PADIReviews of padi.com

If I could give 0 stars, I would! DO NOT waste your money. I purchased the elearning prior to going on vacation (where I planned to get certified) so that I could get "ahead" of the game. When I got to the resort, the dive shop (which goes through PADI) told me that I still had to pay their full $365 certification price even though I already paid to do the elearning...in the end I paid an additional $190 to do the exact same thing I could've done at the resort without the elearning. When I called PADI to see what they could do, they told me that I completed the elearning classes so they could not do anything. Enjoy your extra $190 PADI, maybe you can use it to fix your website which was constantly crashing while I was trying to use it! Thanks for nothing.

If I had known how bad PADI e-learning was, I would have PAID LESS for the written manual or gotten certified by another organization. The online e-learning materials are TERRIBLE- the server doesn't load the pages properly and seems to time out in the middle of quizzes/exams... the mobile app doesn't render the content properly on an iPhone, the scrolling doesn't render properly on google chrome. My friend and I collectively wasted 48hrs of our time on your broken e-learning interfaces. Strangely, his e-learning course was DIFFERENT than mine, as though there are multiple courses? His had videos that you couldn't scroll through or rewatch/rewind. Mine had content within random frames that made it inoperable to slide around and read, assuming the pages loaded at all- and no this wasn't our bandwidth issue - we have a gigabit connection working fine- this was on your server's end. This is the definition of a monopoly gone bad. I'm surprised there isn't a class-action suit against PADI for stealing $190 and providing such a bad online/e-learning experience. If you pride yourself on safety, serve up these materials in a reliable fashion so people don't end up in a situation where they are unable to access the materials in the middle of an open-water dive cert - THAT is unsafe. This is a problem YOU CAN SOLVE with $30K, AWS, a week of a server programmer's time and a week of a mobile programmer's time. Get your IT guy to fix this. It costs nothing. The reviews online for the e-learning are horrible and mention this problem going back a couple years- why/how you haven't fixed it yet is unfathomable- it's either ignorance or incompetence or more likely negligence. Honestly, in the interim, you'd be better off just scanning the damn manual, uploading it, and serving it up as an EPUB/PDF. I'm surprised there isn't a class-action lawsuit against you guys for monopolizing this space, charging such exorbitant rates for e-learning, and THEN delivering the worst-period-experience-period-ever I have encountered with e-learning. Look - make your money off monopolizing the certification process, not the distribution of the material. Host your content on AWS and host those videos on youtube/vimeo, publish the manual as an epub, and you can still charge for taking/passing the quizzes and registering/certifying as a diver. Outside of all this, diving is an amazing sport, the Maui Diving shop was an amazing place to learn, and our instructor was exceptional, and we had incredible experiences under the water in Maui. I'd recommend them to anyone else who wants to learn diving. Also, despite the delivery, the actual PADI learning CONTENT information was great - manual + some videos- if you are going to get certed with PADI, save yourself a nightmare and just buy the physical manual.

I am working my way through the PADI e-learning program. I just finished Section 2. I have two major criticisms of the website. 1) Layout and Design 2) Question Phrasing Regarding the Layout and Design: The e-learning website is very poorly designed and laid out. The multiple scrolling sections are confusing. The content of each section is split, seemingly at random, into areas where you either scroll within the column or scroll the webpage. Further, there are no lines or other indicators showing where each scrolling section starts or stops. It took me most of section 1 to realize that the outline was accessed by mousing over the downward arrows and scrolling down. (I was trying to click on it.) I am completely unable to make the slideshow sections work, which was very detrimental during the hand signals section. Why can't it just be one webpage? There is no need to make it so convoluted and labyrinthine. And why do the videos have to pop out at random, with no way to rewind? Just embed them in the flow of the page like any other sane website. This thing is timecube-levels of layout weirdness. Regarding the Quiz Questions: First, at the very least, there should be an indication whether one should be selecting a single or multiple answers. There currently is not. Second, some questions are very confusingly worded. For example, in Quiz 1 there is a question relating to air density. The questions asks what would happen to the air in an upside-down cup as you descent. Specifically, the question asks whether "the air density (thickness) would ... increase/decrease/remain the same". This is extremely poorly worded. The density would increase, but the "thickness" would decrease. Please try to avoid using words that have opposite answers. This is the one question I got wrong, entirely because of the wording. I have managed to catch the other bad questions in Quizzes, but the Knowledge Reviews have caught me off guard a few times. Please consult with someone who has some education in test-writing. Several basic rules are being ignored or broken in the quizzes (not least of which is that multiple-choice is one of the worst ways to test knowledge). With all the divers out there, there must be many teachers or educators with such training and experience. All in all, I am extremely disappointed in a website I paid a fair bit of money to access and learn from. In summary: Simplifying the website, making it work (which goes hand-in-hand with simplifying the website, as many of the features that don't work are completely unnecessary complications), and reviewing the questions would go a long way to improving the experience, and aid learning.

A terrible e-learning experience The e-learning software (apparently newly updated with 'touch') is terrible; constantly crashing, failing to download, failing to register the exams I have taken etc. I would avoid the e-learning totally until PADI set up a decent system with a company competent in delivering proper capabilities. The e-learning is verbose, a total turn off, impossible with any bandwidth constraints and quite depressing as a result.

An Honest review from a Divemaster doing elearning IDC... the elearning is an absolute joke. The platform looks like it was built on MS-DOS, 1990s era garbage. Some of the quiz questions are completely wrong.... 2 questions to be exact. It provides literally ZERO insightful information. I feel like I was ripped off. Your “marketing diving” teaches NOTHING about current day marketing strategies. The only part of the entire course that was halfway worthwhile was “teaching RDP” and even then it teaches nothing you don’t already know as a divemaster or diver of any “rating” for that matter. I’m absolutely ashamed of your elearning platform and at a cost of $390 or whatever it is you’d expect more information or actual instruction and learning. Just re-read your divemaster handbook... you’ll refresh with more information. Seriously PADI, get it together! I would be embarrassed to offer this garbage platform to any customer. Edit: I noticed your response to my review PADI, the issue is you have a trend here on all fronts of your elearning and you are doing nothing about it. You do not take it seriously and it shows.... you post a reply here to save face but you haven’t fixed anything for anyone

This website is a joke! I have tried using multiple channels (e.g. website, app) and its all impressively horrible! You guys need to fix your digital CX, what the hell is this?!

If I could give them zero stars I would. After days of trying to navigate their terrible website and customer service I finally figured out how to get my ecard for a course I already over-paid for. Then they wanted $46 to download the ecard. What a scam. Also, check out how all the responses to poor reviews on this page are automated and exactly same. This is how much PADI cares about you and your customer experience. Exactly zero. POS!

Like every other review on here, my experience with trying to purchase an e-learning course was TERRIBLE. And the "customer service" agents are pathetic! One of them even asked for my password so she could log into my account! Unbelievable! I have been trying to for two weeks to BUY something from them and I have now officially given up. Unbelievable!