks I can't blame them at all. I won't fill tanks of that material either. On the other hand I have 3aa steel tanks in my fleet that are almost as old as me, born dates on them are the early 1970s.

I'm going to get rid of my single 6351 tank so nobody has to worry about it. 17 explosions worldwide out of 25 million tanks built before 1990 is too many but it is not a lot. Driving to the scuba shop to work is still scarier than filling a 6351 tank.

Desert Diver wrote:

CaptnJack wrote:

Jeff Pack wrote:there are some places that wont even fill tanks that past a certain # of years old, regardless of hydro, etc. Much as I wouldnt like to have a fill refused, its their life on the line, not mine if they are filling it.

After many ali 6351 explosions on supposedly hydroed, viped and eddy current tested tanks I can't blame them at all. I won't fill tanks of that material either. On the other hand I have 3aa steel tanks in my fleet that are almost as old as me, born dates on them are the early 1970s.

I'm going to get rid of my single 6351 tank so nobody has to worry about it. 17 explosions worldwide out of 25 million tanks built before 1990 is too many but it is not a lot. Driving to the scuba shop to work is still scarier than filling a 6351 tank.

There are far more incidents than that now, including one in Olympia 2 yrs ago. I gave up mine a ~6 years ago after several trusted inspectors I know reported that they put valves into freshly hydroed, freshly visualled and freshly eddy current tested al6351 tanks and had them leak through neck cracks which spontaneously developed.

Regtechkidd wrote:

Norris wrote:So there is a shop that is close to me that I have been more and more, not liking...it just seems their tactics on newer divers are shady and their methods of trying to get more money is nothing short of desperation.
Mind you I already have my reasons for avoiding this place but here is my scenario.

These people know me and obviously I am not a mark. I needed a close fill so I decided to head up.
I have a set of double 100s that are less than half spent (just topping off). And I brought in a 120.

While carting them back I asked..."so considering the doubles are over half full and I am filling another tank too, will you be treating my doubles as a single (I even carried them to the fill station.l)?

Without even a thought the answer spilled out as though read from a book..."If I am filling doubles, I am charging for doubles"

I know the SCUBA shop business needs all the help they can get but this seems counter productive to word of mouth advertising.
Because of the snotty response I will not refer people there and cannot say these are good people that will work with you.

Moving forward I will continue to use lighthouse and don't mind driving from Lake Stevens to do so.

If you were a shop owner, would you have answered the same?

So, I am the one who filled your cylinders Norris. You did bring in a set of steel doubles and a HP120 on 03/19/2015. Your post is incorrect and misleading everyone on this forum. I only took two fills off your fill card and specifically informed you of that when you left. Your card was marked off in my computer system when you were leaving at 2:06pm, and your post was several minutes before that (2:04pm was it?). Which means that while you were waiting for your cylinders to be filled you were sitting in our classroom badmouthing our store on your cell phone before you were even charged for the fills.
This April will mark 10 years for me of working full time in the diving industry and never once have I had a customer bring in two single cylinders that are half empty and complain that they were paying for two fills. This is only a complaint that I receive from people diving doubles. In the end you only paid for two single air fills.
I suggest in the future that you do not publicly lie and badmouth a company on this forum, as it is just tacky.

I think the point was that they were more than 1/2 full so despite having 2 tanks there was less than 1 tank's worth of air to be filled. Regardless of that, see the last post on the previous page. How you approach customers is more important than the money.

You might consider changing to a $ per cf pricing structure, it would bring in customers who miss Sound Aquatics. That fill station/business moved to California before you arrived back here on the mainland.

CaptnJack wrote:

Desert Diver wrote:

CaptnJack wrote:

Jeff Pack wrote:there are some places that wont even fill tanks that past a certain # of years old, regardless of hydro, etc. Much as I wouldnt like to have a fill refused, its their life on the line, not mine if they are filling it.

After many ali 6351 explosions on supposedly hydroed, viped and eddy current tested tanks I can't blame them at all. I won't fill tanks of that material either. On the other hand I have 3aa steel tanks in my fleet that are almost as old as me, born dates on them are the early 1970s.

I'm going to get rid of my single 6351 tank so nobody has to worry about it. 17 explosions worldwide out of 25 million tanks built before 1990 is too many but it is not a lot. Driving to the scuba shop to work is still scarier than filling a 6351 tank.

There are far more incidents than that now, including one in Olympia 2 yrs ago. I gave up mine a ~6 years ago after several trusted inspectors I know reported that they put valves into freshly hydroed, freshly visualled and freshly eddy current tested al6351 tanks and had them leak through neck cracks which spontaneously developed.

Could you give me a reference to the one in Olympia 2 years ago?

You can Google this quite easily. No reference to 6351 but plenty to the explosion, including some with video.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/o ... /13335290/

Regtechkidd wrote:

Norris wrote:So there is a shop that is close to me that I have been more and more, not liking...it just seems their tactics on newer divers are shady and their methods of trying to get more money is nothing short of desperation.
Mind you I already have my reasons for avoiding this place but here is my scenario.

These people know me and obviously I am not a mark. I needed a close fill so I decided to head up.
I have a set of double 100s that are less than half spent (just topping off). And I brought in a 120.

While carting them back I asked..."so considering the doubles are over half full and I am filling another tank too, will you be treating my doubles as a single (I even carried them to the fill station.l)?

Without even a thought the answer spilled out as though read from a book..."If I am filling doubles, I am charging for doubles"

I know the SCUBA shop business needs all the help they can get but this seems counter productive to word of mouth advertising.
Because of the snotty response I will not refer people there and cannot say these are good people that will work with you.

Moving forward I will continue to use lighthouse and don't mind driving from Lake Stevens to do so.

If you were a shop owner, would you have answered the same?

So, I am the one who filled your cylinders Norris. You did bring in a set of steel doubles and a HP120 on 03/19/2015. Your post is incorrect and misleading everyone on this forum. I only took two fills off your fill card and specifically informed you of that when you left. Your card was marked off in my computer system when you were leaving at 2:06pm, and your post was several minutes before that (2:04pm was it?). Which means that while you were waiting for your cylinders to be filled you were sitting in our classroom badmouthing our store on your cell phone before you were even charged for the fills.
This April will mark 10 years for me of working full time in the diving industry and never once have I had a customer bring in two single cylinders that are half empty and complain that they were paying for two fills. This is only a complaint that I receive from people diving doubles. In the end you only paid for two single air fills.
I suggest in the future that you do not publicly lie and badmouth a company on this forum, as it is just tacky.

Nice response and I applaud your customer service. Read the entire thread before you come in and attempt to call me out as a liar. Pretty decent detective work too, and yes I posted right after the incident in question happened which would have put me in your shop while doing so.
In addition I never stated what shop I was talking about.

I also posted that you DID only charge me for the two "after the fact" however it was the snide remark you made at my request which concluded my decision to see how others felt, and to just not enter that store anymore.
So just to clarify I was not necessarily bad-mouthing a company when I asked for opinions It was YOU that I had a problem with.
Considering you did decide to only charge me for two fills I am thinking that your initial response to my reasonable request might have been somewhat emotion driven and uncalled for?
Unfortunate for you, your response kind of validates this thread.

No need to kick this horse as I have already decided that I have other options and I will elect to use them

Now lets get back to exploding tanks

AdrianSmith wrote:You can Google this quite easily. No reference to 6351 but plenty to the explosion, including some with video.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/o ... /13335290/

Wayne doesn't seem to be active here anymore, must have something to do with his upcoming nuptials. But he did say a few months after the fact that it was an Ali tank from a customer. Not one of his bank bottles as previously suspected.

I have heard the 15 out of millions "fact" for at least the last 8 years. So if nothing else it should be 16 of millions. Its probably much higher by now, not to mention the numbers of these tanks removed from service before they got to the catastrophic explosion point. They are worth more as scrap than as scuba tanks.

AdrianSmith wrote:You can Google this quite easily. No reference to 6351 but plenty to the explosion, including some with video.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/o ... /13335290/

I don't have a problem finding info about the Capital Divers explosion. I was looking for info on the 6351 tank that exploded in Olympia 2 years ago.

Desert Diver wrote:

AdrianSmith wrote:You can Google this quite easily. No reference to 6351 but plenty to the explosion, including some with video.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/o ... /13335290/

I don't have a problem finding info about the Capital Divers explosion. I was looking for info on the 6351 tank that exploded in Olympia 2 years ago.

You'd have to PM Wayne for more info than that. It was a customer's old alloy tank, 2013 was 2 yrs ago

Desert Diver wrote:

AdrianSmith wrote:You can Google this quite easily. No reference to 6351 but plenty to the explosion, including some with video.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/o ... /13335290/

I don't have a problem finding info about the Capital Divers explosion. I was looking for info on the 6351 tank that exploded in Olympia 2 years ago.

They are one in the same I believe.

Here is a quote from a post by Wayne on May 10, 2014 in response to my question about what failed.

"One of our storage bottles. It was an aluminium tank with steal windings. After testing it's believed there were fractures in some fatigued metal that had been occurring for about 10 years. It was really fortunate that I'd run the banks down to just under half pressure that afternoon. And no one else was in or around the building. The outside didn't fair any better than the inside.

One day when I get some time, I'll post a report with some better pix..."

I don't think that was your basic 6351 tank. I also don't believe it was a customers tank. Easy to blame all cylinder explosions on 6351 and create panic over something that really isn't a large risk in the whole picture of diving.

Desert Diver wrote:Here is a quote from a post by Wayne on May 10, 2014 in response to my question about what failed.

"One of our storage bottles. It was an aluminium tank with steal windings. After testing it's believed there were fractures in some fatigued metal that had been occurring for about 10 years. It was really fortunate that I'd run the banks down to just under half pressure that afternoon. And no one else was in or around the building. The outside didn't fair any better than the inside.

One day when I get some time, I'll post a report with some better pix..."

I don't think that was your basic 6351 tank. I also don't believe it was a customers tank. Easy to blame all cylinder explosions on 6351 and create panic over something that really isn't a large risk in the whole picture of diving.

There was another post (on facebook perhaps?) with different info.

You are welcome to continue using those tanks - they are legal afterall. For me, they are not worth the added costs at hydro time, I don't have an eddy current machine to check them at every visual, and I sometimes leave tanks full with mix in them for long periods (like a year and a half). I recycled all of mine 6 yrs ago for about $25 each.

Mine has been full almost continually since 1988 when I bought it. I don't get lots of diving in and never lived in a area with a compressor so until I got my compressor I made sure it was full when I came back from the coast. I made sure the valves and neck o-ring were airtight and always had it full. Since I got my compressor a few years ago it has not always been at full pressure but still usually.

Most of the real cost for a shop to fill a tank is not readily apparent (liability, testing, maintenance, administrative and overhead, depreciation etc) Shops sell fills at or below cost as a loss leader to keep people diving and buying classes and gear etc. Because of this, divers in general have a skewed perception of what the "should cost" of a fill really is.

I decided to pay a premium for my fills by buying a compressor and filling my own. It wasn't a decision based on cost, it was actually because of my experience with the store that you had a bad experience in. It could have been any store really, but the economics of dive shops are such that you can't always expect a low wage fill expert to actually be an expert...

For me that was the right decision because I need the peace of mind of knowing how my tank was filled more than I need the money I would save having a shop fill. But I will never complain about the price of a fill in a dive shop now that I know what really goes into it.

To your point Norris, I agree that from a customer satisfaction point of view, the shop dropped the ball. They make a business decision to price fills at a loss, and they should be consistent for you as a customer- if you're carrying the tanks in, hooking up one whip only, and topping off rather than a full fill, it only seems fair to charge you what they would charge for a single fill. But having been on the other side of the whip, so to speak, I can understand the frustration for a shop owner when customers want more for less when they're already getting it at a loss.