Garmin's Warrenty

I called the tech support people and was surprised that someone actually took my call without me having to sit on hold for an hour. That in itself was a blessing... Anyway, I've gotten my RMA number and the guy said that the turn around time after they receive it is about 7 days. Hopefully, I'll have it back soon.

I figured that I'd post this here in case you guys had a problem with any of your units and you are wandering what to expect. For the record, I'm sending mine out tomorrow, and I'll keep y'all posted with a few details. I'm not expecting any trouble, and if all goes smoothly... I'm going to finally replace my front finder with that Garmin 240 that I've been wanting! The 160 is still running strong as ever on the console!

Garmin 176 GPS Map Garmin 160 Sounder Garmin 240 Sounder Garmin 168 GPS Map / Sounder

In fact the only piece of new equipment I have had any trouble with is my Eagle sounder. Every trip out it will at one time or another start reading some ridiculous depth like 870 feet, when I can see the bottom 3 or 4 feet down. I didn't like my Humminbird stuff (it sucked), but it came on my boat. I didn't buy the stuff new.

"Charles B. Summers" <cbsummers@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:J5gkd.1151$jE2.984@bignews4.bellsouth.net... Going to send my Garmin 162 GPS in for warranty repairs tomorrow. The screen is starting to fade out, making my have to turn the contrast way up in order to see the screen. After a little while, the thing will just shut itself off.

I called the tech support people and was surprised that someone actually took my call without me having to sit on hold for an hour. That in itself was a blessing... Anyway, I've gotten my RMA number and the guy said that the turn around time after they receive it is about 7 days. Hopefully, I'll have it back soon.

I figured that I'd post this here in case you guys had a problem with any of your units and you are wandering what to expect. For the record, I'm sending mine out tomorrow, and I'll keep y'all posted with a few details. I'm not expecting any trouble, and if all goes smoothly... I'm going to finally replace my front finder with that Garmin 240 that I've been wanting! The 160 is still running strong as ever on the console!

When I bought my unit at Amazon for an unbelievable price (essentially, etrex legend for $150, not counting the $50 rebate) I had some interesting back and forths with Amazon. First, shipping kept getting delayed until I was out of the rebate period. A call to amazon, after getting kicked up enough levels, resulted in Amazon crediting me the rebate amount. Next, the unit arrived with a non-functioning display. Amazon swiped that out with a new unit really quickly for me.

After the warrantee ended, the unit started spontaneously shutting off periodically-- it probably happened first during the warrantee period, but I thought it was bad batteries or something, and then it stopped showing the problem altogether, so I thought it was OK. In any case, it started dying on me out of warrantee.

I called customer service. I was real nice on the phone. I told him that my first unit, after some availability problems, arrived broken, and my second unit had out-of-warrantee problems. Then I told him that if I had to buy a new unit, because of the problems I had with these two units, I would be unlikely to replace it with a Garmin (because of quality control issues), but if they would cover this under warrantee, they'd have a customer for life. Simply put, I asked them to offer my warrantee service for an out of warrantee item, just because I wanted them to. Long story a hair shorter, they replaced my Garmin for free with a brand new unit. Because of firmware and hardware upgrades, it seems even better than my first.

Scott

You sure your batteries are strong? These units are the first to turn off when batteries get old & weak...just a thought Charles.

I can see no difference in the display with the engine off, or running... and the unit usually turns itself off while underway.

I'm sure that I'll be hearing from Garmin soon... hopefully, very soon!