I had similar issues with faulty BCD and regs which caused air leaks and even a self inflating BCD while doing my padi OW causing runaway accent. Having done alot of diving since I realised in my case it was the club using lots of old equipment that definitely missed a few services. Some clubs have lots of equipment laying around and alot of it might not of been used lately because of the pendemic. Also old scuba equipment can work well if used regularly and maintained but in my case it wasn't used much, only for training on the odd day possibly because its expensive to do regular maintenance and a small scuba club would struggle to cover costs with lots of equipment.