Staff Doesn't Listen
This is for AzoresDiving Dive Center
I really debated about leaving a bad review, but my travel partner (a new diver) urged me to.
First, the positive:
Groups are small (4 divers per dive master).
Boat prep well organized.
Dive briefing thorough.
But, I'm so angry with myself for letting myself get talked out of what I knew I needed. One of the crew pulled me aside to question the amount of weights I knew I needed. I'm American, and I have my weight requirements in my dive log in pounds.
I was calculating kilos based on 2 kilos/pound. But he insisted there are 4 kilos/pound. (He is wrong.) Consequently, I was so underweighted, I could barely stay down. It was just a miserable, exhausting experience. I'm an experienced diver, and should know better than to allow someone to rattle my confidence. When I surfaced and told the DM I was underweighted, she said I had had air in my BCD....which I hadn't. Why was she contradicting me? Why this attitude of "we know better about you than you do"?
But I was not the only person to feel unheard. My travel companion is a new diver and wanted a refresher. It had been a year since she'd dived, and she'd never dived in cold water wearing a wetsuit and hood. When the shop wasn't able to schedule a refresher for her, they were pretty insistent she dive anyway saying that the DM would take "extra care" of her. (She refused to cave and went with another dive shop instead. I wish I had, too.)
And I overheard a conversation where one of the divers said she didn't want to dive the afternoon of the day before she was to fly out because she was prone to headaches. Another DM (correctly) advised her that she would be out of the water 24 hours before her flight -- the recommended rule. But she reiterated that she was prone to headaches and didn't want to chance it. But the DM kept insisting she'd be fine. Why the argument?
In the end, I cancelled my second dive. This feeling of not being heard and the staff's sense of "I know what's best for you" was really dispiriting. It wasn't just one person -- it seemed to be the ethos of the dive company.
