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Firstly, the admin staff have been incredible and managed my transfer from Moalboal to Malapascua and from Malapascua to Cebu flawlessly. They were extremely helpful and responsive.
Having said that, the people in charge of the diveshop created a pretty negative experience, in my opinion. On my first day, someone named Alverto handled all my paperwork. He was incredibly pushy about me doing the Padi deep diver course, which he was going to run despite the fact that I wasn't interested in it at all.
On the first dive at Kimud Shoal ( the Thresher site), my buddy, whom they paired me with and seemed really inexperienced, used up his air extremely quickly. When the divemaster checked in with us, he was at 100 bar while I was at 170. The total dive time for this, including the 3 min safety stop, was 36 mins - my shortest dive yet! Instead of switching the buddies around, I did my second dive with the same buddy. Luckily, we bumped into another group of divers from the company right before our safety stop, and I was able to have a slightly longer dive.
Later, Leon, the manager, asked me how my dive was. When I told him about this, he said "well sometimes we don't know until we get them underwater." Now... Let me be clear, I'm a rescue diver, and objectively, that statement is accurate. Having said that, Thresher Shark divers are by far the most expensive company to dive with. I would think that the response should be at least a tinge apologetic.
I also asked Leon if they were planning any dives at Gato or if they would be doing the 3 dive schedule of Monad Shoal, Kimud Shoal, and Kimud Shoal. Leon then told me that based on the weather, it was unlikely that they would be able to go to those places but that he would "try to schedule Gato on my last day of diving."
As a result of this, I switched to Atlas divers, who I would recommend instead. I will admit, when I went with them to Gato, the weather wasn't great, and the sea was quite rough, but not something it made sense to cancel dives over. Given how stunning Gato is them being so uncomital about going there is enough reason for me not to recommend them.
The last point I'd like to make is about the sunset dive for Mandrian Fish at Lighthouse. If you book that with Thresher Shark Divers, a minimum of two divers are required before they will actually do the dive. With Atlas, however, I did it twice, and both times, it was just me and my divemaster.
After my experience with them, a part of me wonders if the replies from the shop to negative reviews are correct and if they really implement the suggested changes. I'd also like to mention that someone I became friends with from doing a shore dive with them through Thresher Shark Divers who had significantly more issues than me with them. - via 