Dont Buy Garmin Products

Well I have done my research and I will unsolder the battery, fix an external Cr2032 battery holder and fit a single Cr2032 for about £4.

Some of you seem to find it acceptable that a properly working bit of kit is working except the NVram has failed because the battery has failed, but I dont. When the manual says Return to manufacturer for repair I assume that he means it. If it was a specific chip or ASIC, I could understand that it may go out of production, but a battery is a battery. The computer industry fitted millions of them to PC mother boards and still do, and if a 10 year old motherboard battery goes U/s another is fitted in minutes without fuss. So surprise surprise I am fitting a battery from a 10 year old obsolete motherboard.

Bad customer service in this case means that I still wont buy from Garmin, even if they are 5 miles away from me
 
The CPC catalogue has many versions of lithium batteries plus the tags and holders so you pays your money and takes your choice ...
 
Do check the type of battery on the GPS 48 it is a rechargeable one. If you fit a non rechargeable one you will have problems.
 
I've seen BR2032 cells in Garmins. That's designed for longer life than CR2032 in low current applications but CR will be OK.
If it's neither BR nor CR be careful as it could be a rechargeable. Panasonic are the main manufacturers and their website is informative.
 
Seems very harsh criticism of Garmin. If they can help they will. Approx 10 years ago i bought an end of range Garmin hand held GPS at Southampton. After about 8 years of use it froze. I sent it back to Garmin for repair and within 7 days I had not my old unit but a brand new model fre of charge and loaded with all my waypoints and routes. Give them another chance ther is every liklehood that they will do all they can to help.
 
Easy to replace the battery

Our Garmin 128 went when we were in Las Palmas in early 2007.

The local 'Garmin agent' charged me E50 to 'fix' it and it failed again a couple of months later in the Azores. I got Steve Birch of this forum to post us a replacement battery and a local guy (MAYS) soldered it in for about E12. It is still going strong over two years later.

Just unsolder the battery and find a suitable replacement.

- W
 
I have always considered Garmin's after sales service to be the best I have come across and would still recommend them. At least it sounds possible to have a new battery fitted by a third party or DIY. I am ticked of with my Tinytach just around 3 years old, battery flat, and case is sealed in plastic gunge so unable to get inside without destroying it WHY ffs ? it's not as if it is ever going to be submerged. I certainly will not be replacing it with another one even though I here they have modified the new ones.
Pete
 
pete said:
I have always considered Garmin's after sales service to be the best I have come across and would still recommend them.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I bought an Etrex handheld in the US (I lived there at the time) and after a couple of years the thumb stick stopped working. I rang Garmin UK who said to send it in and they'd look at it. I received a brand new unit a few days later.

That is customer service.

(Don't get me started on TomTom!)
 
Originally Posted by pete
"I have always considered Garmin's after sales service to be the best I have come across and would still recommend them"

I agree, was after a firmware update to my 2010 colour plotter to stop the "No DGPS Signal" alarm and message from appearing and explained I did not have a card reader or spare data card to download onto from the web, no problem they will send me datacard with latest updates on, if I could return to them when I am done with it. Now thats a plotter that must be coming on for 8/10 years old
 
Whilst I have some sympathy with the OP, Garmin should have practiced a little more customer care than they have, a battery that needs replacing is something that will affect EVERY chartplotter, at some time or another, not just Garmin.

If you have had 10 years use, that's good, a new battery will, I hope, give you another 10 years. If the unit still does what you want it to do, good for you. However to boycott Garmin is unlikely to cause a ripple in their share value.
 
Alternatively

You could have said DO buy Garmin products as this one has lived a decent length of time, worked reliably and with a bit of a fiddle I can get it to work for even longer. Much better than most kit you'll buy these days which falls apart in 5 minutes flat!
 
I had a very different experience with Garmin following a 126 I used to help me get to the Azores and back last year.

The terminals had became corroded and failed to work correctly. Thankfully I had 2 back ups. I returned it to Garmin who replaced it with a brand new 126. These are now an obsolelete model so I imagine they found it in 'deep storage'. I was delighted as I'd always found it very reliable.
 
I often wonder why these onboard batteries are not more easily replaceable. A bit like making a car that has to be replaced when the tyres wear out! Garmin are not alone in this.

Where I DID take issue with Garmin was the way the handled changing from their own format G cards to standard SD. Not an unreasonable switch over, and if you happened to have bought a GPSMap 225 just before the switch was announced it didnt seem too bad until less than a year later they stopped supporting G charts. Not only that, but they actually bought back and destroyed existing stocks of G charts from the swindleries so that a year old unit was not only obsolete, but could not be expanded. Nowadays they are rare as hens teeth, teeth although the unit I have still works perfectly - as I would expect it to from a reputable manufaturer. What a pity I only have Solent and central English Channel on it.

Now what sort of PR exercise was that?
 
Bought a Garmin 230 plotter 10 years ago and invested several hundred squids on charts. Went back a couple of years later to get another chart and was informed charts no longer available and 230 considered obsolete. Having paid £850 for the 230 and about £500 on charts I was not too pleased. Garmin agent informed me that Garmin were doing a trade in on new technology and would offer £50 on the 230 ! I will not go into my response to their offer. I still use the 230 and have now got a rather nice set of admiralty charts for the areas we need.
Its incredible how some people on here think a service life of 4/5 years is Ok on an electronic product.....they must be easily swayed by the marketing hype from Garmin etc to accept this level of service. I have a 20 year old TV (Sony), 39 year Black & Decker drill; missus has a 40 year old Krupps food mixer etc. If you accept **** service and quality, then don't be suprised if that's what manufacturers deliver.
 
nightjar, I agree. Even my 'missus' is over 20 years old and I have no service problems whatsoever. To scrap a piece of otherwise functioning kit because a battery has died is absurd. Everyone talks about 'carbon footprints' and 'global warming'. It is madness for a company the size of Garmin to desert these owners. Quite unacceptable and it is to the great credit of the OP who is not an electronics expert that he has researched the matter and found out how to replace the battery.
 
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