View Full Version : Problems with divers attending the Tearooms
Problems with divers attending the Tearooms
Frank who owns the Tearooms has suggested a £10 parking fee for divers using the site due to some recent problems. There have some divers attending, for the whole day, using the facilities and not using the café. Some divers are bringing their own food and even have the nerve to use the picnic benches outside the cafe!
He feels that these small amounts of divers attending are turning away his normal customers and although he has no objection to divers using the site he has to run a business. He does not want to turn divers away as most do use his cafe but is concerned about the ones that don't, having spoke to him at length he is planning to create another car park at the rear and has even though about erecting some sheds for divers to get changed in, all of this requires a huge amount of expense and cant be done for free.
The £10 parking fee would be refunded if any purchase is made at the cafe.
I will be posting this on all of the forums to get some discussions going on the subject, one suggestion is that if groups of divers are diving hopefully we could leave some of the cars at Furnace and possibly reduce the amount of vehicles parked at the site?
What are your thoughts?
I think £10 is a touch excessive. It's likely to end up with divers parking cars on the pavement/road and just walking through the site onto the beach which he will be unable to stop.
I haven't dived this site in a while, mainly because it's a training site and there are better ones around (and too many divers at this one anyway) but I have always purchased food from the cafe.
The hose he installed is really good, but would anyone actually use changing rooms?
If he wants to charge a parking fee then £5 would probably be ok, refundable against a purchase in the cafe.
As far as our club is concerned, we pretty much only go to the site because of the facilities. The diving is pretty unexciting in my opinion. We always buy food & drinks when we dive there.
If there was a charge, I don't think that I would go there at all. I've never noticed there being any shortage of parking. I think that by alienating the diving community, the owners would be making a fundamental business mistake. I do agree completely that people shouldn't consume their own food on the premises: that's just rude.
It's true that divers pay up to £10 a day to park at St Abbs but the diving is fantastic there. The same cannot be said of the Tearooms. :rolleyes:
Any time I have been to the tearooms site its been for training and any time I have been I have always used the tea room facilities, they make great tea and sell great cakes, do brilliant rolls, he lets divers use the hose to rinse kit off.
I however wouldn't go near the place if they charged £10 to park, don't care if I got it refunded its excessive and out of order.
The vast majority of divers who go to the site will use his tearoom and that vast majority would probably not go back if they got charged £10 to park.
Id suggest he thinks of the one or two idiots that don't use his facilities as lost leaders.
Davie.
I posted on SD that as divers we should support Frank. However, the £10 proposed car parking charge is a bit expensive, though I am led to believe that change will be given from your tenner when you buy food. Can anyone clarify this?
Lizardland
10-04-07, 10:18
There were changing facilities there years ago, an old shed. Sounds more like he wants to either keep divers away or get them out of sight by sticking them round the back.
I haven't dived there in about 12yrs, he can charge what he likes :D
Cheers,
Stuart
I sympathise with Frank - the guy is trying to run a business and it is his property. I would buy a coffee and a cake to avoid the charge. No probs.
I have never dived this site, and have no intention to.
It sounds fair enough if people (some divers) are disrupting his business to do something about it, but the repurcussions on his business could be worse than he is anticipating. It may be worth some clubs considering a "donation" if this is mainly a training site, or if qualified divers are using it as a kit shakedown site then they should consider purchasing.
Another option would be for him to drop a landy down and then charge moneys, with changing facilities etc.
Sinking a Landy would be a good idea, I could get parts off it :D Come to think of it that's not a bad idea Chris, we could sink scrap cars and the like to make the site more interesting.
I think that a £5 fee which buy a £5 credit token for the tearoom would be OK. £10 seems just a bit steep. Our family would probably end up spending £10 anyway by the time we've bought our 2nd round of caramel shortcakes & hot chocolates etc. but don't like the idea of it being forced on us if you know what I mean.
Diving is an expensive enough sport anyway & travelling all the way to Furnace ramps up the fuel expenditure.
Making the site more interesting sounds good, but what would SEPA & PanFish (the fish farm owners) think about that? :o
i posted my response on FS.
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i agree the guy has to run a business.
i think £10 a car is a bit heavy if you plan to travel on your own.
perhaps a per head charge would be more fair?
or am i reading this wrong, would the whole £10 be refunded if i spent say £3.00?
suggesting the non buying divers are turning away his customers i find questionable.
if i bought a roll, coffee & ate it outside, i cant see how anyone passing in a car could tell the difference.
i would have thought it more the guy who has just bought his runny egg roll, dripped most of it down his shirt before donning his undersuit & bearing the hairy crack in the process in full view of the 2 old ladies who just popped in for tea & a scone would be more off putting.
then again, that may be the reason the 2 old ladies attend religiously every sunday.
best of luck to him whatever he decides.
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i dont dive the site, lucky if im there once a year & only for some form of training related outing.
have a look through the viz report, you wont see it listed once.
this tells a story, the one we all know.
the place is predominantly used by trainees.
so perhaps the trainees dont know where they are going or what to expect when they get there.
perhaps they already have their sandwiches, perhaps they dont have money.
perhaps people dont tell them to use the cafe
now if Frank wanted to pay me £10 to dive there, i may consider :)
nahh, id still stop at furnace quarry
I think that a £5 fee which buy a £5 credit token for the tearoom would be OK. £10 seems just a bit steep. Our family would probably end up spending £10 anyway by the time we've bought our 2nd round of caramel shortcakes & hot chocolates etc. but don't like the idea of it being forced on us if you know what I mean.
Diving is an expensive enough sport anyway & travelling all the way to Furnace ramps up the fuel expenditure.
Making the site more interesting sounds good, but what would SEPA & PanFish (the fish farm owners) think about that? :o
As long as its stripped and prepared, it might be welcome!!
have a look through the viz report, you wont see it listed once.
Yes you will, I did a viz report last night for Tea Rooms!
:)
Yes you will, I did a viz report last night for Tea Rooms!
:)
groan...
ok how about this...
have a look through the viz report, you wont see it listed once before last night.
groan...
ok how about this...
have a look through the viz report, you wont see it listed once before last night.
:D
Or, "have a look through the viz report, you wont see it listed very often"?
I did enjoy the dives there yesterday, the fact that I'm still aspiring to 20 logged dives may have something to do with it. A pleasant, simple, straightforward dive to 18m (which is all I'm qualified to just now anyway), easy navigation, some wrasse, pollack and a dogfish, some rather large crabs and a game of frisbee with an inner-tube!
Coming back to the main thrust of the thread, one of the incidents which Frank mentioned to us yesterday concerned a group of divers who had left several cars parked from 10 am then some of them went in for their second dive at half past four. This meant that by the time they came out, packed their kit away, used the loo and dumped their rubbish in his bin, he had to wait around until after 6 (over an hour after he usually closes up) so that he could lock up the carpark after they left. I can quite appreciate him being somewhat p155ed off by that!
Personally I wouldn't have a problem with leaving a £10 deposit which then gets returned minus the cost of the coffee & buns.
Al.
Personally I wouldn't have a problem with leaving a £10 deposit which then gets returned minus the cost of the coffee & buns.
Yeah that would be fair enough. But is that the implication? The alternative interpretation is you pay £10 & get a £10 credit voucher for the cafe. Therefore, if you only wanted say £4.50 worth of carbohydrate overload on that day then you'd end up being £5.50 out of pocket.
After all of the Easter chocolate excess I personally don't want to be coerced into eating more cakes than is appropriate (and it doesn't take much persuasion in my case)! :eek:
£10 just seems quite a lot to me for what's on offer. As far as locking the gates go, he could just put up a sign stating the time or mention it politely to any hangers-on. I'd be interested to know if he's done any calculation as to how much of his revenue comes from divers (especially in the winter). The fact that he's considering building changing facilities & has also mooted selling some emergency dive kit (o-rings etc.) suggests to me that it's significant. One of our kids even bought a model of the Titanic one day when we visited! :rolleyes:
Yeah that would be fair enough. But is that the implication? The alternative interpretation is you pay £10 & get a £10 credit voucher for the cafe. Therefore, if you only wanted say £4.50 worth of carbohydrate overload on that day then you'd end up being £5.50 out of pocket.
After all of the Easter chocolate excess I personally don't want to be coerced into eating more cakes than is appropriate (and it doesn't take much persuasion in my case)! :eek:
£10 just seems quite a lot to me for what's on offer. As far as locking the gates go, he could just put up a sign stating the time or mention it politely to any hangers-on. I'd be interested to know if he's done any calculation as to how much of his revenue comes from divers (especially in the winter). The fact that he's considering building changing facilities & has also mooted selling some emergency dive kit (o-rings etc.) suggests to me that it's significant. One of our kids even bought a model of the Titanic one day when we visited! :rolleyes:
Hi Charlie, that was how I took what he said, but as you say, there is another way of looking at it! He says he's also considering installing a compressor, so he definitely knows that divers can make a significant proportion of his customers!
Good point about a sign saying when the gate gets locked; if the sign is clear and someone takes the p155, he can legitimately lock them in (or tell kitted-up divers at 4.30 that the gate gets locked in 30 minutes, that would focus the minds somewhat!).
He also mentioned the possibility of a divers' car park at the loch edge; allowing divers to drive to the entry point, park, kit up in a changing facility and leave the car away from the car park visible from the road side.
Al.
Maybe if he did charge but donated it to charity it would not be so bad, he obviously realises how much revenue is generated by the diving comunity and I wouldnt mind making a small donation to a relevant charity, air ambulance, rnli, or the local chamber...........
IanStevenson
11-04-07, 15:53
I've only ever been there on the BSAC regional training days, and only plan to go back for the same.
I don't think the diving is up to much (there is better in Loch Long) and its a long haul for us east coasters. I spent money on lunch plus several drinks each time I have been there, and sometimes breakfast too. Frankly the only up-side to the site for me is the cafe and toilets, which I consider I pay for through the food I buy. If he wanted to charge on top of that for parking while I dive then I probably wouldn't go there again. I might even think twice about stopping there en-route to other sites.
If he were to put prices up a little I probably wouldn't notice, and if he asked for a donation (e.g. to RNLI) of £5 or £10 for those who park and don't use the cafe then that would be fair enough. The problem with that would be the "us and them" it creates. Before long we'll be seeing messages about enforcement of parking fees....
If there was a compressor there I'd happily pay for fills, but I'm not sure he'll make much money selling O-rings. If there were a few sunk attractions it would make the site more attractive (but I don't think one old landrover would do it) but with all the good sites in that part of the world it would be an occasional novelty rather than making it a must-dive location.
Just my 2cents...
Ian
Hi Charlie, that was how I took what he said, but as you say, there is another way of looking at it! He says he's also considering installing a compressor, so he definitely knows that divers can make a significant proportion of his customers!
Good point about a sign saying when the gate gets locked; if the sign is clear and someone takes the p155, he can legitimately lock them in (or tell kitted-up divers at 4.30 that the gate gets locked in 30 minutes, that would focus the minds somewhat!).
He also mentioned the possibility of a divers' car park at the loch edge; allowing divers to drive to the entry point, park, kit up in a changing facility and leave the car away from the car park visible from the road side.
Al.
If he is prepared to even consider such things as compressors, changing areas, emergency kit and modification to the car park, then either he is looking to profit from all these divers he sees parking and drinking his coffee, by way of removing them of a tenner for upgraded facilities, but I fail to see what you get for your tenner, when you could probably park out on the road for free! As every diver and shop owner knows there is little money to made in a compressor but the spending that happens whilst waiting on the tanks being filled. I have little confidence in the practicality of changing rooms/huts, and closer parking to the edge is no great benefit, it just removes room for dumping kit/breifings/etc. between dives.
He should either be happy with the majority spending in his shop and possibly put a polite notice up regarding the minority of divers, restrict use of toilets etc. to paying customers only and start to stock diving products, including a compressor and be happy at the extra profit he will make.
Sounds like he is a very accommodating type of chap, however the idea of charging £10 to park your car, whether or not this is refunded or not is opportunistic, just like Borders council at St. Abbs, where parking through the week is about £2 for the day but £10 at weekends.
Complete explotation and someone should tell him, look at the interesting debate it is drawn just from a handful of divers on here, not to mention some of the clubs that use the site!!
Spoke to the owner and suggested that the general feeling is that £10 is too much he said that any fee would be totally refunded upon any purchase from the cafe.
dive granny
14-05-07, 23:10
Did any more come of this, or did it fizzle out?