Become a scuba diver! Visit PADI.com to find a dive shop or dive resort and learn to scuba dive with PADI scuba diving experts who will guide you through scuba lessons anywhere in the world.
PADI (padi.com) has 347 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 2.5 out of 5.
Also known as
padi.com
Website
padi.com
Category
Extreme Sports
Location
Rancho Santa Margarita, California
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
About these reviews
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The company replied to 80% of reviews.
Latest
Most recent review: October 2026.
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Reviews are shown as their authors wrote them. The company can reply, but cannot edit them.
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PADI has been unfairly slated in many of the reviews -
I worked as a divemaster a while back. I can tell you from experience that if you felt like the course was rushed or the instructor was poor, well that has nothing to do with PADI. Those are the result of the dive centre you use. The PADI guidelines for a dive centre are strict and deliver a very good service, but many (if not most) dive centres take liberties. Not least because the guidelines are exhaustive and some dive centres see it as an unnecessary hassle. PADI does have it's faults - it is expensive and they are very money oriented. I'm not their biggest fan by any margin but they do deliver what is in my opinion the best scuba experience available as an organisation. Although I did not use the e learning from other reviews, I would give it a miss..
BC
Brad C.
Just a money grubbing company
Just a money grubbing company, feeding on people
JW
Joseph W.
Stay away at all costs
I was going to Thailand for a holiday and I thought I would do a diving course so looked up diving and found elearning, do the class work at home so I don't have to sit in a classroom and just go straight into the practical so I payed £190 for the course and passed it, but when I went to the diving schools (and I tryed 3 diving schools) I still had to pay for the course as PADI pays the diving schools for every person they get though there centre plus what you pay the centre for the hole course so I had to pay double, so just pay for it all at once
Response from PADISep 12, 2018
Joseph-
Thank you for alerting us to your experience in Thailand. We apologize for this experience.
The self study eLearning prior to the in water instruction is to introduce you to diving, specifically the terminology, equipment and what you can expect from your training. The in person instruction applies your learning and your instructors walk you through the concepts you read and learned.
We'd like to understand if the dive shops told you paying for book or eLearning course training again was required or if they only told you that in water training was now required for your certification. We'd also like to know where in Thailand you visited so we can ensure divers are provided the right information prior to their travels. You can direct message us at [email protected] if you are still interested in diving.
- PADI Support
KM
Kelvin M.
Their eLearning platform absolutely …
Their eLearning platform absolutely blows. I know you're a diving organization but what the hell, why can't you join the 21st century?
Paid for a program (two different program actually) and have to deal with the dive shop and get it all sorted out directly because they just don't show up in thei rportal. No idea why, no bug fixes, no apology, nothing.
GT
ghosty T.
On the day of the first dive on open … Instructor purposefully looking for ways to fail me while treating the others in the group far better
On the day of the first dive on open water the instructor would constantly ask me questions which i managed to answer them properly to his annoyance because nearly all the questions were directed at me and not the others in the group,
i felt like he was trying to rush everything and seemed to have a problem with me,
before the final dive he told us what we were going to do, for the end we were told we had to wait three minutes and then i had to let out the air in my jacket and swim up and once i got to the top i then blow into my bcd to inflate it, however as soon as i started to go up he made me breath on his regulator which confused me,
so when we surfaced i took a couple of seconds to start blowing into the bcd but he failed me. I was treated badly and the nasty Padi instructor tricked me / lied to get to fail me as I remember this girl in our group surfaced on her own and a few seconds later the other dive master with her. Don't waste your time and money with Padi because all it takes to fail is an instructor who has a problem with you personally
CZ
Craig Z.
I will start by saying I took the padi …
I will start by saying I took the padi open water diver class years ago when there was a class and a book . Loved every minute of it ! My son wanted to take dive lessons told him how much fun I had . Well . This has Ben the worst experience to say the least . Try to make this short . He passed all swimming classes with ease . Got the e learning what a complete joke . Where is the instructions 179 dollars to do your self . Also paid 600 for private instuter. What's the point when you do everything your self . Padi when I took class I felt was the best . We are so frustrated with this program I called the dive shop and quit on 5/3/2017 . I have many frends who in the past have talked to about getting dive licenses guess I can tell them why bother just teach yourself. If you would like to here more of this this is just the top of the iceberg I will gladly tell you more . Craigz1973@ gmail.com
TK
Tom K.
Padi final exam
Did 100% on most of the review tests. Almost did not pass final test. Padi does not inform you that you need to purchase a dive planner, I missed all of the dive planner questions because on no planner. Personally I think Padi sucks. Tom K, Denver Colorado.
AL
Albee
Bad Experience at Lumut Malaysia Quiver Dive Team Padi Dive Center
Me and my friends drive travel(Road Trip) from Singapore all the way up to Lumut on 22nd November 2015 (Sunday) non stop for 6 hrs in a high speed, just to reach Lumut in time (0830hrs on 23rd Nov as mentioned in the email sent by them). We able to reached there at 0400hrs and finally we have our short nap while waiting for the dive center to open.
At 0830hrs, we finally get to see 2 staff setting up the center. We approached them, and they asked us to come back at 1000hrs. We drive around and have our breakfast then proceed back to the dive center.
We get to know that actually there is nothing for us on 23rd Nov, the so called instructor pass us a advance diver manual and ask us to study and a question paper to fill up. He then said there is some question in the manual, but is not really correct. Any question you can ask me. But after that the whole day we do nothing, no video, no theory question, no anything, even there is no discussing on the question paper that we spend our time and scratch our head out to finish it.
The trainer is not professional in guiding us and we are totally lost and there is no course objective, we just dive and explore by ourself. Dive site is terrible, the seawater is dirty and visibility is super low in the water. And we lost 3 of our divers during a dive, luckily they manage to come back safely.
What worse is I lost 1 of the mask and my friend lost 1 of the fin during the back roll entry. And the dive center said we have to paid $90 for the mask and $353 for the fin. The mask and fin is used, and they asked us to paid the price that is much higher than the market brand new mask n fin. I don't mind paid for the lost fin n mask, is our mistake. But at least with reasonable price. This is much overly charge. Even 2nd hand stuff get 2nd hand price offered. But this used mask n fin is much more expensive than market brand new mask & fin. And we get threaten by the Quiver Dive Team boss that if we never pay, they won't issue us our Padi cert. We paid $1,250 for each for advance diver course. And this is what we been treated... I am really sad about this, and this experience did cut of my passion to be a padi dive instructor. I love diving, soooo much. But this make me feel shameful to be 1 of the padi instructor in future...