Sun wrote a review Oct 6

Thailand2 contributions

Review of: Full-Day Diving and Snorkeling in Sail Rock

Excellent Overall experience: John was our divemaster. He is probably the best guide I have dived with. His dive briefing, checking of the equipment, and the dive ,all was conducted with great care and thoroughness. He kept a constant watch on me during the dive, The boat support staff was extremely helpful. The food and beverages provided were good. Service is excellent.…

Date of experience: October 2020

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HassanalBold wrote a review Jan 2020

Rotterdam, The Netherlands1 contribution

Great experience overall

A great 3 days diving experience. The divemaster did a great job of leading us throughout the bad visibility. It would be recommended to come during april or may.

Date of experience: January 2020

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Katelyn M wrote a review Jan 2020

4 contributions5 helpful votes

Negative Experience Due to Management

Review of: Full-Day Diving and Snorkeling in Koh Tao

My friend and I have been traveling through Thailand and specifically made a pit stop at Koh Samui to get our divers certification. After researching a few companies, we selected Silent Divers based on customers positive reviews. Upon review of their website, we chose the “beginners course for diving” which costs around $330. Based on the description, we selected this course to receive our certification upon completion. If you are booking online, it requires you to pay an extra $78 in addition to the $330. Instead, we called the company to see if we could pay in cash. On call, we described to Steve (the owner) that we were excited to receive our certification and he made the effort to pickup our deposit before leaving for the dive the next morning. In the morning, Steve sent us an email that the course was not for a certification but rather an experience of diving. After reading the email, we were quite confused because what was communicated the night before was the direct opposite of what was communicated the next morning. Once transportation picked us up from the hotel, we asked the staff for clarity. The head of staff called Steve and proceeded to tell us that we booked the incorrect option and we would need to pay an extra $300 on top of the $330 we were going to pay for the beginners course. Unable to pay for the open water course totaling close to $630, we decided to snorkel since we had already paid for the deposit, we figured we might as well use some of what we paid for but we’re unwilling to pay the $330 for just a thumbs up. Snorkeling with the staff was great in Koh Tao. When we returned, they handed us a survey with Steve (now present) sitting there, watching us fill it out. After we gave them the survey, Steve proceeded to tell us that he would be doing us a “favor” by not having to pay for the beginners course (that we never went on) but instead, would need to pay for the entire cost of the snorkeling on top of the deposit that we had already paid (we were under the impression that the deposit would count for some of the down payment). Steve was very rude to us and belittled us by our failure of reading the website correctly. As a business graduate and inspiring entrepreneur, I am shocked at the way Steve handled the situation and do not support his poor business practices. I do not recommend this company to anyone. If he is willing to treat his customers that way, it makes me wonder how he treats his employees. Please look elsewhere!…

Date of experience: January 2020

2 Helpful votes

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Response from Luis_Arpa, Owner at Silent Divers

Responded Jan 29, 2020

Dear Katelyn, thank you for taking the time to review your experience with us. As we usually say, all reviews, specially the not-so-good ones, can be used to understand the way some customers see us and therefore improve our service. So, given the fact that both you and Danielle have refused to sit and talk to me or even to answer my emails about the situation mentioned on your review, please let me explain here what actually happened so you can be more understanding the next time you book a trip with any company. First of all, please allow me to apologize in case I got something wrong. As a matter of fact, what you say on your review is "very inaccurate", to say the least, and I think I can easily explain why. But again, maybe I'm misunderstanding some of your points, it's quite difficult to tell, to be honest. 1) All our courses are PADI courses, that's pretty standard to all PADI dive centers, especially among PADI 5-star IDC centers such as ours. That means, we only sell official PADI courses. They all have a name that make them distinctive from each other. We do not sell any course called "beginners course for diving" nor are these words written anywhere on our website. We do offer 3 different PADI courses or experiences for beginners, from the Discover Scuba Diving experience (sort of a 1 day scuba tryout) to the world famous PADI Open Water Diver course (aka My PADI) and the PADI Scuba Diver course, a shorter PADI course that can be completed in 2 days, for those who don't have the time to complete a full OWD course. According to the price you mention (330USD) I believe you must be talking about the last one, the PADI Scuba Diver course, which in fact costs 11,500thb (we don’t work and never had worked in USD here and 11,500thb is rather 370USD) but it’s only a guess as you could also be talking about the DSD which costs 5,700thb/person (367USD for both of you). You say that online bookings take a 78USD charge just because(??). That is plainly not true. Our online shop works exclusively through PayPal, the biggest and most reliable online payment platform in the world and given the fact that we have a business account with them, all commissions are on us so our customers don’t have to pay ANYTHING but strictly the deposit amount. That is very easy to check for anybody. Just go to our website, book any product and pretend to check out, you will see that a PayPal page opens up and you are asked to pay the 20% deposit of the product’s price as stated repeatedly in many different places of our website, including the actual checkout page and of course the TERMS AND CONDITIONS you accepted and clearly didn’t read. So, no, sorry, there is NO COMMISSION at all when booking online any of our products, and certainly not a 78USD one. Could it be possible that you mistook the actual deposit for an unexplainable PayPal commission? After all, a 20% of 370USD is 74USD, which is pretty close to the 78USD you mention. 😉 Nonetheless, Steve offered you the possibility to leave a 2,000thb deposit (less than what we usually take on our website) at your resort’s front desk so he could go and pick it up after he finished his shift (at 9pm), still the day before of the trip. It is simply not true that he went to collect the deposit the day after as the whole point of a deposit is to get some sort of payment for a service that is to be provided which implies, by law, acceptance of terms and conditions by the customer. What would be the point of asking for a deposit the day before the trip if we are not going to collect it until the moment the trip starts? None. So, Steve went, the night before, after a long work shift, and collected the deposit from your very own hotel just because you refused to book your trip through our website, as every other customer does. And believe it or not, he did it with a smile, happy to be helping you, as he has done it many times in the past and as I’m sure he will continue doing. 2) Next, you mention your conversation with Steve, who, somehow you mistaken by the owner of the company. I am pretty sure he never said such a thing to you, there is no need either. I am actually the company owner, as you can also see on our website if you click on Meet the Team. There are even pictures of us and a brief background story. It turns out I was with Steve when he received your phone call so I’m aware of how the conversation went. You told Steve about taking an introduction to diving as you were beginners and Steve described the DSD to you. He literally said the DSD is an experience (not a course) and that you don’t get a certification at the end of the day as it does not include any pool training or theory. Even more, he ended the conversation telling you he was going to answer your previous email with all the summarized info and details of the trip following your recent conversation. Here is what you wrote first: “Hello, I am trying to purchase 2 tickets for the intro scuba diving for tomorrow it will only let me proceed to PayPal is there any way we can purchase this upon our arrival tomorrow please let me know what we need to do in order to book this reservation” No course or license mentioned anywhere as it wasn’t mentioned during the phone call either. Just “intro scuba diving for tomorrow” which is exactly what you book (and then refused to take). Instead of pasting here the whole email Steve sent you I will just copy a part of it regarding the subject of your complain: “PADI Discover Scuba Diving. The DSD is not a course but a one-day program (2 dives) to experience scuba diving to a maximum depth of 12m. You don't get a diving license at the end of the day but a certificate of completion. It doesn't involve any theory or pool training and doesn't require any previous experience or swimming skills. Rate is 5,700thb/person” These exact words were sent to you at 18:42h the day BEFORE your trip, 30 minutes after your phone call when you were told you would receive them. Your implication that you were not told about this fact until the next morning is, again to say the least, very inaccurate. 3) The morning of the trip, as you mention, our staff called Steve to clarify the situation. What he told you was that if you wanted to get an Open Water Diver license, the price was 18,200thb (586USD) and if you wanted the PADI Scuba Diver, its price was 11,500thb (370USD). Even if you were expecting to pay 330USD for your Scuba Diver course, the difference between that and the PADI Scuba Diver course is still 216USD, not 330USD. And if you were considering the price of the DSD (183USD), the difference with the PADI Scuba Diver (370USD) is 183USD and with the Open Water Diver is 403USD, so I don’t get why you say you had to pay another 330USD on top of the 330USD we never asked you for… sorry but this part is all very confusing and I think you misunderstood the point here. All our prices are clearly stated on our website and social media and there are literally no hidden costs in any of them. Only if you want to pay with a card, we will charge you a bank fee of 3% that you won’t get if you pay cash. Nothing to do with what we are discussing here. Would it be possible that you mixed up different courses and prices in your head and got confused with the courses naming? To this point you still haven’t mentioned any specific course, not on your emails not on your phone calls and certainly not on your review, which seems pretty weird as you said you checked out our website (although apparently you got all prices and options wrong). 😉 4) “we’re unwilling to pay the $330 for just a thumbs up”. Again, I am lost. You admit having received the email where Steve told you what a DSD was and what is its price (183USD) and yet you keep saying we were going to charge you 330USD for a thumbs up? Look, you booked a DSD, apparently thinking you had booked something else (a course) and clearly didn’t understand what Steve told you nor read the email he sent you. Regardless of it, we had prepared 2 DSD for you, as agreed. Your instructor was there before 7am, your equipment serviced and ready, your spot on the boat saved for you, the insurance company notified about the 2 of you, your breakfast and lunch cooked and prepared for you and your tanks ready to be used. All of it has associated costs as I’m sure you understand. That is the main reason why we collect deposits and that is the only reason why they are non-refundable. As Steve explained you, we had to send your instructor back home at 8am as you refused to go diving. Believe it or not, your 2,000thb deposit went straight to pay him for a work he ended up not doing. The reason is very simple. If we ask a professional to commit to us to do a job, we expect him to be there on time and do it to the best of their knowledge, with a smile and professionality, and he expects to be paid for it. Easy as that. If we cancel the job after he has already started (remember instructors are there way before you, preparing your gear, forms, getting briefed, etc.) we still have to pay them for it. THAT is how we treat our staff (as you seemed to be concerned about that particular topic) and because of that, we used your deposit to pay him. That’s how it works. If we don’t pay him, he just loses the whole day as he cannot get another gig (all boats depart at 8am and are fully staffed the day before) and he probably had to refuse to take other gigs as he already committed to us (to you). You could have gone diving and pay the rest of the 150USD you were quoted, you could have upgraded to the PADI Scuba Diver the day after taking the DSD (unfortunately we couldn’t start the PADI SD at that moment as you needed to attend some classes and pool training first) and paying what you initially thought (some 330USD) and you could have even admitted your misunderstanding about the courses (and not reading the email the day before) and we would have rescheduled your course to another day without any extra charges. But instead you told our staff you preferred to take the course back in the US as you thought it was cheaper there. That’s fair and you are totally entitled to do so but please understand that we can’t be held accountable or responsible for things over which we have zero control. You got a verbal explanation of your booking, you got a written explanation by email and you have a whole website available any day of the year with all the information required to choose among all the available PADI courses. I keep thinking what we could have done better in this regard but Is till fail to find a solution… 5) I am glad you enjoyed your trip to Koh Tao, the snorkel experience and our friendly staff, thank you. 6) Yes, Steve went to the pier to meet you there and to have a personal chat with you as it is part of his job as a MANAGER to keep our customer relationship service to its best and to follow up any possible situation that may happen, as it did. I have asked other customers and staff in the island that were present that day at the pier (we share it with other companies) and they all agreed Steve wasn’t rude to you at all, but rather very polite actually, as it is his usual British way of doing things. He mentioned our terms and conditions to you, which state that if a customer cancels or changes a booking on the day of the trip he will still be required to pay the full amount of the initial booking (unless it is an upgrade). However, he also told you that, regardless of our policy (which you accepted when booking your trip), we were NOT going to charge you for your DSD as we understood it was all a misunderstanding, but unfortunately we were going to keep the little deposit to cover your instructor wages. After that we proceeded to charge you ONLY for what you did, a snorkel trip worth 85USD. I am pretty sure he never mentioned anything about “doing you a favor” although truth is, we did. 6) It is also funny you mention the survey you filled in. I have both of them in front of me and out of 7 questions ratable from “poor” to “excellent”, you personally rated 5 of them as “excellent” (including your “overall experience”). Only the “food and drinks” was rated as “good” and the “booking process” was rated as “average” while on the comment section you wrote, and I quote, “We had issues w/ PayPal but Steve was great” (!!!). Your friend Danielle rated all 7 sections as “excellent” and wrote on the comment section “So much fun thank you”. I’m getting mixed signals here. I guess everything was great and Steve was amazing for accommodating all your needs, going to your resort even after he had finished his shift at 9pm, going personally to the pier to talk to you, calling you at 7.30am to give you options after you refused to take what you booked and even ignoring the company policies regarding cancelations and instead charging you for what you ended up doing to mitigate the whole expense, and yet, he is a very bad and rude person deserving a terrible review on Trip Advisor because he used your 2,000thb deposit to pay the staff we hired to take you diving instead of sending him home with a handshake. I am sorry I am not “a business graduate and inspiring entrepreneur”, I only have a Ph.D. in Biology and some 7 very successful years of experience in the diving industry in the most competitive country in the world when it comes to scuba diving, but in this case I truly believe Steve did the right thing and you should actually be thankful for his consideration and effort in accommodating all your needs even above the company interest. At the end of the day, you are the one who is still today not able to tell what course you actually wanted to do. 😉

Barrak A wrote a review Jan 2020

Kuwait City, Kuwait30 contributions10 helpful votes

Barrak Alfaqaan

Review of: Full-Day Diving and Snorkeling in Koh Tao

Amazing people and amazing staff all around good vibes with good food. Great safety record full on time with our amazing instructor Martin who was such an amazing sole. Highly recommended.

Date of experience: January 2020

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Julie_KohS wrote a review Jan 2020

Paris, France1 contribution

Amazing snorkeling day in Koh Tao with a wonderful team

The Silent Divers team was super helpful, friendly and professional from the beginning to the end of our snorkeling day. They explained everything beforehand, made us feel very safe and well-equipped. Even though our tour was a snorkeling one, we were with people who were trying diving for the first time and we could tell they were also in very good hands! I highly recommend booking a snorkeling or diving tour with them, you will be well taken care of in a super cool atmosphere. Thank you SD team! :) …

Date of experience: January 2020

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