Does this sum up the diving trade?

Special ordering is a time consuming, worthless effort, not worth a sweat and makes no difference in keeping the customer loyal to your store, that's what the dozen or so salesmen I fired over the years tought when I was sale manager, I'm just glad they are using their "smart" thinking in some competitor store now

Sound like a case of lazy salesmenship. sort of the I know its obsolete but its way better than ...

Now if somebody offered me a hot pink zircon encrusted 2nd stage to go with my fireglow tinted glass mask and my electric yellow wet suit, with a tatch of hair grafted in the chest area's open zipper (a la Nikonos pamphlet front page for those ole geezer out there) i'd wip by trusty plastic and red line the damm thing.

There is a difference between warm and cold water diving areas and stores. Hoseless computers do well in warm water, but sometimes do act up in cold.

There are tech-oriented stores and some "recreational" stores here that will always push what they sell, or have on hand first. I guess that's to be expected in almost any store. But I can't imagine somebody turning down a sale because they had to special order it, maybe because they aren't a dealer for it...

Everyone dives here in the Pacific Northwest, and the stores that don't get talked about and very quickly sorted out. Use the wrong gear, or worse configure it wrong, and you end up in trouble very quickly. We honestly have more problems with the recreational stores selling too cheap, or poorly-suited, equipment.

I do agree we have a rash of new tech-oriented instructors who have maybe 400 dives, but all in three locations around the sound. They have experience, but not the depth (breadth ? I don't know if that's quite the term?) of experience to base their opinions on.

Jack

Gee, our shop would have sold her the D9 and offer to gift wrap for free and toss in a Coninuing Ed course for free, too and probably a gift certificate on top of that. Anything to get hubby BACK into the shop for his next purchase and/or make him a permanent customer.

If the D9 wasn't in stock, the question would have been: "When do you need it?" It would have been ordered to arrive by the required date, even if it required overnighting it. The owner would have also called one of several other local shops to see if they had one. We do swap outs with many other shops. We use a non-adversarial approach with all but a couple of shops in the area.

I doubt the jewelry store salesperson told her a Casio keeps just as good time.

BTW, real tech divers don't use hoseless computers. They don't buy OMS either. Nor do they use rebreathers unless absolutely necessary. They also wouldn't buy a D6.

When I lived in Sydney there was a fantastic dive shop in Manly; they gave great advice on great (although their head instructor did push the old Halcyon a bit... probably went on commission!). They also organised trips, ran a dive club, had a great friday night dive and bbq thing going on in summer. Was a great community! And everyone who participated brought all their gear (well, most of it anyway) from the one shop.

Had a similar thing in New Zealand as well, with the Dive Centre that was at that stage on Wairau Rd on the North Shore when I first learnt to dive way back when.

Since moving to the UK I haven't had any of the dive shop community feel. Really missing it, ay. Would be great if more shops took a leaf out of that book... I totally agree with scorpio_fish: anything to operate on repeat custom, best kind of marketing ever!!