I am not up on the politics of diving angecies, I got certified thru padi And now thinking to change to another ,ssi or naui, the reason for this is that I recently found out that there is a program called universal referral program that has five major player in it(ssi and naui are two of them), what this program does is if you wanted to get a specialty dive in and nobody from your agency is present,then another from one of those in the program can sign off your dive,and your agency will honor it.PADI chooses not to be part of this program at this time.and doesnt reconize the sign off of another, also with PADI allowing you to do bookwork and send it in then just go do the dives to get the cert,and also booking dives strait thruogh Padi cuts into the business of the people that was a major factor in padi`s success,the dive shops. My thinking is that if I change over to an agency that is in the Universal program then I should have other resources to pull from(next message to finish)