The cryonics industry is for-profit
Um, SA is nominally for-profit. EUCRIO might be as well. CI and Alcor aren't.
But that's irrelevant, as keeping costs down is obviously a priority regardless of the nature of the institution. I'm not sure the appearance of competence is cheaper in the real world though -- Melody accuses them of being inefficient with their resources and underutilizing pre-existing technologies.
Hence, if cryonics providers think they can continue to appear competent, they have no incentive to actually become competent by performing research and hiring trained personnel, as doing so would only raise costs.
Cryonics is run largely by cryonicists. There is a non-monetary incentive to actually be competent. It's just (apparently) not working well enough.
I'm not sure the appearance of competence is cheaper in the real world though
You may be correct in terms of equipment and research, but not in terms of hiring competent staff. It might be that Meoldy's assessment of the situation is closer to the truth:
...When I tried to convince my manager that the equipment SA needed to perform these procedures already existed, I was met with a tremendous amount of resistance. I wanted to believe that person was simply ignorant of vascular cannulations and perfusion and the related equipment, but it was impossible to
I recently found something that may be of concern to some of the readers here.
On her blog, Melody Maxim, former employee of Suspended Animation, provider of "standby services" for Cryonics Institute customers, describes several examples of gross incompetence in providing those services. Specifically, spending large amounts of money on designing and manufacturing novel perfusion equipment when cheaper, more effective devices that could be adapted to serve their purposes already existed, hiring laymen to perform difficult medical procedures who then botched them, and even finding themselves unable to get their equipment loaded onto a plane because it exceeded the weight limit.
An excerpt from one of her posts, "Why I Believe Cryonics Should Be Regulated":