"Fixed price repair" - a warning

[Graham_Wright]

I recently bought a Raymarine E80 classic plotter on ebay. It was advertised with a declared fault - bent pins in the CF card reader.
The pins I straightened out myself but the reader still did not work. The shorted pins had damaged the supply to the reader.

With the vendors agreement, I took up The Service Centre "fixed price repair" offer advertised on ebay. As expected, this does not include parts which may be required.

The repair estimate was £528! This is comparable to a refurbished E80 complete with warranty and the ebay vendor quite reasonably would not agree to payment. The Service Centre advised they could not repair the fault at component level.

I contacted Raymarine who advised it was not an uncommon problem which they estimated would take around half an hour to fix.

Total cost including VAT and return postage £49.20.

Well done Raymarine and heed the warning!

 

[Tammany]

Suspect it was just a voltage regulator or similar they replaced hence the low cost. What a rip off quote originally though!!

 

[Graham_Wright]

Suspect it was just a voltage regulator or similar they replaced hence the low cost. What a rip off quote originally though!!

It was one surface mount transistor and a capacitor.

I sent just the relevant board to Raymarine (at their request) and when I stuck it all back together, found one of the push switches had gone missing. Spoke to John (great guy, very friendly and helpful) who promised a replacement. I found the original in the packaging and replaced it. All working perfectly. Very happy!

In the next post, I received half a dozen switches!

 

[PaulRainbow]

It was one surface mount transistor and a capacitor.

I sent just the relevant board to Raymarine (at their request) and when I stuck it all back together, found one of the push switches had gone missing. Spoke to John (great guy, very friendly and helpful) who promised a replacement. I found the original in the packaging and replaced it. All working perfectly. Very happy!

In the next post, I received half a dozen switches!

It's good to hear Raymarine customers service has improved so much, they used to be rubbish.

 

[snowleopard]

There are so many instances of crazy repair prices.

The mode knob broke off my Fuji camera. The 'fixed price' repair cost was over £100. Fair enough if it's a damaged lens or screen. I've been using it as a point-and-shoot ever since.

I took a lawn mower with no forward drive to our local repair shop and was quoted 'beyond economic repair'. I opened it up and replaced 2 plastic ratchet springs, total £3 and it's still going strong 12 years later.

Shop around.

 

[Grumpybear]

There are so many instances of crazy repair prices.

The mode knob broke off my Fuji camera. The 'fixed price' repair cost was over £100. Fair enough if it's a damaged lens or screen. I've been using it as a point-and-shoot ever since.

I took a lawn mower with no forward drive to our local repair shop and was quoted 'beyond economic repair'. I opened it up and replaced 2 plastic ratchet springs, total £3 and it's still going strong 12 years later.

Shop around.

My Autohelm Navcenter 600 plotter lost some features after shutdown. Raymarine declared it BER. On the advice of a local electrician (1 minute phone call) I replaced the internal battery at a cost of £2.99. Fixed.