air fills

[DetectorGuy]

USDiver, I am not a shop owner and I am just trying to justify the cost of fills. I am probably wrong on this but this is the way I see it:
Many of you were diving prior to Al Gore inventing the internet  ???.
I wasn't diving 20 years ago, so I don't know what it was like to have a "good deal" on a fill. I think that 20 years ago was probably the golden age for dive shops where the only competition was with another dive shop in the area. 20 years ago we obviously didn't have the online "dive shops" that everyone is buying their gear from to save $2. 20 years ago the dive shops did not need to scrape every nickel out of a divers wet fingers to try and make ends meet. 20 years ago the air fills were probably easier to "give away" at $2/fill as a customer relations kinda deal. If you haven't noticed that this is not 1990 and times are tough for a lot of businesses. The LDS need to keep their head above water financially or they won't be in business. With all the competition from online sales, they need to make money where they can. One way they can is to charge the going rate for air. The compressors are not cheap. The insurance for that compressor is not cheap. The rent on their shop is not cheap. The employee payroll (and their insurance) is not cheap. The utilities for their building is not cheap. Divide the amount of fills they do per month by the cost of these things and see how hard it would be to stay in business. You really can't count their retail sales as profit as they have already lost so much of this to internet sales that I don't think it would add up to much. They have money coming in from training but that is kinda cyclical too. After a point, a diver has all the certifications he or she wants (or that is available locally).
I was frustrated when Smith Diving went out of business. I too had 4 fill cards that I had purchased along with many of you who had a similar amount. Some of you may have bought those cards as a way to get 10 fills for $40 and it was all about you. Some of you may have bought those fill cards as an investment in that LDS in hopes that if enough of us did that, the LDS could make rent for another month. Along with Smith Diving being a great shop who always filled my tanks to the top, They were a Naui shop. I am partial to Naui as I think they offer an actual certification instead of a watered down "get 'em in, and get 'em out" kinda deal. Are there any other Naui dive shops in Minnesota? I don't think there are. We had it and it slipped away when we weren't looking. Would I like to see fills for a buck cheaper? Sure I would, but I would rather not lose anymore dive shops like Smith just because I can't handle coughing up another buck a fill. Anyway... You can't put a price on a good time. Hope I didn't piss any of you off and you all still let me swim with ya.
John