Quote Originally Posted by hbh2oguard View Post
My local dive shop laughed at the idea because they knew the tanks were safe! they are a very reputible dive shop, not a sporting goods store! Any VIP sticker should be good anywhere becasue all dive shops should have the exact same standards of passing or failing a VIP. It wasn't the fact that they didn't fill them, it's that I had a fill card that I used on the exact same tanks and they would give me a prorated refund. Go to a real dive shop, not a sporting goods store!
All inspections should be conducted to the same standards, but the truth is that they are not. I opted to get certified and inspect my own cylinders after encountering some of the less desirable inspectors out there. Even prior to gaining the education though, I did know that using an eddy machine to test steel cylinders was wrong (at least he was honest and admitted that he had to pay for the machine somehow, and since the majority of his customers used steel cylinders...) I also knew that O2 cleaning involved a bit more than looking inside the cylinder, saying, "yep, looks good to me" and then affixing a new sticker that states the cylinder has been properly cleaned to industry standards for O2 service. The fact that such inspectors are actually doing more than some is the really frightening part; some are doing little more than buying EOI stickers off the internet or sourcing them from friends and merely replacing the outdated ones on their cylinders without so much as a quick glance. For these reasons and others, some shops have adopted a policy of not honoring generic EOI stickers, while other shops have adopted a policy of not honoring any that they cannot personally confirm the validity of the inspector. Since these guys are the ones paying hefty liability insurance fees to keep the doors to their business open so that they can sell gas fills to those who insist on buying equipment over the internet, I say more power to them.