Poor customer service with Raymarine

I think the OP is perfectly right to be pissed off. Yes, he dropped the plotter, he freely admitted it was his fault, but for Raymarine to say it's not a repairable item it not acceptable in my opinion. The offer of a replacement head unit for £312 (with the VAT) is a bit of a piss take, Force 4 are selling them complete for £349.

To say it wouldn't be economic to fit a new screen to a plotter is nonsense. Standard Horizon will fit new screens to handheld VHF's. I can have a new glass fitted in my cheap Casio watch.

A few years ago i clumsily damaged the connector socket on a Garmin GPS receiver and pulled the plug off of the N2K cable. I called Garmin to see if the socket was available separately, they sent me a new receiver and a new cable FOC, even though i was clear about what had happened.
 
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Just_sayin' said:
My wife collected her brand new car from the dealership and backed it straight into a parking bay pole. This caused her to confuse the brake with the throttle and she drove straight through the showroom windows. Luckily a crash barrier stopped her ploughing onto the road but it caused the car to swerve through the used car (sorry, pre-owned car) display which strangely enough diverted her back into the original parking bay. The process then repeated itself. I wish we hadn't insisted on a full tank of fuel :nonchalance:

I was incensed that the dealership wouldn't repair her car for free and vowed never to buy from them again.

They seemed pleased.
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If she had simply reversed into the post and cracked the bumper would you be singing the same song if the dealer told you spares were not available for that model of car, but they'd offer you another new one with a £50 discount ?
 
The Dragonfly units are factory sealed units, they can't be taken apart and repaired (not if you want them to still be weatherproof anyway).

The offer of a replacement at £260 is the wholesale price and under the circs about a good an offer as any manufacturer would make, better than most in fact. With vat and delivery it's not much cheaper than retail which just goes to show what tight margins firms like Force 4 are operating on

My experience of dealing with Raymarine tech support is that they're as good or better than their competition these days. Not brilliant, I grant, but none of them are
 
PaulRainbow said:
To say it wouldn't be economic to fit a new screen to a plotter is nonsense. Standard Horizon will fit new screens to handheld VHF's. I can have a new glass fitted in my cheap Casio watch.
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I don't think that's right. Raymarine screens are physically bonded to the underlying electronics in order to guarantee absolute waterproofing and zero screen misting. This is a departure from the pricey gas filled diaphragm units and the breathable gear still sold by NASA, Standard Horizon, etc.

Fixing such a screen may simply not be possible for the simple reason that a complete removal of the old one would likely to trash the underlying electronics.
 
PaulRainbow said:
Poor design then.
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No, I disagree

The unit is designed to be sealed for life because that makes it ultra reliable in a harsh marine environment.

It's also significantly cheaper to manufacture than incorporating replaceable seals, filling the unit with inert gas or any of the other nefarious, and less effective, methods used to weatherproof marine electronics
 
Bru said:
No, I disagree
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You are of course entitled to disagree, even if you are still wrong :)

There are lots of things that withstand the marine environment, but are still repairable. My SH handheld is submersible, it doesn't mist up and the screen can be replaced, same is true of even the £100 models.
 
PaulRainbow said:
You are of course entitled to disagree, even if you are still wrong :)

There are lots of things that withstand the marine environment, but are still repairable. My SH handheld is submersible, it doesn't mist up and the screen can be replaced, same is true of even the £100 models.
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All the above is of course perfectly true... right up until the point where the seal fails :)

And fail they do

The Dragonfly design is not poor, it's simply different. You (and I for that matter) may not like the concept of sealed for life units but you pay your money and take your choice. It is what it is
 
PaulRainbow said:
You are of course entitled to disagree, even if you are still wrong :)

There are lots of things that withstand the marine environment, but are still repairable. My SH handheld is submersible, it doesn't mist up and the screen can be replaced, same is true of even the £100 models.
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You may be getting the wrong end of the stick here:

1. There is no denying that simple little electronic units can be cheaply waterproofed. Look at your VHF screen and you will see a fairly basic set of number and indicator matrices, nothing else. A chartplotter requires an infinitely more complex screen and has also has more complex waterproofing requirements.

2. The problem with waterproofing such a big item is that air can expand a good bit if the unit is left exposed cycling through daytime temperatures of say 30C with nighttime temperatures down to perhaps -15C. Old units were waterproof in the sense that they could withstand a dunking, but required a pressure release vent, which in turn allowed moisture laden air into the equipment. Expensive solutions such as inert gas filling were neither reliable nor cost effective.

3. One needs to accurately read a chartplotter even in strong sunlight and that requires a far more sophisticated setup than say a SH handheld VHF. It also requires that refraction across different materials and gas layers is kept to a minimum.​

The most straightforward and economical way to resolve all of these constraints is to manufacture 'sealed for life' units. If you think about it the Raymarine Dragonfly is a great bit of kit at a very competitive price; the OP dropped his, something which is outside the design parameters and it broke.
 
Just had my 4 year old tack tick wind fettled by Raymarine, service turn round as promised at a very reasonable cost..£45.
Good chat with servicing tech.
more than happy with level of service
 
It's a pity the OP hasn't come back and answered some of the comments/questions that have been raised in this thread. One can't help but wonder if the purpose of his first (and only) post wasn't an attempt at "naming and shaming on social media" - which seems to be the current vogue - in the hope that Raymarine would roll over and compensate him for his clumsiness. I'm sure he will get a long way with Trading Standards concerning the "glass not being up to standard" as I don't think the Dragonfly is designed to be bounced on the deck!
 
dom said:
You may be getting the wrong end of the stick here:

1. There is no denying that simple little electronic units can be cheaply waterproofed. Look at your VHF screen and you will see a fairly basic set of number and indicator matrices, nothing else. A chartplotter requires an infinitely more complex screen and has also has more complex waterproofing requirements.

2. The problem with waterproofing such a big item is that air can expand a good bit if the unit is left exposed cycling through daytime temperatures of say 30C with nighttime temperatures down to perhaps -15C. Old units were waterproof in the sense that they could withstand a dunking, but required a pressure release vent, which in turn allowed moisture laden air into the equipment. Expensive solutions such as inert gas filling were neither reliable nor cost effective.

3. One needs to accurately read a chartplotter even in strong sunlight and that requires a far more sophisticated setup than say a SH handheld VHF. It also requires that refraction across different materials and gas layers is kept to a minimum.​

The most straightforward and economical way to resolve all of these constraints is to manufacture 'sealed for life' units. If you think about it the Raymarine Dragonfly is a great bit of kit at a very competitive price; the OP dropped his, something which is outside the design parameters and it broke.
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Thank you Dom, and also Bru, for explaining this so clearly. One lives and learns.
Peter
 
Well I'm grateful to the OP for identifying this issue. In my opinion it's perfectly normal, and to be expected, for electronic displays to be removed when not in use. Especially on an open boat. Obviously nobody intends to drop the unit. But accidents happen. I think the unit should be designed in such a way so that the display can be replaced. I think there is an arguable case that the device is unfit for purpose.
 
PaulRainbow said:
To say it wouldn't be economic to fit a new screen to a plotter is nonsense.
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That will depend on how it is manufactured, re-working is always far more expensive than original manufacture and given it was not the manufactures fault that the OP, who has gone very, very quiet, dropped it and unfortunately impacted on a point that caused the screen to damage.

Of course the whole thread could be a wind up.
 
Scotsailor said:
Well I'm grateful to the OP for identifying this issue. In my opinion it's perfectly normal, and to be expected, for electronic displays to be removed when not in use. Especially on an open boat. Obviously nobody intends to drop the unit. But accidents happen. I think the unit should be designed in such a way so that the display can be replaced. I think there is an arguable case that the device is unfit for purpose.
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Yeah yeah, take a broken whisky bottle back to the shop, and see if they'll replace it FOC. :rolleyes:
 
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