My fiance and I got a deal on groupon back in July for academy of scuba off of Bell rd. Needless to say my 2 stars shows how our experience went but I do have one good thing to say to lighten this review first:
Our lake diver certification teacher (Skip) was stellar! He was super fun and very very knowledgeable!
Skip is the best- if you go here ask for Skip- seriously.
But the rest of Academy of Scuba off of bell road was a disaster. They lost our medical papers, scuba release forms, and said they "scheduled" us for our check out dive- which was completely false and we had to re-schedule.
I did NOT get along with our pool instructor Marsha. She was snobby and had very little positive motivation for our class.
Marsha is the bad- avoid Marsha at all costs - very very serious.
No one told us that we could do our paper work test online when we went in for our first intro visit. So we ended up reading the entire padi certification book with all the book quizzes completed. Only to learn that this meant we had to do even MORE work than the rest of the class and take 2 separate multiple choice tests that took up almost all of our lunch break (just super).
Half of the staff are just highbrow scuba snobs that LOVE to tell you how stupid you are about being financially cautious in regards to buying scuba gear. And the other half are CLUELESS to how any type of technology works in the office and/or how to properly file documents (With the exception of Skip- he was just awesome).
At one point I forwarded a letter to the owner John Flanders after the store ignored all my e-mails and multiple phone calls about missing medical papers. He was very very nice in his message back to me and let me know our missing files were top priority with the staff.
I can only hope this store has gotten better since our experience last July. But if you're thinking about taking a class there- hopefully some of this information can serve as a warning. And if you are, all I can say is Good luck, you're going to need it!