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*edit. I left the same review on yelp (which i never use) and noticed that there were many one star reviews with very similar stories.
I called the owner (John) before buying a groupon for scuba certification. I asked number of direct questions to determine the final cost of the certification. The groupon was $80. John told me there would be a orientation cost of $225, and a gear rental cost of $125 with an overall cost of $430. The owner John gave me direct answers to those questions but excluded hidden costs which were later to be added on. On the phone he told me that I would need to take an online class, but failed to mention that cost for the class was $190. He also told me about gift cards that i would receive when i signed up, but failed to mention that in order to use those gift cards i would have to spend an amount of money that would negate the worth of the cards. One card was for $50, but it turns out that card can only be redeemed if you spend more then $450 which means if you rent your equipment for $125 that card is no longer usable unless you continue to shop at his store. The second card for $75 dollars can only be used if you spend $1250 at the shop, or sign up for a subscription equipment rental program. At our orientation meeting which his son Hunter was going to help me with never happened because Hunter forgot. John was apologetic and offered me an additional $25 gift card (an offer that was no followed up on) The orientation was just a sales meeting to sell me scuba equipment. The owner John implied that i would have to buy a set of equipment that i had previously said that i would like to rent, and only acknowledged that i could rent after i asked him about our previous conversation. The cost of that purchase was around $525 but I could have used the $50 to bring it down to ~$475.
Phone price of Groupon + orientation + scuba rental-gift cards =~$430
price of services with rental equipment in actuality (if a customer was willing to ask questions and not get pushed into a sales transaction) = $620
price on website without groupon $664.
honestly from the get go if he had just said. "this costs $620. by getting the groupon you are saving $44" i would have said, cool. here is the money lets do it, but by advertising lower costs, hiding fees and then being unwilling to refund my $225 for a sales meeting really stinks.
additionally I had a phone conversation with another employee who when they heard my concerns acknowledged my frustrations as being valid, and told me that they had conversations in the past with John about being more up front about hidden costs (aka this kind of thing has happened before) but that he was "old school" like that. - via 