Vesper Marine buyout

[Travelling Westerly]

I've just read Vesper Marine has been sold to Garmin.
I read a thread on Cruisers forum by current Cortex owners who seemed to be annoyed by the Garmin buyout. They cited possibility of no future support and price drops ahead.
I was thinking about buying a Cortex AIS system but am worried about the above.
Any thoughts or similar experience of buyouts resulting in the drop of support and prices?

 

[bedouin]

When Simrad bought out Navico they killed off the Corus range and stopped supporting it very quickly - leaving a lot of people with relatively new equipment with no support or spares availability.

 

[KompetentKrew]

It could well be that Cortex was what Garmin bought Vesper for - it's a fairly ambitious system, and also has a subscription model for the remote monitoring service.

I guess it could go either way, but I don't see how any opinion here could be more than a guess. Garmin previously bought inReach and have continued and expanded the range.

I'm not surprised that boat owners might be worried, if they bought one for the monthly plans and fear the system being shut down.

Personally, it was the monthly plans that turned me off the Cortex - there are plenty of boat owners who won't care about the cost, but I didn't want my VHF/AIS to be a just a vehicle for selling me other products.

 

[doug748]

That is a shame, eventually it may well mean the end of Vesper's excellent customer support, Garmin are not known for their long term attachment to older products, I imagine the corporate accountants would be on the case. The other sad thing is that innovative products can be strangled at birth, if they don't fit in with the marketing strategy at Head Office or cross boundaries with existing products

I agree with KK above, and won't buy stuff that involves paying a monthly tribute to the people who sold it to me. The old missus has a Fitbit watch that does not work properly unless you give them 3 quid a month. ?‍

.

 

[Travelling Westerly]

I got a reply from Vesper, they told me that the Garmin alignment will allow Garmin to provide wider support to users. They are keeping on a current Vesper support member to continue second line support.
Doesn't fill me with confidence and at near £2k for the equipment I think I'm going to hold off until things become clearer.

 

[Malish]

I got a reply from Vesper, they told me that the Garmin alignment will allow Garmin to provide wider support to users. They are keeping on a current Vesper support member to continue second line support.

Just keeping one support member, hummmm, that one support member could easily move on....

 

[jwilson]

I have been bitten by buyout problems, on non-boat stuff, worst case being a year-old £4500+ Mercury range cooker. Within a year of the buyout (by Aga Rangemaster) they stopped spares and repairs for this, and introduced a new Mercury model that superficially looked alike but was a tarted up version of a much cheaper Rangemaster cooker - none of the spares were the same. Usually the main aim of the buyout seems to be to shut down a thriving competitor.

Re Vesper/Garmin - in my experience Garmin stop product support on old models pretty quickly once they are selling a newer model.

 

[Moonraker Phil]

That is a shame, eventually it may well mean the end of Vesper's excellent customer support, Garmin are not known for their long term attachment to older products, I imagine the corporate accountants would be on the case. The other sad thing is that innovative products can be strangled at birth, if they don't fit in with the marketing strategy at Head Office or cross boundaries with existing products

I agree with KK above, and won't buy stuff that involves paying a monthly tribute to the people who sold it to me. The old missus has a Fitbit watch that does not work properly unless you give them 3 quid a month. ?‍

.

I agree, the formerly excellent customer support is now impotent.
i sent a query via Garmin 2 months ago. 2 weeks on Garmin replied that they could not respond and would forward the query to Vesper Marine. Another 6 weeks have passed with nothing heard.