Most Dive Shops that I know in California are all about service. Dive N Surf is the best. We pull up with 20 bottles and nobody is sitting around, and in 15 to 20 mins those bottles are full and loaded back. No signing nothing. Buy air cards and get em punched.
That’s only one reason that it’s so much better to support these shops, and I know you know that, but the other alternative here in California is the Corporate Giants that have put the little shops out of business, not because of better service, because of volume inventory. Those corps rarely can fill a tank right, it takes them 45 minutes to fill 1 or 3 max, they have some detailed reason why they have to go so slow, like they don’t want you to get stress cracks?? And they have the banks, but they don’t use water even having the water bays. I understand that, it’s the shoe salesman filling the tanks he does’t want to get wet. And you got an hour and a half to wait on 6 tanks to browse the store for other sporting goods reasons! On dive boats tanks are filled in 4 minutes. If the tanks run 10 years, that’s good! There are 2 shops that I know of that, they don’t lift a finger for much.