Our experience with this company has been quite disappointing. Initially, the first few meetings…read morewere pleasant. I got along well with Dan McIntyre and a few other employees in the Nashville shop. However, the issue arose when we purchased our gear from another shop.
We had thoroughly researched and were quite certain about our preferences. Dan agreed that the items we had in mind were good. He provided us with a list of his recommended options, and we conducted further research to ensure that they were indeed the best choices. During this process, we discovered that we could save a significant amount of money by ordering online.
As a VA resident, I reside in an area with a lower sales tax, and Scuba Pro offers a 6% military discount. Considering the substantial amount of gear we were ordering, this discount would amount to an impressive 11% savings. The savings were well over $1000.
I visited the Scuba Shack to personally speak with Dan and inquire about any potential discounts that would allow us to purchase our gear through their shop. I was transparent about the situation. Unfortunately, Dan informed me that there was no discount available. I expressed my disappointment. If the amount had been a few hundred dollars, we could have considered purchasing from their shop, but not for such a substantial amount.
Dan then proceeded to give me a rather peculiar explanation about why direct purchases from Scuba Pro were not possible. He claimed that they would be receiving stock from a privately owned shop in the US and then shipping it to us, essentially making Scuba Pro a third-party intermediary. This explanation left me feeling somewhat paranoid about making direct purchases from them.
At this point, Dan's demeanor shifted, which is understandable given the disappointment of losing a significant sale. Despite this, he acknowledged our position and expressed gratitude for our transparency.
It's worth noting that we had already invested in classes to obtain our open water certification and had paid for a trip to Florida the following weekend with this company to complete our certification.
So I sat in the parking lot of scuba shack and called every scuba shop listed, and one of those stores gave me a referral to another dive shop that carried scuba pro gear. I called that shop, explained that I was planning on ordering online, and my reasoning for doing so. At this point I was still unaware of the size BC I needed for myself. (I had asked Dan multiple times what size BC was needed and could not get a direct answer- If you ask him a direct question, you very rarely get a direct answer, he will walk around the question 100 different directions)
So I drove the distance to this shop to figure out what to order online, and while there they agreed to give a discount so I placed the order for all of our gear. Several hours after I arrived back home, Dan sent me an email offering to give me a discount on the gear. I replied to that email informing Dan that everything had been purchased from another shop. I explained that if he had offered the discount earlier, we would've absolutely went with his store, but it was too late as We had already bought everything.
At this point, Dan's demeanor and petty personality apparently kicked in- I am more than willing to explain every encounter, but by far the most important one was when we finished our enclosed pool session.
My partner and I have very colorful, matching sandcloud towels that we used on day 1, I washed and we reuse them again on day 2. After class finished sunday,(day 2) my partner took his scuba gear to the shower to rinse it off, carried the gear back out, grabbed his dry clothes, and went back into the bathroom to shower. My fiance re-entered the shower area to find the manager of the scuba shack (Dan) using his (my fiancé's) towel in between his (Dan) legs up his butt crack with his hand wrapped around the front part of his male anatomy drying and flossing his butt cheeks. The unprofessionalism of this act is disgusting. Dan was quite shocked to be discovered. Our personal feeling is that he would have done this disgusting act and hung the towel back up on its hook for my fiancé to use to dry his body. It simply seemed to be another petty act on top of all the others he had already done. The absolute unprofessionalism that we have experienced is alarming. We are supposed to trust this person to keep us alive in the open ocean as we finish our training. We have been completely transparent with all our interactions and this childish behavior is sad!
