Support from Garmin

iangrant

iangrant

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Really is top notch.

I had a splash screen on my GPS map screens of the old boat name so I cheekily emailed Garmin support, a Guy called Alex emailed me within two hours and said no problem I'll post you an update card.

It arrived, I poked it into the Garmin 5012 and hey presto it updated the screens on the network (I was a little nervous stuffing it in though)

Took another SD card off the boat and poked it onto the reader on the PC at home, downloaded the software updates for the kit, they unzipped themselves onto the SD card, took it to the boat, plugged it into the 5012 - "system update" on all instruments and plotters sorted - brilliant.

Chart updates I'll have to pay for and I believe also buy a Garmin card reader as the support software fets upset if you don't have one.

Thanks Garmin - excellent support..

Ian
 
Just dumped my almost new Raymarine widescreen plotter and digital radar for Garmin plotter and Digital HD radar. Did have to make a call to Garmin support when i couldn't get the radar to work, they answered the phone straight away and were very helpful and honest. They acknowledged that form my description it had to be a fault, either with the radome or the cable, confirmed that they had had instances of both being faulty on arrival, but very rare with the radome, most likely the cable. Suggested i called the supplier and ask them to send me a cable. The supplier actually sent a whole boxed kit, radome and cable. It was the cable at fault.

Great service and exactly the reason i changed from Raymarine to Garmin.

Ian, no need for a Garmin card reader. One from Asda or Tesco's works fine.
 
I've always had fabulous service from Garmin. The UK office even replaced a US handheld that want wrong well outside of its official guarantee.

Have to say I wasn't impressed with the service from Raymarine when tcm's autopilot went t*ts up and tried to force us to go round in circles.

(I suppose it may have been trying to shorten the circles that he's doing now.)
 
pteron said:
I've always had fabulous service from Garmin. The UK office even replaced a US handheld that want wrong well outside of its official guarantee.
Click to expand...

Yep, me too : I dropped my US sourced eTrex Summit and cracked the glass - Garmin UK (who were fully apprised of whence it came) fixed it foc without a quibble with iirc 5 days turnaround. VG.

Boo2
 
Decent after sales service is forgotten by lots of 'keen buyers' , not only in the Marine trade.
Hence the growth of Flea Bay.
Garmin -- can't add anything further than 'Excellent'
 
I had a Garmin fishfinder develop a fault about three years outside of the warranty period, I returned it and expected it to be repaired with a bill to follow. Instead I received a brand new unit complete with the transducer, mounting bracket etc. completely free of charge.
Brilliant service and as a result I have remained faithful to Garmin products since.
 
Have a Raymarine C70 :(

Making it work with a PC is a nightmare - needs a seperate card reader to read the charts on the PC, another to then copy the WPTs to another card.

It does not work with Vista or Windows 7 only XP and Raymarine can not tell me whe this will change even though XP has been discontinued by Windows.

The connector from the Radar to the C70 uses tiny pins that snap, the card reader on the unit when you take the card out has a tendancy to pull out the pins here as well.

All in all not great, wish we had bought Garmin. Also now thinking that the iPad could be an interesting way forward if linked to a Bluetooth GPS
 
Sundowner Portofino said:
Have a Raymarine C70 :(

Making it work with a PC is a nightmare - needs a seperate card reader to read the charts on the PC, another to then copy the WPTs to another card.

It does not work with Vista or Windows 7 only XP and Raymarine can not tell me whe this will change even though XP has been discontinued by Windows.

The connector from the Radar to the C70 uses tiny pins that snap, the card reader on the unit when you take the card out has a tendancy to pull out the pins here as well.

All in all not great, wish we had bought Garmin. Also now thinking that the iPad could be an interesting way forward if linked to a Bluetooth GPS
Click to expand...


Oh dear - here I go again.

Try running Memory Map on a PC (perhaps a Netbook) and uploading waypoints/routes using the NMEA on the C Series. Might have to find/create a spare NMEA input but it would be well worthwhile - IMHO. In fact, you could buy the kit and the charts twice over for the price of an iPad
 
I do not disagree with you Hurricane, the issue I think is more with Vista than anything. We do not use the NMEA side of the set up at the moment, maybe worth investigating.

The iPad is more that I want and iPad and am trying to convince SWMBO that it is a good idea :)

Have not looked at Memory Map will try that thank you
 
Raymarine are so screwed up with their software that Raytech won't work with anything newer than XP. The full version of Raytech won't work with the new widescreen C series. There is currently no software to network a widescreen C series with a PC. Best you can do is network and old C series, with a PC running an old version of Windows (XP) You have to buy a special card reader to use Raytech for planning on the PC. Garmin works with a 99p Ebay reader. It's a mess that doesn't appear to be getting any better, maybe now the money problems seem to be fixed they'll get on with things, but i wouldn't hold my breath.

Garmin is a little better, though not perfect. You can use a 99p reader and about 40 quid for Homeport for passage planning on the PC. Homeport isn't the best i've seen, but it is functional. If you have Bluechart Atlantic x.xx, you can passage plan with that. It's also possible to use Bluechart with nRoute on a PC with a GPS feed to navigate, handy as a backup plotter. It's also possible to convert G2 Vision charts to run on Mapsource or nRoute. Whilst not perfect at the moment, Garmin seem to be investing time and money in new software and hardware. They are properly supporting their products and customers.
 
Sundowner Portofino said:
I do not disagree with you Hurricane, the issue I think is more with Vista than anything. We do not use the NMEA side of the set up at the moment, maybe worth investigating.

The iPad is more that I want and iPad and am trying to convince SWMBO that it is a good idea :)

Have not looked at Memory Map will try that thank you
Click to expand...

Have a look at this thread before you look at the Memory-Map website - several pages of discussion.

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238419
 
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