I just returned last night from a week in Cozumel. My trip report will
follow someday, but right now I have a couple questions regarding my
experience on a couple of dives with a company that will remain unnamed
until I decide whether or not they were in the wrong. So please help me
decide.

Said unnamed dive operation promised extra long bottom times on larger
tanks, purportedly justifying their rates of 25%-50% more than what any
other company charges. However on two of the four day dives I actually did
with them, we were forced to spend a good deal of time kicking against a
very strong current, wasting air. The second such dive was a joke. I
aborted with my wife as the rest of the group was kicking with all their
might just to stay in place and I wanted to bail before someone (namely my
wife) started breathing too hard from the exertion and panicked. Another in
the group of 7 also bailed, abandoning his wife to the whims of the
divemaster. This was not my idea of an effortless and relaxing drift dive.
I later looked at a profile of the site and discovered that the wall that
the divemaster was apparently trying to keep us away from bottomed out in
only 70' so I couldn't fathom any reason for making us ruin our drift dive
with a fruitless intense underwater workout session.

Furthermore, said dive operation promised two long and deep dives a day
because of the long surface interval between dives. However, the second
dive on both days was around 40-50', just like all the other dive
operations. Plus, instead of the hour-plus bottom times promised by the
operation, the bottom times were only 47, 57, 45, and 29 minutes, with a lot
of time spent over bare sand. (I did have a very nice 64 minute night dive
at 55 feet with them, but that seemed to be the exception and not the rule.)

Finally, said dive operation promised small fast boats, but the first two
days of our trip the small boats were supposedly not allowed out of the
harbor by the harbormaster because of the "north winds" and the operation st
rung us along hour by hour on until they finally decided to take out a big
boat which I declined both days since I had specifically tried to avoid
cattle boats. On the second of the two days that we actually went out with
them, they had mechanical problems with one boat so we had to take a taxi to
their dock in town and go on a big boat after all (I didn't decline that day
because that was our last diving day!).

Since this was my first time to Cozumel, and my only previous experience
with drift diving was mellow cruising along the walls in Yap where I didn't
have to move my legs at all, I really don't know whether this is usual or
not. So my questions are: (1) Does this sort of thing (i.e., spending half
a drift dive kicking against the current) happen routinely and is to be
expected, or did I just have lousy dive masters? (2) If all this happened
to you on your Cozumel trip (i.e., bottom times less than promised, drift
dives less drifting than promised, boats larger than promised, etc.), would
you feel entitled to a discount from the exhorbitant prices they wanted to
charge?