Complaint Review: Pro dive college

I booked a place with pro dive college in December 2010 and so had been looking forward to itfor ten months. I'd been saving and flew from Australia ready to begin.

I had deposited almost $2000usd and since then had been in contact with the college every month. After arriving and setting up, it came time to pay my remainder.. However, they had no record of my deposit! The company had changed hands 7months ago which I was never informed of- and an old employee had taken off with my money. They say they have nothing to do with him but this same thing has happened to a few others this year as well!

The difference with me is, rather than offering any support or even admitting that the company had made some mistake, they expected me to just pay the full amount to them instantly! And told me this problem was between me and the ex employee! Rather than the company who I paid the money to??? The cost was even more than the price I was quoted when I reserved and they would not even budge on the cost.

If this wasn't bad enough on my 2nd day in Mexico!,( I could not afford to loose the 2k plus pay a whole course again), the owner told me that I couldn't even stay at the house, which had many free beds, just so i could take this in and figure out what i could do. Or rather, he had an employee tell me and never showed his face or discussed anything further.

I would definitely not want to dive at this school- not just due to their careless business practice - ie: letting 2000 dollars go missing, but more so the horrible treatment they gave someone in my situation! The other students were as shocked as me!

Think about arriving in a new country that you had looked forward to almost a year, getting told your money was gone, getting kicked out of the house and left on your own! Through no fault of yourself!!

I would not trust these guys at all and I would suggest any other dive school in the world, where I'm sure you would be treated better than this. It's pretty hard to beat..

Ps: all this said, Mariano is a good guy who works there and put me on contact with some alternate options. Without his help It wouldve been much worse! It's The company that is the rip off. Owners being pepe and jorge. And since they are the ones who take your money, I would book elsewhere