Overall, very unprofessional, impatient instructor, horribly unresponsive communicator, and a gaslighter. Stay away at all costs.
Initially, I wanted to support a local small business as opposed to a big dive shop, and eventually wasted hours of time painfully communicating with him to finally get in hand 1 out of 2 certifications I paid for.
We did our dives in November after paying $850, when he gave me a general idea of 7:30a-230p the first day and 10a-230p the second day. However, he wouldn't text me where/when to meet until 11p the night before the first day and not until the morning OF the second day. Each day was very rushed and ended up being half the time he had proposed, despite us being his only 2 students those days.
During the training, he was very impatient. He gave us no reading materials beforehand, and we went straight to the beach for him to explain all the equipment and skills. English is my wife's second language, though she is fluent and did her PhD in the USA. Nonetheless, Manny was very rushed in explaining skills/equipment from the get-go, and when she would ask for clarification or for him to repeat more slowly the jargon-heavy SCUBA language, he would be very condescending and blame her for not being able to understand immediately.
On the first open water dive, she ended up inhaling salty ocean water at 40 feet deep during the mask clearing skill, which created the sensation that she was drowning. Of course, she freaked out and when we got to the surface, she was shaking and crying. The response from him and the boat captain were literally, "You're so dramatic."
He also picked up and played with a live conch, despite PADI's clear standards of protecting ocean wildlife.
In the end, I completed my 4 dives and my wife only 2. She's scarred from this experience but will still complete her certification elsewhere. From the beginning, he only had me fill out the medical clearance form, sign a waiver, and complete the book exam. When I asked if she would need to sign these forms, he said, "Later." It seems like he expected her to fail before we even started.
Without warning at the end of the 2nd day, Manny said he had to leave, and that we'd have to meet on a 3rd day to finish the final exam. We had plans already and couldn't meet in person, so he said I would have to go to a local dive shop in California to finish.
After I returned, I spent hours on the phone with multiple dive shops explaining this situation, and all said this was clearly not protocol. Manny would always reply, "It's simple - just drive to a dive shop, show up, say I'm here to take the test," which I actually did one time, and they of course refused, as he hadn't sent me the dive logs.
Finally, Manny agreed to schedule a time to do the test by FaceTime. For months, he would ghost my texts to schedule, until I finally told him I would submit a Venmo request refund. He then finally sent me iMessage photos of the exam from a book, and I sent back my answers that night. After another couple weeks of ghosted texts and me actually contacting Venmo, he finally processed my certification last night, saying "I did this two days ago, it's your fault you didn't check your junk mail," when clearly I got my certification email from PADI minutes after I told him about Venmo. He still has yet to send the dive logs...
He also said another thing that creeped out my wife.
"After I learned to dive, I had the choice to work for the military, oil rigs, or instead be able to watch beautiful tourists in bikinis all day, so the choice was obvious." - Manny, introducing his PADI history to me and my wife, who was standing there in her bikini.
Combine that with a Yelp reviewer who caught Manny looking through his cell phone, and you have an idea of who you're dealing with.
Overall, I'm very disappointed with this experience and do not think that Manny brings a good name to the PADI brand. read more